Intercession

Would you turn with me to a scripture in the first book of Samuel and chapter twelve? The first book of Samuel and chapter twelve. And we are going to read from verse 19, I Samuel chapter 12 from verse 19. And all the people said unto Samuel, Pray for thy servants unto the Lord thy God, that we die not; for we have added unto all our sins this evil, to ask us a king. And Samuel said unto the people, Fear not: ye have indeed done all this evil; yet turn not aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart: and turn ye not aside; for then would ye go after vain things which cannot profit nor deliver, for they are vain. For the Lord will not forsake his people for his great name’s sake, because it hath pleased the Lord to make you a people unto himself. Moreover as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you: but I will instruct you in the good and the right way. Only fear the Lord, and serve him in truth with all your heart; for consider how great things he hath done for you. But if ye shall still do wickedly, ye shall be consumed, both ye and your king. And then if we will turn to the book of Acts, the acts of the apostles, and chapter four. Chapter four and from verse 23. Acts four, verse 23.   And being let go, they came to their own company, and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said unto them. And they, when they heard it, lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and said, O Lord, thou that didst make the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that in them is: who by the Holy Spirit, by the mouth of our father David thy servant, didst say, Why did the Gentiles rage,
And the peoples imagine vain things?  The kings of the earth set themselves in array,
And the rulers were gathered together,
Against the Lord, and against his Anointed: for of a truth in this city against thy holy Servant Jesus, whom thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, were gathered together, to do whatsoever thy hand and thy council foreordained to come to pass. And now, Lord, look upon their threatenings: and grant unto thy servants to speak thy word with all boldness, while thou stretchest forth thy hand to heal; and that signs and wonders may be done through the name of thy holy Servant Jesus. And when they had prayed, the place was shaken wherein they were gathered together; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spake the word of God with boldness. And then lastly, if you will turn to the last book of the Bible, Revelation, the Apocalypse. And we will read in chapter eight. And another angel came, verse three, the Apocalypse, Revelation, chapter eight, verse three. And another angel came and stood over the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should add it unto the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, went up before God out of the angel’s hand. And the angel taketh the censer; and he filled it with the fire of the altar, and cast it upon the earth: and there followed thunders, and voices, and lightnings, and an earthquake. Just a further word of prayer. Beloved Lord, we're so glad that we're here this evening. You've been so greatly with us, speaking to us in each of these sessions. We thank you, Lord, it is your mercy and your grace. And now, Lord, we come to this evening. We've already prayed for it. Now, dear Lord, all we want to tell you is that without that anointing we can do nothing, neither in the speaking nor in the hearing. But when the anointing is present, then we shall hear your voice. And Lord, in some very real way our hearts will be touched. You see the days in which we are living, the confusion, the darkness, the deterioration, the paganisation that's taking place on every side. Lord, we need you. Reach us this evening and we ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus the Messiah. Amen. Well, I don't think you need me to tell you that the theme of these times has been very simply that we need to be linked to the Lord in heaven and especially where there is a turning point in divine history. We have spoken, different ones of us, a number of times about those turning points, whether it was Abraham or Moses or Samuel or David, or whether it was John the Baptist or before John the Baptist, Daniel. And there are others too, like Nehemiah and Ezra, who are also smaller but very real turning points in the divine purpose. Now we have, I hope, received something from these sessions. My responsibility has been Samuel, and Samuel ranks very highly in the Jewish tradition. It is quite amazing how much is accredited to Samuel. And I have already spoken to you about it. At this turning point, Samuel was the man whom the Lord used. I have already spoken about the three totals. We see it in Samuel total and unconditional commitment to the person of the Lord Jesus. Total surrender of my will to his will — perhaps the most difficult of all. And total and utter obedience. Thank you, someone listened to me last time. Obedience to the Lord Jesus. Let me tell you something. If those three totalities are present in your life, you will not fail. You are on the road to becoming an overcomer. There's no way that you can be totally and utterly committed to the person of the Lord Jesus and not win. There is no way that you can surrender your will, in which is all the problem that we face so often, there is no way, when you surrender your will to his will that you will not go through. You will win. And if you are totally obedient to his voice, to his commands, you will surely win. It's as simple as that. The funny thing is, well, it's not really funny. To use a good old