I’ve been home for a month and a half from the Semesters mission trip that I led this summer. Since then I have been meditating on the topic of intercession and would like to share with you what I have been learning.
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A few weeks into our month in Guatemala, Mae, a woman filled with Holy Spirit, said to me, “Christy, you know you have the gift of intercession, right?”
A lot of thoughts ran through my head: “Intercession, isn’t that the generic, catch-all spiritual gift? At the same time, I trust this woman’s discernment, so maybe she’s right? Could my definition of intercession be incorrect?” So, after a pause that was probably legible on my face, I said, “What do you mean by intercession?”
Mae explained to me that intercession was standing in the gap for others, being the ‘stand-in’ before God for another person. It is communicating with God on their behalf until they are at a point where they can come before Him themselves. She followed this explanation with a few Scriptural examples of people who interceded for others.
While the most perfect example in Scripture of a person of intercession is Jesus Christ Himself (more on that later), I would like to share with you the one that she gave to me about Moses.
This story began back in Exodus 19 when the Lord made a covenant with the people of Israel whom He had just rescued out of slavery in Egypt. The terms of the covenant were ones of faithfulness; the Lord promised to make the people of Israel “[His] treasured possession among all peoples” and “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex. 19:5-6). For the people, they agreed to prioritize the Lord above all other gods, to respect their fellow humans, and to keep themselves pure before the Lord (Ex. 20:1-17). However, the people were so frightened by the presence of God when He came down to explain this covenant to them that they asked Moses their leader to speak to God on their behalf and repeat to them what God said (Ex. 20:18-21).
While Moses was away for days with the Lord, the people grew restless and created a golden statue, worshiping it and proclaiming it was the god that had delivered them, thus breaking the covenant they had just agreed to with the Lord. This deeply grieved the Lord and He spoke with Moses (who was still up on the mountain alone with the Lord and knew nothing of what was going on down below) of destroying the people who had broken their covenant and starting anew with a people descendant from Moses (Ex. 32:1-10).
Here’s the part where intercession comes into play. Moses prayed and asked the Lord to reconsider, declaring the character of the Lord: that He is a remarkably faithful God, despite the shortcomings of humans. Then the Lord honored the words of Moses and chose to faithfully keep His end of the covenant with the people of Israel, even though the people had dishonored their part of the bargain, not to mention dishonoring God Himself (Ex. 32:11-14). We find this story poetically retold in the Psalms,
“They made a calf in Horeb
and worshiped a metal image.
They exchanged the glory of God
for the image of an ox that eats grass.
They forgot God, their Savior,
who had done great things in Egypt,
wondrous works in the land of Ham,
and awesome deeds by the Red Sea.
Therefore, he said he would destroy them—
had not Moses, his chosen one,
stood in the breach before him,
to turn away his wrath from destroying them.” (Ps. 106:19-23)
This is what gets me in this story: we see here that intercession is not about praying helplessly for things to change. Intercession is joining in on a conversation with the Lord in faith and asking for Him to get involved and to change things on a cosmic level. Intercession is doing battle on behalf of another by partnering with the Lord in prayer. Scripture tells us that God honors the prayers of a righteous person (James 1:16). This is why Mae called intercession standing in the gap for another. In intercession, we bring the needs, requests, pain, and joy of others before the Lord, and the Lord honors our prayers and moves on behalf of the one praying.
Intercession is also so much more than prayer. Not only do we bring the pleas of others before God, we also communicate to others on behalf of God. Conversation with God is not one-way. The Lord has many things to say, words that I for one long to hear. As Peter said to Jesus in the Gospel of John 6:68, “You have the words of eternal life.” When we come before God, it is good to talk with Him, but even better to hear His words.
Therefore, intercession is not only standing in the gap to bring our prayers unto God, but also, by the prompting of the Lord, bringing His words to another. This of course is a delicate business, but since God never contradicts His character, the words from His mouth are always in agreement with those found in Scripture. According to 2 Timothy 3:16-17, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work,” so also will be every word from God. God can speak to all of us (Acts 2:17) and His very words are life, but just as there are times when we stand in the gap for others to bring their needs before God, so we also stand in the gap to bring His words unto others as an act of intercession.
So, to sum it up, when I was told I had the gift of intercession, at first I was skeptical but now I am exhilarated! What an honor to stand with the Lord to fight for someone else. To pray for them, feel for them, speak life over them, to stand in the gap for them. After all, that’s what Jesus did for me. Jesus Christ in the greatest act of intercession came down to earth and interceded not only in word but also in deed by dying on a cross, and standing in the gap, He paid the price for my sin so that I can stand before God guiltless (1 Peter 2:22-25). And He is still interceding for us before God every day (Romans 8:34).
As it says in the book of Philippians, “Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!” (Phil. 2:5-7).
