Would you turn with me to a scripture in the first book of Samuel, chapter 12? We are going to read from verse 19.
And all the people said unto Samuel, Pray for thy servants unto the Lord thy God, that we die not; for we have added unto all our sins this evil, to ask us a king.
And Samuel said unto the people, Fear not: ye have indeed done all this evil; yet turn not aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart:
And turn ye not aside; for then would ye go after vain things which cannot profit nor deliver, for they are vain.
For the Lord will not forsake His people for His great name’s sake, because it hath pleased the Lord to make you a people unto Himself.
Moreover as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you: but I will instruct you in the good and the right way.
Only fear the Lord, and serve Him in truth with all your heart; for consider how great things He hath done for you.
But if ye shall still do wickedly, ye shall be consumed, both ye and your king.—1 Samuel 12:19–25
Then, if we will turn to the book of Acts, the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 4, from verse 23.
And being let go, they came to their own company, and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said unto them.
And they, when they heard it, lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and said, O Lord, Thou that didst make the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that in them is:
Who by the Holy Spirit, by the mouth of our father David Thy servant, didst say, Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples imagine vain things?
The kings of the earth set themselves in array, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord, and against His Anointed:
For of a truth in this city against Thy holy Servant Jesus, Whom Thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, were gathered together,
To do whatsoever Thy hand and Thy counsel foreordained to come to pass.
And now, Lord, look upon their threatenings: and grant unto Thy servants to speak Thy word with all boldness,
While Thou stretchest forth Thy hand to heal; and that signs and wonders may be done through the name of Thy holy Servant Jesus.
And when they had prayed, the place was shaken wherein they were gathered together; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spake the word of God with boldness.—Acts 4:23–31
Lastly, if you will turn to the last book of the Bible, Revelation—the Apocalypse—we will read in chapter 8, verse 3.
And another angel came and stood over the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should add it unto the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne.
And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, went up before God out of the angel’s hand.
And the angel taketh the censer; and he filled it with the fire of the altar, and cast it upon the earth: and there followed thunders, and voices, and lightnings, and an earthquake.—Revelation 8:3–5
Just a further word of prayer.
Beloved Lord, we are so glad that we are here this evening. You have been so greatly with us, speaking to us in each of these sessions. We thank You, Lord. It is Your mercy and Your grace.
And now, Lord, we come to this evening. We have already prayed for it. Now, dear Lord, all we want to tell You is that without that anointing, we can do nothing—neither in the speaking nor in the hearing. But when the anointing is present, then we shall hear Your voice.
And, Lord, in some very real way, our hearts will be touched. You see the days in which we are living: the confusion, the darkness, the deterioration, the paganisation that is taking place on every side. Lord, we need You.
Reach us this evening, and we ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus, the Messiah. Amen.
Well, I do not think you need me to tell you that the theme of these times has been very simply that we need to be linked to the Lord in heaven, especially where there is a turning point in divine history.
Different ones of us have spoken a number of times about those turning points—whether it was Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David, John the Baptist, or, before John the Baptist, Daniel. There are others too, like Nehemiah and Ezra, who were also smaller, but very real, turning points in the divine purpose.
Now, we have, I hope, received something from these sessions. My responsibility has been Samuel. Samuel ranks very highly in the Jewish tradition. It is quite amazing how much is accredited to Samuel, and I have already spoken to you about it.
At this turning point, Samuel was the man whom the Lord used. I have already spoken about the three totalities. We see them in Samuel:
Thank you; someone listened to me last time. Obedience to the Lord Jesus.
Let me tell you something: if those three totalities are present in your life, you will not fail. You are on the road to becoming an overcomer.
There is no way that you can be totally and utterly committed to the person of the Lord Jesus and not win. There is no way that you can surrender your will—which is so often the whole problem that we face—to His will and not go through. You will win.
And if you are totally obedient to His voice, to His commands, you will surely win. It is as simple as that.
The funny thing is—well, it is not really funny. To use a good old English, Shakespearean word: tragic. The tragic thing is that we make a huge mess of our Christian lives.
No sooner are we saved than we begin to draw back from any total commitment to the person of the Lord Jesus. We have battles over our will—my will and His will. Whom should I marry? What career should I take? Where should I live? What shall be the future?
My will and His will may be two very different things. We get into total confusion over this because we have, within our being, a civil war.
