This morning I put on a clean shirt. It’s comfortable and it looks nice or it did. A short time ago, I took a small break in my morning and happened to notice that I now have not one but two small stains on the bottom of my shirt! And so, I am once more reminded of my own blemishes, my faults and my shortcomings. I found myself saying, “Lord, I am interceding for others in prayer and I am stained.”
As one of God’s intercessors, I am so thankful that I do not have to be perfect to be called by God. While I may pray often for God to create in me a clean heart, I recognize that my heart and my Spirit are still growing in the Lord even as I serve Him. Sometimes my own heart is a bit stained by the effects of life.
If you are concerned that you cannot pray well for others because not everything is in order in your own life, please be reassured that God can and does use even those of us with stains to pray for his people. Maybe, God even prefers those of us with a few stains to be the ones on our knees praying for others.
When we are aware of our own brokenness, our own struggles, it enables us to pray for those who are walking through difficulties with a passion that comes from understanding. We pray with an awareness that we would not otherwise have.
God’s intercessors are called to pray because we have a relationship with him. We are familiar with knowing the need for prayer. We are confident of God answering our prayers because we have prayed so many times when in need ourselves. We have witnessed the hope that God can bring in just knowing that he is a God who hears us. He is a God who turns his ear and hears our prayers.
We know and recognize the comfort that comes when God’s peace descends upon us after we lay our burdens at his feet. We have felt the joy in the assuredness that we are praying to the one who CAN, who is ABLE, and who WILL do more than we could ever have imagined, even in situations where we have no control and no earthly reason to believe the situation will improve. There is God.
So, if you have a few stains, like I do, please trust that God would love to use you to intercede in prayer for others, too. There are so many in need of prayer. God may be calling you to pray. If you have a willing heart to learn how to intercede in prayer for someone else, the Lord will guide you. You have only to say, “Yes, Lord”. He is waiting for you to come to him, stains and all.
By Jacqui - One of God's Intercessors
I appreciate every post. From one Intercessor to another, may you be strengthened to do His Precious Work!