english word, shakespearean word, it’s tragic. The tragic thing is that we make a huge mess out of our Christian lives. No sooner are we saved than we begin to draw back from any total commitment to the person of the Lord Jesus. We have battles over our will, my will and his will. Whom I should marry, what career should I take, where should I live, what shall be the future? My will and his will may be two very different things. We get into a total confusion over this because we have within our being a civil war. We have seen the results of a civil war in Libya and in Syria. But many a Christian has a civil war going on in their life. They have never surrendered their will to the Lord Jesus, never surrendered their will to his will. And the result is confusion and failure and defeat. All this I've sought to say already something about it. But this evening I want to speak about yet another matter. Last night I spoke about ministry to the Lord. That matter can never be fulfilled in your life and mine unless these three t's are in place. I can prophesy without any fear of contradiction, at least from heaven, that if you don't follow those three totalities, you will never minister to the Lord Jesus. It is impossible without total abandonment to him. You have to be under his lordship. It's one thing to know him as saviour. It is another thing to know him as Lord. It is yet another thing to know him as head. That means a body, that means fellow members. It all goes back to this matter. We spoke about ministry to the Lord, worshipping the Lord, really serving him with love. That's ministry to the Lord. Ministry to the temple, ministry to the tabernacle, ministry to the work, ministry to the system, to the organisation. We get into all kinds of things. But ministry to the Lord is first and foremost. And that we see in the life of Samuel. He was totally committed to the Lord, totally surrendered to the will of the Lord, and totally obedient to the Lord. He ministered to the Lord from an early age, right through his life to his death. But there is one further matter, and it's that that I want to dwell upon this evening. Now, don't get turned off the moment you hear what I'm going to speak about. There’s a whole number of us, oh, not going to talk about that, is he? It is the matter of intercession. That shines out of Samuel's life. I read the account of how he said that he would not sin by ceasing to pray for a difficult, gainsaying people. Samuel is one of the greatest examples in the word of God of an intercessor. Unfortunately, this word intercessor and intercession has been devalued. People talk about intercession, and what they really mean is prayer. Real intercession is in another dimension. And Samuel, one of the greatest lessons that we learn from his life is his intercession. He was, above all, an intercessor. We cannot ignore the fact that everyone whom the Lord has used at a turning point, a new era, a new phase, a new epoch, whatever you call it, in divine history, every one of them has been an intercessor. You cannot ignore it. It shouts at you. Abraham, God called him, My friend. He even said, at one time, shall I withhold from Abraham what I'm going to do? You know the story. And you know that when the Lord said, I'm sick of the sin and iniquity of Sodom and Gomorrah, and I'm going to judge them, then Abraham began his intercession. You know the story. It's very interesting. He went down from quite 50 people to 45 to 40, it was real Jewish, right down, little bit more, 30, 25, 20. Each time the Lord said, if there are 20 people, I will withhold. I will not judge. But Abraham never came to five, and there were only five righteous people in Sodom. Maybe there was a lesson to learn there. I don't know. Moses was an intercessor. The humour of the Lord is something that has fascinated me. When I was young, I thought that God was humourless, but I discovered that God has enormous humour. And I think it's amazing when the Lord said to Moses, stand aside, Moses. I'm going to destroy this people. I'm sick of them. Murmuring, stiff necked, critical the whole time, never thankful for what I've done for them. After all, I brought them out of Egypt, turned the whole of Egypt upside down to save them and they spend their time murmuring. And then he said to Moses, I think with enormous humour, it's okay, Moses. I'll make of you a new nation. He knew very well he was putting Moses to the test. Moses was no ordinary person, brought up in Pharaoh's household, educated at the highest degree in Egypt, a military hero. All this, we learn from our tradition. Not all those traditions are stupid. It's even referred to in the book of Acts, these things. And I would have thought Moses, if there had only been a little bit of a commitment to himself, to his own future, to a fulfilment of his own will, he would not have obeyed the Lord. And he would have said, well, Lord, I think that's a very interesting idea you've got. I'm a bit fed up with these people myself, and maybe you could start afresh with me and the family. Aaron, Miriam, we're better stock than these others. But not Moses. The moment the Lord said it, he remonstrated with the Lord. He was an intercessor. He pleaded with the Lord to forgive the people. And he said, what will the nations say? You brought these people out with an outstretched arm with mighty miracles, and they will say you took them out to destroy them. And the Lord relented. I think he knew all along that Moses had already abandoned any big ideas about himself. I find this very interesting. And you come to Samuel. He stood between the Lord and a sinning people. If we were to say you