“Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” (James 5:16)
Beloved Christian, America needs more than just your prayers, it needs the effectiveness of your righteous prayers. Please allow me a little latitude with the defining of the word when I say this—before you can effectively intercede for another, you must first intercede for yourself. Let me explain using the Word and the Spirit of the Word.
“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:14)
God’s people shall humble themselves and pray what?
Two things: (1) Repentance and (2) Intercession
1. Repentance – Our repentance is far too casual in today’s Christian. I sin-I confess-He forgives-I go on-often repeating the very same sins. This is not repentance!
It ought to break our hearts that our sin is an affront to our Holy God! In Isaiah 6, when Isaiah was in the Holy presence of the LORD, he was able to see himself as he truly was. Note his response:
“Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” (Isaiah 6:5)
Our proper response to a Holy God about our sin is sorrow, grief, tears— “Woe is me!”
Grief is the evidence that we are experiencing love! If we cannot grieve because of our sin against God, what does that say about our love for Him? Before we can intercede effectively for anyone else we must first intercede for ourselves in humble repentance, genuine sorrow over our sin, and then a change of behavior—avoiding the sin—walking in the Spirit.
2. Intercession – After repenting, we are ready for intercession. Interceding for what? For the land! Our nation (the land) needs rescuing! This is spiritual warfare for the land. There are strongholds throughout America that can only be broken through intercession. 2 Chronicles 7:14 gives us God’s promises of His appropriate actions resulting from our humble, confessing, repentant hearts. He says He will do two things: forgive our sin, and heal our land!
This is a call to repented, revived children of God to intercede for a people in bondage to the evil one!
But look a little further into the heart of God with me: “And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none.” (Ezekiel 22:30)
Beloved, if God does not change in His heart or in His purpose, can you not see that He is still looking—expecting—counting on—someone to stand in the gap—rescuing someone from the divine judgment against them for their sin? That’s intercession!
What or who is at the bottom of these national, or even personal, strongholds?
“But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.” (2 Corinthians 4:3-4)
Which is the most important – to rescue a wayward nation, or to save a person who needs salvation in Christ Jesus? God seems to have made provisions for both, you and I, children of God, as we engage in effective, righteous intercession to rescue the perishing. Come On, Church—Pray On!
