Vitally Alive and Thriving
By Sandy Mayle
For years I’ve followed a specific pattern of intercession for my three sons, and eventually their families. Long ago the Lord called me to spend a half-hour, three times a week, interceding for them: the oldest son and his family on Monday, the middle on Wednesday, and the youngest on Friday.
On a recent morning, I felt an unusual burden for one son. As I prayed earnestly for him, God pressed an unexpected message to my heart:
I’m the only Savior. Your structured prayers have been good and you have been obedient in them, but it’s time for something different.
What did He mean? Had I come to consider my faithfulness to my prayer patterns as the vital key to my family’s reclamation or process of spiritual formation? Was I mistakenly taking on myself the responsibility for their souls’ well-being? Had the half-hour become legalistic and stifling rather than fostering intercession? Whatever the reason, God wasn’t quite finished speaking.
Organic prayer.
Those two words were repeated in my spirit over the following days, with a mental image of what looked like the offshoot of a vine, vitally alive, vividly green, and delicately tendrilled.
Organic prayer.
The phrase and the picture sent me to the dictionary and the Bible in an effort to understand what the Lord was saying. As I studied and meditated in His presence, God began to reveal how He was calling me to pray.
What Is Organic Prayer?
I learned that “organic” is a multi-faceted word,
and that many of those facets apply to the kind of intercession God intends.
1. Organic prayer is elemental.
- It’s simple and basic. “Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests” (Eph. 6:18). As the Holy Spirit seeds His longings deep into the root of the need and the heart of the matter, organic intercession springs up. It surfaces anytime and anywhere, often outside the boxes we’ve built (established times and topics). It’s not a rejection of structured intercession—it easily occurs within those times and styles—but also sprouts a Spirit-germinated prayer response to overheard remarks or a news report or a conversation with a distraught friend.
- It’s powerful. “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective” (James 5:16). Not in itself or because of the intercessor’s earnestness or righteousness, but because his or her prayers are offered through right standing with Christ, and in His name.
2. Organic prayer is alive. The righteous person’s plea is “[dynamic and can have tremendous power]” (James 5:16 amp). Like a gardener’s glove laying lifeless, it “fills with life” when the Holy Spirit fills it with Himself, takes it up, and uses it for His purposes. When full of the Spirit, our organic prayer shares common characteristics of living things:
- It breathes. It breathes in the Spirit and breathes out petitions and pleas.
- It feeds. As our intercession feasts on the Word, it gains the energy of faith to declare truth and claim promises.
- It grows. As God shines His light on a need, organic prayers germinate and rise up, stretching up to the Light, sending out shoots and tendrils, wrapping under and over the lost or lacking, lifting them to the Father.
- It goes. Living prayer has “locomotion.” It goes places. Not under its own power but borne by the Spirit. Our free-range requests can “go” anywhere God can reach—and that is everywhere! Overseas missionaries. Persecuted believers. Prime ministers, supreme leaders, presidents, and kings. And closer to home, struggling pastors. New believers. Estranged family members. Unbelieving spouses.
- It responds. Vital intercession engages spiritual senses that virtually hear God’s heartbeat, see His perspective, and feel the needs around us. Over time, Spirit-stimulated prayer becomes an almost involuntary response.
- It yields. Organic prayer is productive. It bears fruit. God moves in response to requests He’s initiated, in the way He knows is best—even if we do not see the harvest in our lifetime.
3. Organic prayer is naturally sourced and grown.Organic intercession isn’t rote or self-manufactured. It arises from a God-aligned sense of need, as though the Spirit taps the heart and whispers, Pray. This isn’t an exotic or hothouse species of intercession—just ordinary supplication seeded into a holy heart by the Spirit to affect His answers by His power.
It often springs up from the pure, rich soil of the Word—soil loamy with promises and fertilized with faith; soil uncontaminated by the pesticide of doubt, unpopulated with the weeds of selfishness, and untouched by skewed theology. Our requests bow to the Gardener’s desires and plans, saying, “May your will be done” (Matt. 26:42), and readily submits to His pruning. Reshaping. Training. Transplanting. Propagating.
The enemy of our souls considers organic prayer an invasive species from another world—and in a way, it is! It adapts to the harshest environments. It hardily resists the parasites of presumption, the cutworms of empty repetition and the blight of monotony. And once established, it can be impossible for Satan to eradicate. Through the Spirit, our persistent prayers reclaim lost ground, break up hard soil, even spread and thrive to God’s glory.
Give Me More
As I begin this adventure with organic prayer, it’s taking a bit of adjustment, something like breaking in new shoes. A little uncomfortable in places at first (this just doesn’t feel normal) and unnatural (wouldn’t God be more likely to answer if I prayed longer and harder?). Yet I’ve seen new buds forming—unexpected opportunities to reach out to that son for whom I’m burdened.
Around the time God called me to this new type of intercession, I went on a long-planned personal retreat. Later, looking over those retreat notes, I noticed part of a conversation with Him I’d forgotten—a request from Him so gracious and so poignant I wonder how I could have forgotten. I’d written down what He seemed to say to me that day:
Can you give Me more to answer?
Can you ask and keep on asking?
God was pressing the invitation: More. Give Me more.
Our God desires more organic prayers. More Spirit-prompted pleadings. He is eagerly anticipating those requests because He longs and loves to answer.
And still the Holy Spirit reminds me that God alone is the Savior. It’s not about the length or intensity of my pleas. Instead of trying to earn His response or twist His arm, the Spirit reminds me to come simply and earnestly (and yes, sometimes intensely and at length) to the Father and offer faith-fortified petitions full of the Spirit and effective for His Kingdom—appeals that above all seek, without apology, His will. Requests that will prove, by His power, to be effective for His Kingdom.
So, even now He’s seeding this willing heart. Germinating vital prayers. Infusing them with vigor, tending and shaping, encouraging them to fruitfulness.
Raising them in the power of the Spirit.
Organically.
SANDY MAYLE is a freelance writer from Pennsylvania and a frequent contributor to Prayer Connect.
