Stand in the gap!
- Oct 11, 2024
- 6 min read
Last week we talked about setting aside time to listen and hear the ‘gentle whispers’ of our God. Did you hear the ‘whispers of grace’ or the ‘whispers of love’ as you spent time in His presence?
I want us to look further at spending time with God in prayer, but this time in intercessory prayer.
Every believer is to be involved in the ministry of intercession. We are called to “stand in the gap for another”: “ I looked for a man among them who would make a wall, and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found no one.” (Ezra 22:30).
These words were spoken during a time when the Israelites were in rebellion against God. But even though there was rebellion, God was still looking for someone among them who would intercede for them. The amazing thing is that He would have honoured the intercession of even one person who was willing to stand in the gap!
God didn’t say, “I looked for 100 people,” although 100 would have been great! No, He was looking for one person who would stand in the gap in that particular place, at that particular time. He's still looking today!
Pete Greig writes, “Intercession is impossible until we allow the things that break God’s heart to break our hearts as well.”
He’s still looking for one intercessor, one prayer warrior, one person who will stand in the gap and have this divine partnership in prayer.
In 1722 there was a group of Christians called the Moravians who were so persecuted in Europe that they had to flee their homes, and they took refuge on the estate of a German man called Count Nicolaus von Zinzendorf. The estate became known as 'Hernhut', which in German means 'under the Lord's watch'. There they were, fleeing for their faith, yet God gave them a refuge in Count von Zinzendorf.
On the 27th Aug 1727 they began what has been known as the 100 year prayer meeting. It was simply a round-the-clock prayer meeting.
24 men and 24 women covenanted to intercede for a one-hour watch before God. Praying through each day, and through a whole week, a whole month, and a whole year.
Sixty-five years after that one hundred year prayer meeting began, in 1792, the Moravian congregation sent out 300 missionaries worldwide.
John Calvin declared, “Prayer is the chief exercise of faith, and by which we daily receive God’s benefits."
The grounds for the 100 year prayer meeting was given as Leviticus 6. They talked about the sacred fire that was never permitted to go out:"The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar; it shall never go out" (v13). They saw it as their responsibility of prayer before God.
Presence of God
Fire is the nature of God, it refers to the presence of God and of His protection and guidance.“God is a consuming fire” (Heb12:29).
Remember when God revealed Himself to Moses in the desert, He appeared as a fire burning but not consuming the bush. Later, when Moses was leading the Israelites out of Egypt, God manifested Himself as a a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Then on top of Mount Sinai the mountain was burning with fire because of the presence of God. "For the LORD your God is a consuming fire" (Deut 4:24).
The fire of God doesn’t come uninvited. He doesn’t force His way in. He stays because you want Him to. God is love, and He loves you passionately, like an all-consuming fire.
John Stott said: "If intercessory prayer is an expression of what love we have, it is a means to increase our love as well. It is impossible to pray for someone without loving him, and impossible to go on praying for him without discovering that our love for him grows and matures."
Is your heart burning with the presence of God, the passion of God and a passion for God?
Can I ask, "When was your best day with Jesus?" That’s a question we need to keep answering. If it wasn't this week, don't you think we need to do something about it?
Am I an Intercessor for Christ?
Intercessory prayer acknowledges our inability and God’s ability. We come with empty hands but high hopes. Why? He’s able to supply all our needs!
Max Lucado states, “Our prayers may be awkward. Our attempts may be feeble. But since the power of prayer is in the one who hears it and not in the one who says it, our prayers do make a difference.”
Remove the Ashes
Did you notice in our text in Leviticus 6:10-11, about the priest taking up the ashes and placing them beside the altar. Then he carries the ashes outside the camp to a clean place.
What are the ashes? Ashes are what remains after the fire, the residue left after the fire burns. It’s the stuff that doesn’t ascend to God that God cannot accept.
All Ashes Must Go! The question is, what are you going to do with the ashes? There's too much “stuff” that chokes out what God wants to do in our lives. Those wrong motives and desires, that hidden selfish agenda, a spirit of unforgiveness or resentment, and so on!
Don’t allow these things to accumulate, learn to remove them daily.
"See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled" (Heb 12:15).
If you hold onto the ashes, your fire will be suffocated.
God instructed three times in this passage to keep the fire burning on the altar. The repetition emphasises how important it is to keep the fire burning.
The fuel for our fire has to be found and maintained. If we are not tending to our fire we could possibly wake up to a cold experience and a pile of ashes where our spiritual life used to be. It doesn’t matter how you do it as long as you do it.
Let’s stop for a while and do just that!
Did you notice - "Jesus confirm my heart’s desire To work and speak and think for thee Still let me guard the holy fire And still stir up thy gift in me?”
Perhaps you’re thinking, "The fire in my life is barely flickering." Or some of you might say, "My fire is completely gone. I need a new fire."
Here's the good news: If you're ready for your life to be filled with the fire, God is willing to provide it! He's prepared to light the fire again in your life and in your relationship with Him, there’s nothing more important! Ask God to set alight this fire, tell Him you want a flame that consumes all you are, from the inside out.
God will set a fire within us when we allow His Holy Spirit to enter in without restriction and then fill us beyond capacity. Ask for this fire to be unmeasurable, unfathomable, indescribable, uncontainable and uncontrollable, and see what Father God does!
Like Wesley says, "There let it for thy glory burn with inextinguishable blaze, and trembling to its source return in humble prayer and fervent praise."
We must be a people marked by, saturated in, and empowered by intercessory prayer in order to stand in the gap.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “Intercessory Prayer is the purifying bath into which the individual and the fellowship must enter every day.”
Intercession is prayer that pleads with God for your own needs and the needs of others. But it’s much more than that. Intercession involves taking hold of God's will and refusing to let go until His will comes to pass.
"For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ" (2 Cor 10:3-5 ).
D Legge states, "That incessant, never ceasing, persistent prayer, persevering before God and wrestling before God, never fails to avail - because it's never a vain thing to call upon the name of the Lord..."
I found myself drawn to God asking for just one person to step into the gap, just one person. So God is saying how much he listens to the prayer of one person, and calls us to step into a gap. If the power of the prayer is in the One who hears it, doesn’t that just raise the desire to fan the smallest spark into a flame? Lord, change my spark into an uncontrollable flame to stand in the gap for Your work and Your glory, for Your will to be done.
Reading God’s word this week I stopped and pondered on all the situations his grace and love for the people he chose was shown, it’s endless grace…