Andrew Murray’s little book, The Ministry of Intercession, is transforming.  It’s so good I wanted to share one of the chapters with you.  I’m going to do this in several blog posts, sharing a little each day.  It’s so worth your time to read.

I’m quoting from Chapter 14 … God Seeks Intercessors.

“I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night: ye that make mention of the Lord keep not silence, and give Him no rest…till He makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth.”  –Isaiah 62:6-7

“And He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor.”  –Isaiah 63:5

“There is none that calleth upon Thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of Thee.” –Isaiah 64:7

“And I sought for a man…that should…stand in the gap before Me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none.”  –Ezekiel 22:30

“I have chosen you and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit…that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in My name, He may give it you.”  –John 15:16

In the study of the starry heavens, much depends on proper understanding of magnitudes.  Without some sense of the size of the heavenly bodies, which appear so small to the eye, and of the almost unlimited extent of the regions in which they move, though they appear so near, they can be no true knowledge of the heavenly world or its relation to this earth.  It is even so with the spiritual heavens and the heavenly life in which we are called to live.  It is especially so in the life of intercession, that most wondrous fellowship between heaven and earth.  Everything depends on the proper magnitudes.

Just think of the three that come first.  There is a world, with its needs entirely dependent on and waiting to be helped by intercession.  There is a God in heaven, with His all-sufficient supply for all those needs, waiting to be asked.  There is a Church, with its wondrous calling and its sure promises, waiting to be roused to a sense of its wondrous responsibility and power.

God seeks intercessors.  There is a world with its perishing millions, with intercession as its only hope.  So much love and work are comparatively vain, because there is so little intercession.  There are millions living as if there had never been a Son of God to die for them.  Every year, millions pass into the outer darkness without hope.  Millions bear the Christian name, but the great majority of them live in utter ignorance or indifference.  Millions of feeble, sickly Christians, thousands of wearied workers, could be blessed by intercession, could help themselves to become mighty in intercession.  Churches and ministries sacrificing life and labor with little result often lack the power of intercession.  Souls, each one worth more than worlds, worth nothing less than the price paid for them in Christ’s blood–are within reach of the power that can be won by intercession.  We surely have no conception of the magnitude of the work to be done by God’s intercessors, or we would cry to God above everything to give us the spirit of intercession.

God seeks intercessors.  There is a God of glory able to meet all these needs.  We are told that He delights in mercy, that He waits to be gracious, that He longs to pour out His blessing.  We are told that the love which gave the Son up to death is the same love that each moment hovers over every human being.  And yet He does not help.  And there they perish.  It is as if God does not move.  If He does so love and long to bless, there must be some inscrutable reason for His holding back.  What can it be?  Scripture says it is because of your unbelief.  It is the faithlessness and consequent unfaithfulness of God’s people.  He has taken them up into partnership with Himself.  He has honored them, and bound Himself, by making their prayers one of the standard measures of the working of His power.  Lack of intercession is one of the chief reasons for the lack of blessing.  O that we would turn our eyes and heart from everything else and fix them on this God who hears prayer.  Let the magnificence of His promises, His power, and His purpose of love overwhelm us!  How our whole life and heart would become intercession.

Source:  The Ministry of Intercession by Andrew Murray (copyright 1982 by Whitaker House, ISBN 0883681145, pages 137-139).

More to come on the next blog…