today, it's not just an unsaved nation, we would say he stood between the Lord and the church, the redeemed, the people of God, and he pleaded with the Lord for them. I have recently been reading through the psalms, and I'm amazed how much of an intercessor was David. Again and again in his psalms, he tells the Lord when he talks about the judgments of the Lord upon Israel, he pleads with the Lord to remember his covenants with the fathers, remember the promises that he made concerning this people. That was the basis of his intercession. But wherever you look, you can go further, even with Nehemiah. When you read the paraphrase of Nehemiah's intercessory ministry, you're speechless. He wept before the Lord. He stood between the Lord and the people. He was an intercessor. He saw the walls of Jerusalem completely rebuilt. And Ezra was another extraordinary brother, or whatever you like to call him. I mean, he restored the word of God and the law of God to its rightful place at the heart of the people. Well, I don't have to mention Daniel because we have all the record in Daniel chapter nine. So tremendous was Daniel's intercessory ministry. If you're good bible students, look at chapter nine, verse one, and you will see the date is given. In the first year of Ahasueras, I, Daniel discovered by reading the scroll of Jeremiah the 70 years that were determined for the destruction and desolation of Jerusalem. If you look at that date, turn back a few more pages to another chapter, first verse. And it says, in the first year of Ahasueras, the emperor, certain satraps, that is, princes, came to the king and said, O king, you are God in the flesh. Will you decree that no one is allowed to pray except to you? And the king, of course, thought it a marvellous idea. And they said you have the lion's den. Get it ready for anyone who disobeys this rule, it's the law of the Medes and the Persians. It cannot be changed. In other words, Satan was so bothered with Daniel's intercessory ministry that he prepared an incredible strategy to trap Daniel and to murder him. But Daniel went straight on. He opened the shutters of his window toward Jerusalem and he was standing on the word of King Solomon that if anyone in exile prays toward this city and to this house which is named with your name, hear them, answer them and bring them back from their captivity. That kind of intercessory ministry is tremendous. If Daniel had not fulfilled his intercessory ministry, Jerusalem would have not been rebuilt. The house of the Lord would not have been rebuilt. Bethlehem would not have been rebuilt. Nazareth would have not been rebuilt, nothing else would have been rebuilt. But it all had to be rebuilt for the coming of the messiah, because Micah had prophesied: And thou Bethlehem Ephrathah, which art little amongst the thousands of Judah shall come forth, he that shall be ruler of my people, Israel. That's Jesus. Or you think of Isaiah when he said about the way of the sea, the Via Maris, so interesting, passing just north of Capernaum, just south of Nazareth, speaking of those who were in darkness, they shall see a great light. But there was no Nazareth, there was no Capernaum. They'd been destroyed. They had to be rebuilt. This intercessory ministry of dear Daniel, maybe he thought it was only to do with the Jewish people going back to the land, but in fact it was to do with the coming of the Messiah. It doesn't matter where we turn, we find that there are intercessors. It's almost as if the Lord is loudly saying something. If you and I are going to be a link, we have to become intercessors. We also are facing the second coming of the Messiah. We also have in front of us ruin, deterioration, paganisation, especially of the so called Christian nations. It is happening with such incredible speed that it can only be spiritual, angelic, fallen angelic beings that are responsible for it. What are we to do? We can talk till kingdom come and not get anywhere. The fact of the matter is that this question of intercession is absolutely strategic. It is vital to the coming of the Lord. And if you and I are not, by the grace of God, poor material as we may be, are not by the grace of God, turned into intercessors, we shall lose much. So all I want to do this evening is to say something about intercession. Firstly, it is a matter of spiritual character. Why does the Lord call for intercessors? Because the intercessor has within him or her a spiritual character that is being formed by the Holy Spirit. These features that we see in Abraham, in Moses, in Samuel, in David, in Daniel, in John the Baptist, these features have to be found in us. Or, pardon me being so blunt, do we expect to be carried on beds of ease into the coming of the kingdom? Do we think that the Lord will mollycoddle us and simply carry us? But the Lord is seeking to train us. Why is intercession so important? I have often said, you will never be an intercessor if you do not recognise that this world is essentially, essentially a spiritual place. It is not a matter just of what you touch, what you see, what you hear, what you feel. It is something spiritual. It is the things which are invisible, which are the powerful matters. All those eternal matters are invisible. And until our eyes are open to see that we are born into a spiritual world, we will never see the need to be an intercessor. I've said to you before, you've heard me, that the Lord could have done and could do the job much more easily without us. I mean, I'm now old enough to be able to say that it's the Lord's people who are the problem. My goodness me, the Lord would have been back ages ago, but for