What is an Intercessor? Are You One?

Why do we need an intercessor?

The definition is basic: an intercessor is someone who prays, petitions, or begs God in favor of another person.

It’s a Biblical concept that appears often.

The most famous case probably is when Abram barters God down from the need to find 50 righteous men to 10 righteous men in order to spare Sodom and Gomorrah.

Abram’s intercession worked–God agreed–but they were unable to find 10 lovers of God and the cities were destroyed.

(Archaeologists, by the way, believe they’ve found the site. See my friend Latayne Scott’s book with Steven Collins: Discovering the City of Sodom: The Fascinating, True Discovery of the Old Testament’s Most Infamous City.)

Famous Intercessors

Other well-known intercessors include Moses, Samuel, Noah, Job, Jeremiah and a host of others.

Several women also interceded for Israel: Zipporah, Hulda, and certainly Esther.

Jesus often prayed for his people.

In all cases, they desired people to know the one true God and to trust Him.

They recognized how far the Israelites had traveled from the true faith and they begged God to intervene.

The lack of an intercessor caught God’s attention as well.

In Isaiah 59: 15-16, God himself asked,

Then the LORD saw it, and it displeased Him
That there was no justice.
He saw that there was no man,
And wondered that there was no intercessor.”

If God looks for intercessors on our behalf, surely we need them?

Intercessor and Prayer

When someone prays for another, they’re called intercessors and they practice intercessory prayer.

Oswald Chambers spoke about intercessory prayer and the need for intercessors on several days in My Utmost for His Highest.

In a response to that Isaiah passage, Chambers observed:

Worship and intercession must go together; one is impossible without the other. Intercession means raising ourselves up to the point of getting the mind of Christ regarding the person for whom we are praying.”

To “get the mind of Christ regarding the person,” means to see them through Christ’s eyes.

While praying for someone recently, I realized it did no good for me to ask God to help them in a given situation if they had no concept of Jesus as savior.

If that person has no interest in worshipping God or Jesus, an answer to prayer ultimately wouldn’t mean anything to their spiritual health.

The person needed to know Jesus more than s/he needed to have something in her life “fixed.”

Viewing the prayers of the Biblical intercessors listed above, their prayers were for the salvation of their people–that they would come into a worshipful relationship with God.

Chambers went on:

When we lose sight of God, we become hard and dogmatic. We throw our petitions at His throne and dictate to Him what we want Him to do.

“We don’t worship God, nor do we seek to conform our minds to the mind of Christ. And if we are hard toward God, we will become hard toward other people.”

How does one intercede in a case like that?

By keeping our eyes on God, not on our opinion of our friend’s need.

Intercessor = Standing in the Gap

One way of understanding intercession is to imagine “standing in the gap,” between a person and God.

Jesus, of course, is the one who stood in that gap and connected people with God by his death on the cross.

He and the Holy Spirit intercede on our behalf before God.

But sometimes people lack the faith they know they need to pray.

I’ve volunteered more than once to pray for a friend because the situation was so difficult, they just couldn’t pray.

Perhaps their anger was too strong toward another person–even as they recognized they needed to pray.

“Let me do that for you. I don’t carry your frustration. I can pray.”

Or perhaps their circumstances were so difficult, they couldn’t imagine what to pray or if God would hear them. (He would hear them, they just felt too broken to remember that).

That’s what being an intercessor means.

Intercessor led by the Holy Spirit

Intercessory prayer often is the result of a prompting by the Holy Spirit–a sudden understanding or insight into someone else’s life.

Oswald Chambers also discusses this concept in the My Utmost for His Highest March 31 reading.

One of the most subtle and illusive burdens God ever places on us as saints is this burden of discernment concerning others.

“He gives us discernment so that we may . . . form the mind of Christ about them (see Philippians 2:5).

“We should intercede . . . to bring God into contact with our minds, that we awaken ourselves to the point where God is able to convey His mind to us regarding the people for whom we intercede.

In other words, the Holy Spirit gives us insight into another’s life (perhaps of their sin), and our task as an intercessor is to pray for that individual within the will of God.

It’s not to judge them for their failings.

We need to have God’s view of their situation when we pray.

I like to tell friends who gain this knowledge from God that, “He’s just drafted you into His prayer army.”

And since Chambers likes to point out, “Prayer is the greater work,” praying God’s will into their lives is often the most effective action we can take.

Tweetables

What is an intercessor and what do they do? Click to Tweet

Have you ever been drafted into God’s prayer army? Click to Tweet

Even God sees the need for intercessory prayers. Click to Tweet