We have seen the results of civil war in Libya and in Syria. But many a Christian has a civil war going on in his or her life. They have never surrendered their will to the Lord Jesus—never surrendered their will to His will. The result is confusion, failure, and defeat.
All this, I have sought to say something about. But this evening I want to speak about yet another matter. Last night I spoke about ministry to the Lord.
That matter can never be fulfilled in your life and mine unless these three T’s are in place. I can prophesy, without any fear of contradiction—at least from heaven—that if you do not follow those three totalities, you will never minister to the Lord Jesus.
It is impossible without total abandonment to Him. You have to be under His lordship. It is one thing to know Him as Saviour; it is another thing to know Him as Lord; it is yet another thing to know Him as Head. That means a body. That means fellow members.
It all goes back to this matter. We spoke about ministry to the Lord: worshipping the Lord, really serving Him with love. That is ministry to the Lord.
Ministry to the temple, ministry to the tabernacle, ministry to the work, ministry to the system, to the organisation—we get into all kinds of things. But ministry to the Lord is first and foremost, and that we see in the life of Samuel.
He was totally committed to the Lord, totally surrendered to the will of the Lord, and totally obedient to the Lord. He ministered to the Lord from an early age, right through his life to his death.
But there is one further matter, and it is that which I want to dwell upon this evening. Now, do not get turned off the moment you hear what I am going to speak about, because a whole number go, “Oh, he is not going to talk about that, is he?”
It is the matter of intercession.
That shines out of Samuel’s life. I read the account of how he said that he would not sin by ceasing to pray for a difficult, gainsaying people. Samuel is one of the greatest examples in the Word of God of an intercessor.
Unfortunately, this word intercession, or intercessor, has been devalued. People talk about intercession, and what they really mean is prayer. Real intercession is in another dimension.
One of the greatest lessons that we learn from Samuel’s life is his intercession. He was, above all, an intercessor.
We cannot ignore the fact that everyone whom the Lord has used at a turning point—a new era, a new phase, a new epoch, whatever you call it—in divine history, every one of them has been an intercessor. You cannot ignore it. It shouts at you.
Abraham: God called him, “My friend.” He even said at one time, “Shall I withhold from Abraham what I am going to do?” You know the story.
When the Lord said, “I am sick of the sin and iniquity of Sodom and Gomorrah, and I am going to judge them,” Abraham began his intercession. You know the story.
It is very interesting. He went down from fifty people to forty-five, to forty. It was real Jewish: right down a little bit more—thirty, twenty. Each time the Lord said, “If there are twenty people, I will withhold; I will not judge.”
But Abraham never came to five, and there were only five righteous people in Sodom. Maybe it was a lesson to learn; that I do not know.
Moses was an intercessor. The humour of the Lord is something that has fascinated me. When I was young, I thought that God was humourless, but I discovered that God has enormous humour.
I think it is amazing when the Lord said to Moses, “Stand aside, Moses. I am going to destroy this people. I am sick of them: murmuring, stiff-necked, critical the whole time, never thankful for what I have done for them. After all, I brought them out of Egypt, turned the whole of Egypt upside down to save them, and they spend their time murmuring.”
Then He said to Moses, I think with enormous humour, “It is okay, Moses. I will make of you a new nation.” He knew very well that He was putting Moses to the test.
Moses was no ordinary person—brought up in Pharaoh’s household, educated to the highest degree in Egypt, a military hero. From all this, we learn from our tradition. Not all those traditions are stupid; these things are even referred to in the book of Acts.
I would have thought that Moses, if there had only been a little bit of commitment to himself, to his own future, to the fulfilment of his own will, would have obeyed the Lord and said, “Well, Lord, I think that is a very interesting idea You have got. I am a bit fed up with these people myself. Maybe You could start afresh with me and the family—Aaron and Miriam. We are better stock than these others.”
But not Moses. The moment the Lord said it, he remonstrated with the Lord. He was an intercessor. He pleaded with the Lord to forgive the people, and he said, “What will the nations say? You brought these people out with an outstretched arm, with mighty miracles, and they will say, ‘You took them out to destroy them.’”
And the Lord relented. I think He knew all along that Moses had already abandoned any big ideas about himself.
You come to Samuel. He stood between the Lord and the sinning people. If we were to say it today, it is not just an unsaved nation; we would say he stood between the Lord and the church—the redeemed, the people of God—and he pleaded with the Lord for them.
