Holding Up the Life of Another Before God
From Douglas Steere’s book, Prayer and Worship, comes this excerpt on intercessory prayer:
When we hold up the life of another before God, when we
expose it to God’s love, when we pray for its release from drowsiness, for the
quickening of its inner health, for the power to throw off a destructive habit,
for the restoration of its free and vital relationship with its fellows, for
its strength to resist temptation, for its courage to continue against sharp
opposition—only then do we sense what it means to share in God’s work, in his
concern; only then do the walls that separate us from others come down…”Prayer
is incipient action,” and these clues are the lines along which the molten
freedom of the person in prayer is to be cast. “Mind the Light,” reads an
inscription on a sundial. Come under holy obedience.
Here is the unformed side of life’s relationships—the letters
to be written, the friends to be visited, the journey to be undertaken, the
suffering to be met by food, or nursing care, or fellowship. Here is the social
wrong to be resisted, the piece of interpretive work to be undertaken, the
command to “rebuild my churches,” the article to be written, the wrong to be
forgiven, the grudge to be dropped, the relationship to be set right, the
willingness to serve God in the interior court by clear honest thinking, and
the refusal to turn out shoddy work.
Yet we need more than the intimations. We need spiritual staying
power to carry them out…Holy obedience to the insights, to the concerns that
come, that persist, and that are in accord with God’s way of love is not only
the active side of prayer, but is the only adequate preparation for future
prayer.