Since our service last night, I’ve been thinking about intercessory prayer. We are so near God’s return and now more than ever, we need to be interceding for the lost. I don’t want anyone going to hell, and more than anything, I want people to experience life the way I have! Jesus has been life to me. Redemption from wreckage. I know He has been the same to many of you. In many of those extended periods of time when I’ve poured out my heart to Him in true intercession, I was going through extreme crisis and marrow-deep healing. I was interceding for myself…I’ve only had a couple experiences with interceding for someone else. In my normal practice (when I’m not in crisis mode), I confess my sins and ask God to search my heart, then I pray for the needs on my list. We are the children of God and our hearts need tending and mending that only He can bring. But in these end times, its so important that we find that place of intercession. Its not an easy place, especially for people who like to pray for a certain amount of time and then go about their day. Its hard for people like me who have jobs. Its hard to find a balance between cultivating your own relationship with God and interceding for others. Its a balance we have to find though, a struggle we have to endure. Anybody else feeling this urgency to intercede?
I read this story earlier this week in the book Intercessory Prayer by Dutch Sheets:
I knew the person I was going to pray for was very ill. What I didn’t know was that she was comatose with a tracheotomy in her throat, a feeding tube in her stomach and had been in that condition for a year and a half. Seeing her for the first time was like expecting a prescription and receiving brain surgery. Her sister, who had asked me to visit this young lady, had not given me the whole story for fear I wouldn’t go at all. She knew if she could just get me there once, I’d probably go back. She was right! The doctors gave Diane no hope for living, let alone coming out of the coma. Even if she did regain consciousness, she would basically be a vegetable because of her extensive brain damage, or so the doctors believed.
Have you ever stood beside someone in this kind of condition and asked God for a miracle? To stand beside death and ask for life can be intimidating. It can also teach us a lot – about life, about death, about ourselves and about our God.
It happened on a Saturday morning when she was all alone. Earlier that week Diane had been moved from the nursing home to a hospital for treatment of an infection. After administering more tests, the doctors determined her condition had grown worse and informed her family that she would die soon. When Diane’s sister relayed this information to me, I dashed off to the hospital. Knowing comatose people can often hear and understand everything happening around them, I spoke much to her. We later learned, because of the damage to her brain, Diane was not hearing me. But on that afternoon, I spoke to her as usual. “This nightmare is almost over,” I said with tears streaming down by face. “Nothing can keep us from receiving our miracle. Nothing!” It was not just a strong hope I had at this point, but a great faith. I had turned to God so many times throughout the course of that year asking Him if He Had really sent me to this little girl. Each time I received His assurance, “I sent you. Don’t quit.”
God restored Diane! He healed her brain, the outer layer of which the doctors said had been totally destroyed by a virus. Every part of it was covered with infection. “No hope,” they said. The front page of the newspaper read, “Woman Awake, Alive, Healthy After Two Years in Coma.” The doctors called it a “medical miracle.” “We have no explanation,” they said.
We know the explanation. We know a God who saves, who heals, who delivers, who spares, who restores! 1 Timothy 2:1 says “I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people…” We know people who, like the girl in the story, are dying from physical problems, but we are also surrounded by people who are dying from spiritual disease. Bro. Cook preached last night to tell the pallbearers “Stop! I’m still alive!”
Psalm 106:23 talks about Moses interceding for the Israelites. The Bible says the people would have been destroyed “had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach…” We need to stand in the gap, to intercede for the lost, to stand up for them and declare that there is still life in those dry bones.
Let’s stand in the breach for the people of Willis , TX
Amberly
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