Give Time To Quietness

The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? (Psalm 27:1)

The fight to which we have been called is not an easy fight. We are touching the very center of the devil's power and kingdom, and he hates us intensely and fights hard against us. We have no chance at all of winning in this fight unless we are disciplined soldiers, utterly out-and-out and uncompromising, and men and women of prayer.

So first, give much time to quietness. For the most part we have to get our help directly from our God. We are here to help, not to be helped, and we must each learn to walk with God alone and feed on His Word so as to be nourished. Don't only read and pray, listen. And don't evade the slightest whisper of guidance that comes. May God make you very sensitive, and very obedient.

Fill up the crevices of time with the things that matter most. This will cost something, but it is worth it. "Seek ye My face, my heart said unto Thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek" (Psalm 27:8).

All this will be, if you walk with Him as with a visible Companion, from dawn through all the hours till you go to sleep at night. And your nights will be holy too, for He is watching over your sleep as your mother watched over it when you were a tiny child.

Intercession For Others

"I exhort, therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving thanks, be made for all men." (1 Timothy 2:1)

"Without God, we cannot. Without us, God will not." St. Augustine's succinct statement sums up the twofold nature of intercession. God empowers us by the Holy Spirit to intercede for others' needs; without that empowerment, our prayers would be empty words.

God also invests us with Christ's authority to restrain evil forces that are blinding and hindering the person for whom we are praying. God could restrain those forces without us if He chose to. But He has equipped us and commissioned us to intercede by pushing back the enemy, thus allowing the Holy Spirit to bring conviction that leads to repentance.

Two Old Testament verses depict the need for an intercessor to do battle for sinful man: "God was appalled that there was no one to intervene" (Isaiah 59:16); "I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none" (Ezekiel 22:30).

Of course, Jesus ultimately filled the gap. He became the mediator between God and man by giving Himself as a sacrifice for sin. But believers should also see themselves as intercessors; standing between God and the person(s) for whom we are praying, pleading for God to intervene.

If God be for us, who can be against us?