I have recently been reading the Psalms, and I am amazed how much of an intercessor David was. Again and again in his psalms, when he speaks about the judgments of the Lord upon Israel, he pleads with the Lord to remember His covenants with the fathers, and remember the promises that He made concerning this people.
That was the basis of his intercession. But wherever you look, you can go further even with Nehemiah. When you read the paraphrase of Nehemiah’s intercessory ministry, you are speechless. He wept before the Lord. He stood between the Lord and the people. He was an intercessor.
He saw the walls of Jerusalem completely rebuilt. And Ezra was another extraordinary brother, or whatever you like to call him. He restored the Word of God and the law of God to its rightful place at the heart of the people.
Well, I do not have to mention Daniel, because we have all the record in Daniel 9. So tremendous was Daniel’s intercessory ministry.
If you are good Bible students, look at Daniel 9:1, and you will see the date is given: “In the first year of Ahasuerus, I, Daniel, discovered by reading the scroll of Jeremiah the seventy years that were determined for the desolation of Jerusalem.”
If you look at that date, turn back a few more pages to another chapter and its first verse, and it says, “In the first year of Ahasuerus the emperor, certain satraps”—that is, princes—“came to the king and said, ‘O king, you are God in the flesh. Will you decree that no one is allowed to pray except to you?’”
The king, of course, thought it a marvellous idea. And they said, “You had better get the lion’s den ready for anyone who disobeys this rule. It is the law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be changed.”
In other words, Satan was so bothered with Daniel’s intercessory ministry that he prepared an incredible strategy to trap Daniel and murder him. But Daniel went straight on.
He opened the shutters of his window toward Jerusalem, and he was standing on the word of King Solomon: that if anyone in exile prays toward this city and toward this house, which is called by Your name, hear them, answer them, and bring them back from their captivity.
That kind of intercessory ministry is tremendous. If Daniel had not fulfilled his intercessory ministry, Jerusalem would not have been rebuilt, the house of the Lord would not have been rebuilt, Bethlehem would not have been rebuilt, Nazareth would not have been rebuilt—nothing else would have been rebuilt.
But it all had to be rebuilt for the coming of the Desire, because Micah prophesied:
But thou, Bethlehem Ephrathah, which art little to be among the thousands of Judah, out of thee shall One come forth unto Me that is to be ruler in Israel.
—Micah 5:2
That is Jesus. Oh, you think of Isaiah, when he spoke about the way of the sea, the Via Maris. So interesting—passing just north of Capernaum and just south of Nazareth—speaking of those who were in darkness: they shall see a great light.
But there was no Nazareth. There was no Capernaum. They had been destroyed. They had to be rebuilt. This intercessory ministry of dear Daniel—maybe he thought it was only to do with the Jewish people going back to the land, but in fact it was to do with the coming of the Messiah.
It does not matter where we turn: we find that they are intercessors. It is almost as if the Lord is loudly saying something. If you and I are going to be a link, we have to become intercessors.
We also are facing the second coming of the Messiah. We also have in front of us ruin, deterioration, and paganisation, especially in the so-called Christian nations.
It is happening with such incredible speed that it can only be spiritual—angelic, fallen angelic beings—that are responsible for it. What are we to do?
We can talk till kingdom come and not get anywhere. The fact of the matter is that this question of intercession is absolutely strategic. It is vital to the coming of the Lord.
And if you and I, poor material as we may be, are not by the grace of God turned into intercessors, we shall lose much.
So all I want to do this evening is say something about intercession. Firstly, it is a matter of spiritual character.
Why does the Lord call for intercessors? Because the intercessor has within him or her a spiritual character that is being formed by the Holy Spirit.
These features that we see in Abraham, in Moses, in Samuel, in David, in Daniel, and in John the Baptist—these features have to be found in us.
Or, pardon me for being so blunt, do we expect to be carried on beds of ease into the coming of the kingdom? Do we think that the Lord will mollycoddle us and simply carry us? But the Lord is seeking to train.
Why is intercession so important? I have often said that you will never be an intercessor if you do not recognise that this world is essentially, essentially, a spiritual place.
It is not just a matter of what you touch, what you see, what you hear, or what you feel. It is something spiritual. It is the things which are invisible that are the powerful matters. All those eternal matters are invisible.
Until our eyes are opened to see that we are born into a spiritual world, we will never see the need to be an intercessor.
I have said to you before—you have heard me—that the Lord could have done, and could do, the job much more easily without us. I mean, I am now old enough to be able to say that it is the Lord’s people who are the problem.
