“Offering intercessory prayer
means nothing other than Christians bringing one another into the presence of
God, seeing each other under the cross of Jesus as poor human beings and
sinners in need of grace.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, Fortress Press, 2015 (Reader’s Edition), page 64.
Intercessory living, and with
it intercessory prayer, is, in Christ, the life of the church, it is the life
of life together. When we awake in
the morning we awake not only in the presence of God, but we awake with our
brothers and sisters in the presence of God. Our brothers and sisters are in
our hearts and minds, they are in our souls, they are bound to our lives and we
are bound to their lives. The prayer of our Lord Jesus that we may all be one
as the Trinity is one (John Chapter 17) is fulfilled in our life together. As Paul writes, our
hearts are “knit together in love”. The Christian life goes beyond “me” and
becomes “we” – this “we” is found in intercessory prayer.
In intercessory prayer there
is no comparison between brothers, there is rather compassion. We are all in
need of grace and mercy; we all stand, or kneel, or lie prostrate before the
Cross of Christ. The needs and afflictions and trials and sins of my brothers
become my burden, enveloped in my intercession, in my cry to God for His mercy
and grace in the lives of my brothers.
When there are times in which
we do not know how to pray for others as we ought (Romans 8) we can trust the
Holy Spirit to pray through us in ways that we do not understand. Often these
prayers will be brought into focus as we persevere and we will gain some
understanding or sense of the specifics of our brother’s need.
As a rule intercessory prayer
is specific prayer, as Bonhoeffer writes: “Furthermore, it is clear that
intercessory prayer is not something general and vague, but something very
concrete. It is interested in specific persons and specific difficulties and
therefore specific requests. The more concrete my intercessory prayer becomes,
the more promising it is (pages 64 – 65).”
We are to live for others and
we are to intercede for others – this is a service in the Temple of God to
which we are all called. Intercessory
prayer is a service of the priesthood of all believers. Bonhoeffer calls
intercessory prayer “a gift of God’s grace for every Christian community and
for every Christian (page 65).”
Some of us may use written
lists; lists that we maintain, or lists printed or emailed within our
fellowship. Others of us may use memory devices. The important thing is that
our lists of people on whose behalf we intercede be etched in our hearts – we go
beyond lists to hearts knit together, we go beyond lists to souls bound to one
another in Christ – we become identified with our brothers and sisters in their
needs and burdens and pilgrimage – the need becomes not simply “his need” but
rather “our need”. I will carry the burden of my brother, I will carry my
brother…in intercession. Just as Jesus carries us in intercession, even so we
carry one another.
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