us, we murmur, we hold back, we follow our own will, we do our own thing. And then we ask the Lord to clean up the mess. And then we make another mess. Then we ask him to clean up the mess again, and then we make another mess, and we never learn. To be an intercessor is to have your eyes open to the fact that this world is essentially a spiritual world. And once those eyes are opened, you are at least ready for the education that the Lord would lead you into. Intercession, in my estimation, is the highest calling that any child of God could be called with. People think the highest calling is to be an apostle or to be a teacher or to be a shepherd or to be an evangelist. But higher than all these is the intercessor. Why does the Lord put such a value on the intercessor? Because the intercessor has to learn how to reign with Christ down here in the conditions of a fallen world. They have to learn how to distinguish and discern the will of God in any given situation, and then to pray it into fulfilment. Prayer is just simply in Greek, the pouring out of the heart. You just pour out. You're full of emotion, full of distress, full of anxiety. You pour it out. The Lord himself said, you have not because you ask not. So you ask, do ask. The Lord said it. Be careful what you ask for, because he may give it to you and send leanness into your soul. But the fact is, that's prayer. Anyone can pray. Intercession is in another dimension. First you have to know what is the will of God in any given situation. That means you have to be able to discern the will of God in that situation. You have to learn how to hear the Lord speaking. You have to learn how, in fellowship with other believers, you discover that it is corporate, this matter of knowing the will of God. So why does the Lord so find this matter of intercession or being an intercessor, so important? Because it's all to do with reigning with Christ. First it is to discover the will of Christ, to know the burden that is on his heart and what his will is. And then it is the enabling of the Holy Spirit to persist until it is done, it is fulfilled. Our dear Lord gave us a pattern prayer, and there's a lot of misunderstandings about this pattern prayer. Some people believe you should repeat it all the time like a buddhist mantra, as if somehow it gathers sort of value, as you say. But our Lord said, and it's all in the present, our Father who art in heaven, this is Matthew six, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, sanctified be thy name, that's present. Thy kingdom come, thy will, Greek, as it is, thy will be done as it is in heaven, so on earth. Give us this day our daily bread. Present. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us. Present. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Present. Isn't it extraordinary that we take this one phrase, thy kingdom come, thy will be done as it is in heaven, so on earth, and we refer it to some hugely future matter. Well, maybe in the very end, may your kingdom come and may your will be done as it is in heaven, so on earth. But our Lord meant it in a different way. He meant when you're in situations, when the evil one is bothering you, when you are facing problems that are impossible, when you have persecution, when you have deterioration and apostasy, thy kingdom come. In other words, listen carefully. People who live in a republic have no idea of a kingdom, generally speaking. The kingdom is all to do with a throne, and that throne is the centre of authority and the one who sits on it is either king or queen. In other words, when you pray thy kingdom come, we are saying, let the will of the enthroned Messiah be done in this matter. Whatever it is, we are invading it in the name of the Lord. We are facing something that is a deterioration and not the will of the Lord. But first we've got to know what is the will of the Lord? What does the king on the throne with that sceptre of his strength in Zion, ruling in the midst of his enemies? What is he saying to us? Why should we throw in the towel and say, oh, it's far too difficult. The Lord has a purpose to fulfil even to the actual day of his coming. Does it not say in the prophecy of Joel and whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved? So we know that right up to the last moment people are going to be saved. But how can they be saved if they don't know the name upon which to call for salvation? So here we have something, I keep on saying tremendous, I'm sorry, I just got into a rut on that word. But the fact of the matter is you have something tremendous here. Please hear me. There can be no intercession without the three t's, total commitment to the person of the Lord Jesus, total surrender of my will to his will and total obedience to what he says. Out of that, intercession comes. You can be the youngest person in this place this evening, but God will lead you in the end to be an intercessor. He can start your education right now, you can be the oldest person in this building this evening, and you feel you're long beyond it, and you've failed the Lord very largely, but the Lord can still turn you in your last days into an intercessor. Listen to me. You begin to see how important this matter is. Listen to me. There can be no intercession or intercessory ministry without denying yourself, giving up all right to yourself, taking up your cross and following him. The scripture I would quote is in Mark's gospel and chapter eight here in verse 34, I think it is on five. He called unto him the multitude with his disciples, that's how important this matter is. And said unto them, if any man would come after me, let