My goodness me, the Lord would have been back ages ago but for us. We murmur, we hold back, we follow our own will, we do our own thing, and then we ask the Lord to clean up the mess. Then we make another mess, and ask Him to clean that up again. And we never learn.
To be an intercessor is to have your eyes opened to the fact that this world is essentially a spiritual world. Once those eyes are opened, you are at least ready for the education that the Lord would lead you into.
Intercession, in my estimation, is the highest calling that any child of God could be called to. People think the highest calling is to be an apostle, a teacher, a shepherd, or an evangelist. But higher than all these is the intercessor.
Why does the Lord put such a value on the intercessor? Because the intercessor has to learn how to reign with Christ down here, in the conditions of a fallen world.
They have to learn how to distinguish and discern the will of God in any given situation, and then to pray it into fulfilment.
Prayer is simply, in Greek, the pouring out of the heart. You just pour out. You are full of emotion, full of distress, full of anxiety, and you pour it out. The Lord Himself said, “You have not because you ask not.” So you ask. The Lord said it.
Be careful what you ask for, because He may give it to you and send leanness into your soul. But the fact is, that is prayer. Anyone can pray.
Intercession is in another dimension. First, you have to know what is the will of God in any given situation. That means you have to be able to discern the will of God in that situation. You have to learn how to hear the Lord speaking.
You have to learn how, in fellowship with other believers, you discover that this matter of knowing the will of God is corporate.
Why does the Lord find this matter of intercession, being an intercessor, so important? Because it is all to do with reigning with Christ.
First, it is to discover the will of Christ: to know the burden that is on His heart, and what His will is. Then it is the enabling of the Holy Spirit to persist until it is done, until it is fulfilled.
Our dear Lord gave us a pattern prayer, and there are a lot of misunderstandings about this pattern prayer. Some people believe you should repeat it all the time, like a Buddhist mantra, as if somehow it gathers value as you say it.
But our Lord said—and it is all in the present—“Our Father, who art in heaven.” This is Matthew 6.
Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.—Matthew 6:9–13
“Hallowed be Thy name”—sanctified be Thy name. That is present. “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as it is in heaven, so on earth.” “Give us this day our daily bread”—present. “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against us”—present. “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one”—present.
Is it not extraordinary that we take this one phrase, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, as it is in heaven, so on earth,” and refer it to some hugely future matter? Well, perhaps in the very end: may Your kingdom come, and may Your will be done, as it is in heaven, so on earth.
But our Lord meant it in a different way. When you are in situations where the evil one is bothering you, when you are facing impossible problems, when you have persecution, deterioration, and apostasy—“Thy kingdom come.”
In other words, listen carefully: people who live in a republic have no idea of a kingdom, generally speaking. The kingdom is all to do with a throne, and that throne is the centre of authority. The one who sits on it is either king or queen.
In other words, when you pray, “Thy kingdom come,” we are saying, “Let the will of the enthroned Messiah be done in this matter.” Whatever it is, we are invading it in the name of the Lord.
We are facing something that is deterioration and not the will of the Lord. But first we have to know: what is the will of the Lord? What does the King on the throne, with that sceptre of His strength in Zion, ruling in the midst of His enemies, say to us?
Why should we throw in the towel and say, “Oh, it is far too difficult”? We must not. The Lord has a purpose to fulfil, even to the actual day of His coming.
Does it not say in the prophecy of Joel, “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved”? So we know that right up to the last moment people are going to be saved. But how can they be saved if they do not know the name upon which to call for salvation?
So here we have something tremendous. I keep on saying “tremendous”—I am sorry; I have just got into a rut with that word. But the fact of the matter is, you have something tremendous here. Please hear me.
There can be no intercession without the three T’s: total commitment to the person of the Lord Jesus, total surrender of my will to His will, and total obedience to what He says.
Out of that, intercession comes. You can be the youngest person in this place this evening, but God will lead you in the end to be an intercessor. He can start your education right now.
You can be the oldest person in this building this evening, and you feel you are long beyond it, and that you have failed the Lord very largely. But the Lord can still turn you, in your last days, into an intercessor. Listen to me: you begin to see how important this matter is.
There can be no intercession, or intercessory ministry, without denying yourself, giving up all right to yourself, taking up your cross, and following Him.
