The Reasons for Intercession

Since my last blog about intercession, I received an interesting note from one of my friends who lives in France and has been reading the blog. She asked me why it is necessary to continue to pray for the same people many times. Once we have offered our requests to the Lord on their behalf is that not enough?

One of the daily readings that she uses has been speaking about the futility of bringing the same needs to the Lord repeatedly. I do agree that there is no point in just praying the same prayers every day for the same people. I also believe that our situations change from day to day and some folks for whom I pray may not need the prayer too much one day, but the next day they find themselves in a place where they do need that kind of support. I hope to show a little of how that works as we continue to look at some of the prayer concerns that have been presented to me for intercession.

As I move through that first large folder, the next list that I encounter is the list of all of the people who currently make up the congregation of the church that Glen and I attend, The Salvation Army, Montreal Citadel. I note the name of an individual or a couple each day and pray for them. If the Scripture I read as I pray for them seems particularly appropriate for them, I will underline it and have it on record to give them, if an appropriate occasion were to arise. For the first couple of years that I was back in Montreal, I sent a card to each person with the date that I prayed for them as an encouragement to them. Now my days are so full that I find I am not able to do that. I am hoping to find someone in our congregation who has the time and the willingness to take on that task for me.

The next person on my list is someone that I met at a conference in 2006. It was a weekend for Christian women who were in business or in ministry. As we met together, it was clear that the women in ministry outnumbered those in business and it was easy to forget that the world in which business women work is often quite unlike the one in which we carry on our various ministries. This particular woman was quite articulate and as I sensed the challenges that she faces in business, I found that a desire was born in me to try to be a support to her. As we chatted together after one of the workshops, I asked if she would mind if I added her to my prayer list. She was pleased at the suggestion.

Two years later, we found ourselves again at the same conference. This time, she had come because she knew that I was going to be there and she wanted to spend some time together, so she took me out for lunch. It was so good to know that she was grateful for my daily intercession for her. I continue to remember her each day. We are seldom in contact with each other and I know that the Lord is with her and blessing and using her and I have a small part to play in that.

We will continue to consider the names and requests in the next blog. In the meantime, if you have a question that you think I might be able to shed some light on through these conversations, please feel free to contact me. Perhaps you can help me to learn to become a better intercessor. I would be so grateful.

The Practice of Intercession

Now that I have told you about all of the tools that I use for my intercession, you may be wondering how I proceed. What are the things that I talk to the Lord about in this time when I arise and settle down on the couch in the den with my lap desk? I am usually accompanied by our cat, Belle who initially jumps up on the lap desk to see what I am going to do and when she finds that it is not that interesting to her, she moves over to the chair at the desk and curls up there to wait until I have finished.

The order of the topics I cover has no particular significance and changes frequently. I mentioned earlier that I begin with the large folder of current topics for prayer that are most urgent, as well as the lists of requests. These days the first topic is our personal prayer requests. If you have read my book, More Questions than Answers, Sharing Faith by Listening, you may remember that when we were responsible for the work of The Salvation Army in France, a decade ago, we faced some significant challenges in our ministry. It became clear to us that we needed additional prayer support, so I organized our prayer support team. That was when we started the prayer team. These people pray for us on a regular basis. We prepare and send out our prayer newsletter to them every month, outlining the specific needs that we have in our ministries and in our lives. The prayer support team really proved its worth at the time of our son’s accident, eight years ago. A traffic accident when the vehicle he was driving hit black ice on the highway in northern Vermont left him a quadriplegic.

As well as asking others to remember our prayer requests, I also pray through the list myself, praying for one request each day. Since there are seven prayer topics in the list, I can cover them four times each month.

Praying about the concerns that we have also reminds me to pray for those who are part of our prayer network. I have listed all of them by name and the second list in my folder is the names of all the members of our prayer support team. I pray for a different person or couple each morning. Since the list is quite long, it takes me a while to work through the list. Some of the names also appear on other lists in my folders for various other reasons. We will eventually come to those.

The third page in my current acute prayer list is the name of a little boy, whose parents are part of our congregation. He has been having seizures and there are still a lot of questions about what is causing these and how to treat them. His father is the one who does the translation from English into Spanish for those who come to worship with us but are still learning the English language. This is their first child and they are worried about this health concern of their little boy.

As we continue this journey of intercession, I will share with you some of the other concerns that occupy this valuable part of my day.