him deny himself, give up all right to himself, and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever would save his self life shall lose it. And whosoever shall lose his self life for my sake, and the gospel’s shall find it. That is the beginning of intercessory ministry. It is when you are ready to give up all rights to yourself, when you are ready to be committed to the person of the Lord Jesus, when you are ready to follow the lamb whithersoever he goeth. So simple, but so profound, and for most Christians, unknown in experience. Intercession is not just saying a few words, not reading a little liturgical prayer. Intercession is travail. The apostle Paul wrote in his Galatian letter, chapter four, verse 19, he said, my little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be fully formed in you. It is interesting to me that the little word there is again, so he had been in this travail for their spiritual birth. Now he was in travail again for the Lord Jesus to be formed in them fully. Mysterious. This Greek word is the agony of childbirth. And the apostle is saying, intercession is not just pouring out your heart, it is travail, a burden that is conceived by the Holy Spirit in your spirit and cannot escape without intercession. When you think you've got on your knees and prayed your heart out with others, you feel it's like a tank of water is drained. You get up, you feel it's over. But the next day the water has risen again and the pressure is on you until the birth comes. I sometimes wonder whether the reason we have so few believers who go on into maturity is because there are so few brothers and sisters who travail for them that Christ be fully formed in them. I thank God that I had a number of older folks who prayed for me all through the years. They travailed in the secret place. I didn't know anything about it. They never told me. I only found out later that they prayed day and night. We need this kind of intercessory ministry. The reason why we have so little maturity, so little spiritual growth, so little coming to be soldiers of Christ, coming to be those who can take responsibility in the things of God, is because there have not been people who've travailed for us. I find that tremendous. Intercession then, begins with a knowledge of the will of God. We know what the will of God is for the church. We know that it is that the house of God be built, that the body of the Lord Jesus be fully formed and built up in love. We know that. We know a wonderful window into this matter in the book of Revelation, where we're told and the bride has made herself ready, there is grist for intercession. There's a foundation for intercession. We have the revealed will of God for the church. But what do we see? We see apostasy on every side. Appalling apostasy. In this latest vote by the parliament, both commons and lords in Britain for same sex marriages and for gay rights, an evangelical leader, spokesman for the evangelicals, actually, has drawn up a marriage service for evangelicals and same sex marriage. I never thought such a thing could ever happen. It is amazing. But if we have the word of God, there is ground for us to intercede. We have the word of God. It's no wonder to me that the apostle Paul said to Timothy, war the good warfare. He was probably referring to a word in Hebrew which doesn't make a lot of sense in its present English translation, but in the Hebrew it says, it is the war of the service of God. War the warfare of the service of God. It was to do with the Levites and the priests. Mr. Sparks very often used to speak, referring to that scripture in Numbers. Does what I say have any reaction in your heart? We have got to such a position where we do not have enough intercessors. We have enough prayer, praying people. But where are the intercessors? Corporate intercession is one of the most powerful instruments in the hand of God. When the Lord Jesus, by the Holy Spirit, as head of the church, is able to make known what is his mind to the members of the body and harmonises them, symphonises them, so that they begin to pray in tune with one another, we know that that kind of prayer will, in the end, be fulfilled. Here then we have something to pray for. Here is something else. And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all nations for a testimony, and then shall the end come. Therefore, we have absolute foundation for intercession, to pray for gospel work all over the world, that men and women may come into a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus, even at the very last hour. We've got it. It's in the book. It's not as if we're cooking it up. It's there. Or think of Israel. Definitely, the word of God says that the natural branches will be re-engrafted to their own olive tree. And we're told that when the full number of the Gentiles be come in, God will turn again to the Jewish people and will save them. So now we have a foundation for intercession. We know it is the revealed will of God to save this people, not necessarily all of them, but to save them, to re-engraft them into their own olive tree, which actually is the church. If you're a wild olive branch, you've been grafted into the good olive tree, which is contrary to nature. But the wonderful thing is the natural branches are laid on one side at present. But there's coming a day when they're going to be re-engrafted, and that is the end of the cycle of redemption. It is the last, final chapter, the last paragraph. There are many other things I could talk about from the word of God that are his revealed will. But our biggest problem, and with this I close, our biggest problem