The Scripture I would quote is Mark 8:34–35. He called unto Him the multitude with His disciples—that is how important this matter is—and said:
If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
For whosoever would save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the gospel’s shall save it.—Mark 8:34–35
That is the beginning of intercessory ministry. It is when you are ready to give up all rights to yourself, when you are ready to be committed to the person of the Lord Jesus, when you are ready to follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth.
So simple, but so profound—and, for most Christians, unknown in experience.
Intercession is not just saying a few words, not reading a little liturgical prayer. Intercession is travail.
The Apostle Paul wrote in his Galatian letter, Galatians 4:19:
My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you.
—Galatians 4:19
It is interesting to me that the little word there is again. So he had been in this travail for their spiritual birth; now he was in travail again for the Lord Jesus to be fully formed in them. Mysterious.
This Greek word is the agony of childbirth. The apostle is saying that intercession is not just pouring out your heart; it is travail—a burden that is conceived by the Holy Spirit in your spirit and cannot escape without intercession.
When you think you have got on your knees and prayed your heart out with others, you feel like a tank of water is drained. You get up and feel it is over. But the next day the water has risen again, and the pressure is on you until the birth comes.
I sometimes wonder whether the reason we have so few believers who go on into maturity is because there are so few brothers and sisters who travail for them, that Christ may be fully formed in them.
I thank God that I had a number of older folks who prayed for me all through the years. They travailed in the secret place. I did not know anything about it; they never told me. I only found out later that they prayed day and night.
We need this kind of intercessory ministry. The reason why we have so little maturity, so little spiritual growth, so little coming to be soldiers of Christ, and so little coming to be those who can take responsibility in the things of God, is because there have not been people who have travailed for us. I find that tremendous.
Intercession, then, begins with a knowledge of the will of God. We know what the will of God is for the church. We know that it is that the house of God be built, that the body of the Lord Jesus be fully formed and built up in love. We know that.
We have a wonderful window into this matter in the book of Revelation, where we are told, “The bride hath made herself ready.” There is ground for intercession. There is a foundation for intercession. We have the revealed will of God for the church.
But what do we see? We see apostasy on every side—appalling apostasy. In this latest vote by Parliament, both Commons and Lords in Britain, for same-sex marriage and for gay rights, an evangelical leader, spokesman for the evangelicals, has actually drawn up a marriage service for evangelicals and same-sex couples.
I never thought such a thing could ever happen. It is amazing. But if we have the Word of God, there is ground for us to intercede. We have the Word of God.
It is no wonder to me that the Apostle Paul said to Timothy, “War the good warfare.” He was probably referring to a word in Hebrew which does not make a lot of sense in its present English translation, but in Hebrew it says, “It is the warfare of the service of God.” It was to do with the Levites and the priests.
Does what I say have any reaction in your heart? We have got to such a position where we do not have enough intercessors. We have enough praying people, but where are the intercessors?
Corporate intercession is one of the most powerful instruments in the hand of God. When the Lord Jesus, by the Holy Spirit, as Head of the church, is able to make known what is His mind to the members of the body and harmonise them—symphonise them—so that they begin to pray in tune with one another, we know that that kind of prayer will in the end be fulfilled.
Here, then, we have something to pray for. Here is something else:
And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony unto all the nations; and then shall the end come.
—Matthew 24:14
Therefore, we have an absolute foundation for intercession: to pray for gospel work all over the world, that men and women may come into a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus, even at the very last hour. It is in the Book; it is not as if we are cooking it up. It is there.
Oh, think of Israel. Definitely, the Word of God says the natural branches will be grafted in again to their own olive tree.
We are told that when the full number of the Gentiles comes in, God will turn again to the Jewish people and will save them. So now we have a foundation for intercession. We know it is the revealed will of God to save this people—not necessarily all of them, but to save them and to graft them in again to their own olive tree, which actually is the church.
If you are a wild olive branch, you have been grafted into the good olive tree, which is contrary to nature. But the wonderful thing is that the natural branches are laid aside for a season, but there is coming a day when they are going to be grafted in again.
That is the end of the cycle of redemption. It is the last, final chapter—the last paragraph, if you like.
There are many other things I could talk about from the Word of God that are His revealed will. But our biggest problem—and with this I close—is that we have bred the kind of Christianity which is a stranger to real intercession.
I wonder what would have happened if the two sisters who prayed for the Islamic world had never prayed. I knew them. I saw their intercessory ministry.
It was never boring. It was always from one to the other, to the other, back—sort of like a tennis match, really—but all going backwards and forwards, all the time, until one of them would say, “Are we there?” And the other would say, “Not yet.”
