Quote for today
Intercessory prayer is the purifying bath into which the individual and the fellowship must enter every day.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Provoking Thoughts on Prayer
And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. Eph. 6:18
As we go on in intercession we may find that our obedience to God is going to cost other people more than we thought. The danger then is to begin to intercede in sympathy with those whom God was gradually lifting to a totally different sphere in answer to our prayers. Whenever we step back from identification with God’s interests in others into sympathy with them, the vital connection with God has gone. We have put our sympathy, our consideration for them in the way, and this is a deliberate rebuke to God.
It is impossible to intercede vitally unless we are perfectly sure of God, and the greatest dissipater of our relationship to God is personal sympathy and personal prejudice. Identification is the key to intercession, and whenever we stop being identified with God, it is by sympathy. Sympathy with ourselves and with others will make us say – I will not allow that thing to happen. Instantly we are out of vital connection with God.
Intercession leaves you neither time nor inclination to pray for your own sad sweet self. The thought of yourself is not kept out, because it is not there to keep out; you are completely and entirely identified with God’s interest in others lives.Discernment is God’s call to intercession, never to fault finding.
Oswald Chambers