There are words just spoken into the air, and then there is prayer. The glory of intercession is offering together words of petition, where intercessors are formed and God has His way in our hearts. There is great spiritual warfare around prayer, within intercession there is the making of saints, which is the greatest spiritual warfare you may encounter.

 

When I look at the prayers of the Old Testament and the New Testament I’m always communing with the Saints. Have you ever read the bible and feel like they are your friends?  Their story is your story. I read the story of Jacob and realized... Jacob is me. Jacob is you. David is me, David is you. Isaiah 55 says that God gave David as a witness to the people; his life was an example before men then and now. We read the Bible and we find real men and women of God and we say, "I know what that is like". When I'm reading their prayers, the prayers align my heart because I’m put into their story in a personal way.

 

It’s not the right combination of words, it’s the power in the inner man that lives the life of those prayers so that when your life matches that prayer, you pray it and something breaks out.  

 

There are words, than there is prayer. There is intercession and then there are intercessors. 

 

In Psalm 109 David is being attacked, they hate him and he describes this situation where he is being surrounded by his enemies, then he says but ‘I pray.’   In the Hebrew language it's translated as ‘I prayer.’ "The wicked surround me, they’ve hemmed me in on every side.."  and David declares. "I prayer."

 

Prayer is the word made flesh. Prayer is alive, its active, it comes from the gut, it comes from the belly of a life lived of failures, triumphs, of the discovery of mercy, of the discovery of grace, the discovery of redemption.  When we signed up for God, we got Him on the inside. He wanted us; He didn’t want you to go through the script just reading the lines. He wanted Himself within you, in order to take you on the guided tour from the inside out. 

 

David didn’t say, 'the evil are around me, they are all around me. I’m going to a prayer meeting'. No, he said, the evil are all around me but ‘I’m prayer.’ In other words, I have intimate acquaintance with you God. You know the weakness of my frame and you know the intentions of my heart.  

 

He’s not after mere words, but the word made flesh. Treasure in earthen vessels. It’s the reservoir of God in us, that when our words of God match the reality and the atmosphere of our hearts in the grace of God, something crescendos in the spirit and things shift, because it tells God’s story. He is the Lord; apart from Him we can do nothing. But we are the Saints, the excellent ones in whom is all His delight (Psalm 16). Its screams the story. We’re nothing, He is everything, but He loves us, and my weak frame matched His large heart and prayer came forth. Something guttural, something on the inside.

 

There are words and then there is prayer. There is intercession and then there are intercessors.

 

Intercessors don’t have the corner on the market of insight, no, they have guttural words, things from the inside, breaking out that match the story in the Word. When our lives match the Living Word, when something lines up on the inside, suddenly, God is there and He is glorified that the story is repeated.

 

Some of my motives are pure, some aren’t.  I have God in me. I’ve got to have something real. I’ve got to have something on the inside where He puts me on and displays Himself, in spite of me.  In the midst of the wrestling, there is glory and drama and weakness and repentance and the discovery that God loves us.  In other words, He is meddling with us. He is in there. This is not a 12 step program for us to become intercessors, or Christians. It’s God, in us, with an agenda, who is brilliant, who is dreaming up ways to make things so complex we can’t sort it out in our own limitations. He doesn’t have the agenda to make us great in the eyes of men, but to bring our lives into cooperation with grace so that at the end of the day fragrance of Christ comes out of us.

 

I’m longing that the Word become flesh inside of me. I join Him in His intent, His desire and my life matches His beautiful grace. At the revelation of mercy, I utter a word I cannot comprehend at the moment but God escorts it somewhere and He shifts something and He looks down and says, a Saint, a holy one, one born of the Spirit, one who trusts in God. I may be groaning with some heavy burden, not knowing why or what, but God is taking my willingness to be part of His great plan and trnasforms my groanings. Where there is humility in prayer there is breakthrough in the answer. 

 

This is our greatest call. To stay in the place of prayer for the next generation, even to our old age. If we don’t see the breakthrough in our day, we will keep going.  Who will stay in the place of prayer and cooperate with transformation and all of its complexities and learn how to possess your soul for honor, for holiness, until God makes you ‘prayer’?