i had a conversation about prayer with someone today, and thought i would share what intercession means for a church.

this will take several posts, but the simplist one is first

intercession relationships:

we all need to be back to back protecting one another. what this means for us is that we engage consistantly in praying for 3 groups of people...probably daily.

1. those in authority over us. Our boss, the president, our parents, our pastors, our small group leaders etc. We bring them before God and ask that God would be in thier lives; that his presence and protection would fill them. That His wisdom and agenda would infiltrate and influence them. etc.
2. those that are our peers. Our co-workers; spouse; other people in the church etc. we do the same as above.
3. those that are our disciples. our employees; our children; people on our teams or those we are mentoring. we do the same as above.

when we do this we find that prayer also has a call-back feature that effects us. We end up with Gods heart for these people starting to draw us into Gods will for them. we then find we can be gods agents in thier lives and give them grace, mercy, forgiveness etc. we also find that we then understand how to serve and love them. sometimes this means obedience, or confrontation, or 7 times 70 forgiveness, or a word of encouragement...

prayer is an act of God's people [or persons] caring for one another as a spiritual family with a Father figure leading us all.

many times we have unnatural breaks in relationships simply because we don't spend time with our Father searching to understand how he wants the family to operate. When we are with him, we enter into his feelings, wisdom, and will. Sure we can listen to Oprah, Dr Phil, and Dr Laura and all the self help books and therapists. But the 1st place to go is to God.

when a church does this, and invisible spiritual bonding begins to happen. the church becomes God's people...his tribe...his family. And in this context joy, hope, love, mercy, and compassion flow freely and strongly. in the absence of this...striving, resentment, bitterness, passivity, and hopelessness often saturate relationships. and in this atmosphere sin breeds and forms crusts and wounds in our hearts.

pray...and you will find and feel God pull you into his world. and in his world we change and can handle this world 1,000 times better.