In fact, I had the feeling they were on a gun emplacement, turning it around and shooting down enemy aircraft. I have never forgotten it. They had people from all over the Middle East: from Baghdad, Algiers, Casablanca, Benghazi, Tripoli, all over Egypt, everywhere—Beirut. So I could go on.
I used to think, “What is this? These two old ladies are supposed to be retired, and they are busier than people much younger.” What is it they are doing?
I remember once asking Auntie Alex. She was Estonian, and I said to her, “Auntie, you have been in Egypt all these years. How many people have you led to the Lord?”
She looked at me and put her hand up: five. And I, being young and arrogant, said, “Five? You have been here for forty or fifty years, and you have only seen one person come to the Lord every ten years?”
I have never forgotten her answer. She did not rebuke me. She simply said—because I did not know anything about intercession, nothing whatsoever—“There will come a day when thousands upon thousands of Muslims will find the Lord.”
I have lived to see it: so many thousands of Muslims finding the Lord. Incredible. You cannot keep abreast with it.
Or I think of dear Margaret Barber and her niece. She was discredited in the mission that she went out with to China. There was jealousy in the mission, and they did not like the enormous attraction the girls had for her in the girls’ school.
They began to spread stories about her until, in the end, she had to resign from the mission. Then she had to leave China. When she went back to Britain, she went to Keswick and heard Bishop Handley Moule, a godly man. She asked if she could see him.
She told him the whole story. He said, “Sister, have you sinned?” She said, “Well, I have done some things in my mind, but I certainly never did the things that I am accused of.”
He said, “Do you believe God called you to China?” She said, “Yes.” And he said, “Then to China you will go.”
Then she protested and said, “How can I go? The mission is against me. They blackened my name. How can I go?” He said, “You go with God.”
So she took her niece and went to China. She spent those years in intercessory ministry. She prayed that God would raise a Chinese man as a minister of the Word of God, and lead the people of God in China. Well, you know the rest of the story.
I could give you a whole number of other instances of intercession. Incredible. God is not mocked.
I remember dear Lady Ogle—Daisy, Lady Ogle—and Miss Sinclair. They told me the story of how God led them to India, to a home in Bangalore. There, the two of them began to pray for India. They were very distressed by the spiritual condition.
They began to pray for an Indian man who would be raised up as a man of God and lead people to the Lord. They prayed and prayed and prayed. It was real intercession.
Then one day they heard about this Sikh who had found the Lord and had been thrown out of his home, and whose wife had left him. They heard he was going to preach in Bangalore, so they went to hear him.
Whilst he was preaching, the Lord said to both of them independently—they only found out when they got back to their home—“This is the man you have prayed for.” It was Bakht Singh.
You see, God is not mocked. This matter of intercession will go on to the very coming of the Lord.
I think that to be an intercessor is to be an overcomer. It is as simple as that.
May the Lord challenge us. If you wonder what you should do—if you are a young person and think, “This is a bit strange, what he is saying; what should I do?”—or if you are an older person and feel, “Well, I certainly have not been an intercessor like this,” I would say: in a moment of quietness, offer yourself to the Lord.
Total commitment to His person. Total surrender of your will to His will. Total obedience to what He says to you.
And you will begin a journey that will end in the throne of God.
May the Lord challenge you in these days of darkness, apostasy, and deterioration. We know the Lord’s coming is nearer, but we are not escapists. We are not just sort of waiting, “Well, we want to get out of all this.”
We are here, in some very real way, to be intercessors to the last day of our life on this earth: that others may come to the Lord, others may be built up, others may grow, and that the purpose of God for His church may be fulfilled; the purpose of God for the gospel in the nations; and the purpose of God for Israel.
May the Lord challenge you this night. Shall we pray?
Beloved Lord, You know our hearts. We have talked about being links, Lord. We want to be that link with You. We want, Lord, to be the link in this turning point in history. We want to be intercessors.
Help us, Lord. You see how foolish we are, how slow to learn. So often, Lord, have mercy on us. Reach us, and bring within our hearts a readiness to sacrifice, to give up all right to ourselves, to take up the cross, and truly follow You.
Help us, Lord, to let go of our self-life, that we may find it unto life eternal. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
I want to take a few moments once again to see all this in prayer. If your heart has really been burdened, maybe you can offer up a silent prayer for tonight. So we will have a few moments for prayer.