is that we've bred a kind of Christianity which is a stranger to real intercession. I wonder what would have happened if the two sisters that prayed for the Islamic world had never prayed. I knew them. I saw their intercessory ministry. It was never boring. It was always from one to the other, to the other, back, like a tennis match, really, but the ball going backwards and forwards all the time, until one of them would say, are we there? And the other would say, not yet. Back they would go and I had the feeling they were on a gun emplacement, turning around and shooting down aircraft, enemy aircraft. I've never forgotten it. They had people from all over the Middle East, from Baghdad, from Algiers, from Casablanca, from Benghazi, from Tripoli, all over Egypt, everywhere, Beirut, so I could go on. I used to think, what is this? These two old ladies, they're supposed to be retired, and they're more busy than I'd ever seen people much younger. What is it they're doing? I remember once asking Auntie Alex, she was Estonian, and I said to her Auntie, you've been in Egypt all these years. How many people have you led to the Lord? And she looked at me and she put her hand up, five. And I, being young and arrogant, I said, five? You've been here for 40, 50 years and you've only seen one person come to the Lord every ten years? And I've never forgotten her answer. She didn't rebuke me, she just simply said, because I didn't know anything about intercession, nothing whatsoever. She said, there will come a day when thousands upon thousands of Muslims will find the Lord. I have lived to see it. So many thousands of Muslims finding the Lord. It's incredible. Can't keep abreast with it. Or I think of dear Margaret Barber and her niece discredited in the mission that she went out to China with. It was jealousy in the mission and they didn't like her. Enormous attraction that the girls had for her in this girl school. They began to spread stories about her until in the end, she had to resign from the mission and then she had to leave China. When she went back to Britain, she went to Keswick and she heard Handley Moule, Bishop Handley Moule, a godly man, and she asked if she could see him. And she said to him, she told him the whole story. He said, sister, have you sinned? And she said, well, I've done some things in my mind, but I certainly never did the things that I'm accused of. He said, do you believe God called you to China? And she said, yes. And he said, then to China you go. Then she protested and said, how can I go? The mission is against me, they blackened my name. How can I go? He said, you go with God. So she took her niece and went to China. And she spent those years in intercessory ministry. She prayed that God would raise a Chinese as a minister of the word of God and lead the people of God in China. Well, you know the rest of the story. I could give you a whole number of other instances of intercession. Incredible. God is not mocked. Those who are utterly committed to the Lord. I remember dear Lady Ogle, Daisy, Lady Ogle and Miss Sinclair, how they told me the story of how God led them to India, to a home in Bangalore. And there the two of them began to pray for India. They were very distressed by the spiritual condition and they began to pray for a man, an Indian that would be raised up as a man of God and lead many to the Lord. They prayed and they prayed and they prayed. It was real intercession. And then one day they heard about this Sikh who had found the Lord and had been thrown out of his home and his wife had left him. And they heard he was going to preach in Bangalore so they went to hear him. And whilst he was preaching the Lord said to both of them independently, they only found out when they got back to their home, this is the man you have prayed for. It was Bakht Singh. You see, God is not mocked. This matter of intercession will go on to the very coming of the Lord. And I think that to be an intercessor is to be an overcomer. It's as simple as that. And may the Lord challenge us. If you wonder, what should you do? If you're a young person, you think this is a bit strange, what he's saying, what should I do? You're an older person, you feel well, I certainly have not been an intercessor like this. I would say in a moment of quietness, offer yourself to the Lord. Total commitment to his person, total surrender of your will to his will and total obedience to what he says to you and you will begin a journey that will end in the throne of God. May the Lord challenge you in these days of darkness and apostasy and deterioration. We know the Lord's coming is nearer, but we are not escapists. We are not just sort of waiting, well, we want to get out of all this. We are here in some very real way to be intercessors to the last day of our life on this earth, that others may come to the Lord, others may be built up, others may grow, and that the purpose of God for his church be fulfilled and the purpose of God for the gospel in the nations and the purpose of God for Israel. May the Lord challenge you this night. Shall we pray? Beloved Lord, you know our hearts. We've talked about being links, Lord. We want to be that link with you. We want to be the link in this turning point in history. We want, Lord, to be intercessors. Help us, Lord. You see how foolish we are, how slow to learn so often. Lord, have mercy on us, reach us and bring within our hearts a readiness to sacrifice, to give up all right to ourself, to take up the cross and truly follow you. Help us, Lord, to let go of our self life, that we may find it unto life eternal. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.