Our Active Intercessory Role
By Alvin VanderGriend
Partnerships are important. A partner is a person who joins with another person(s) in a shared activity. Together, they accomplish more than they would apart.
In the Old Testament, when Israel faced a serious military threat (Exodus 17), Joshua and the army went out to fight. But Moses went up on a hillside to pray. When his praying hands were up, Israel was winning. But when they were down, the enemy had the battle success.
Why, we may ask, would God allow His people to suffer defeat during moments of no prayer? The answer is that God was teaching His people that He chooses to move in response to prayer and that He will not move without it. Though God is Almighty, all-wise, and fully able to work without us, He chooses to work through our prayers. He calls us into a working partnership with the Trinity. We co-labor with Him to accomplish His purposes. Amazing things happen when we pray that won’t happen if we don’t pray!
Partnering with the Trinity means joining with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to accomplish God’s purposes on earth. That’s an awesome arrangement, considering the magnificent God we are partnering with—and what we are accomplishing! One of the most important ways we partner with our triune God is in prayer. But just how does this work?
Cycle of Prayer
In his book The Arena of Prayer, Ben Jennings uses the diagram here to depict the believer’s interrelated prayer activity with the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.1
Our heavenly Father, Jennings suggests, is where the cycle of prayer starts. The Father initiates what He wants us to pray: “From him [God] . . . are all things” (Rom. 11:36). Paul says that “the Spirit searches . . . the deep things of God” and “no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2:10–11).
The Holy Spirit transmits the prayer longings of the Father to believers.
Believers, aided by the Spirit, become active participants in the cycle, praying what the Holy Spirit births in our hearts.
Jesus Christ hears our Spirit-birthed prayers and, as our ever-living Intercessor, conveys them to the Father, who in turn hears and answers them in accordance with His promise.
Our Active Role
Believers partner effectively in prayer with the Trinity by being active participants.
- Pray with a clean heart. One of the worst things about sin is that it obstructs prayer. If we cherish sin in our hearts, the Lord will not hear us (Ps. 66:18). The first requirement of true prayer, then, is to confess anything in our hearts that is not of God and to receive His forgiveness. We can then go to God with clean hearts and be sure He hears us.
- Pray in the Spirit (Eph. 6:18). The Spirit makes prayer possible. He reveals God’s glory and grace to us so that our prayers will be filled with praise and thanks. He reveals God’s will and promises to us so that our petitions and intercession will be on target. He reveals our sin to us so our confession will be deeply contrite. Spirit-filled believers will be effective pray-ers.
- Pray “in Jesus’ name.” This means to pray as authorized by the Son for things that are in accord with the Father’s will. The Father, discerning that the requests we bring before Him have been authorized by His Son, hears and answers us. Such requests and their answers will always glorify the Father and advance His Kingdom.
- Pray with expectant faith. Praying in faith means being certain God hears our prayers and is pleased to respond when we ask, “in Jesus’ name.” By faith, we know that God will always answer in ways that are right and good.
Our Hands Lifted Up
When God first taught me this important partnership principle of prayer, it had a simple but pointed application for me. It was as if God said, “Alvin, when your children go to school each morning, they are heading into battle. If you as a parent keep your hands uplifted, they will be winning. But, if your praying hands come down, they will be losing.” I have never forgotten that lesson.
Since that time, I have understood that as church leaders and faithful Christians “lift up holy hands in prayer” (1 Tim. 2:8), the church grows strong and is able to break down the gates of hell. When believers in neighborhoods and workplaces lift up praying hands over those around them, the powers of darkness are pushed back.
The most common testimony of churches whose people pray over neighborhoods is that of transformation. They speak of crack houses closing, crime rates falling, marriages being restored, families coming back together, and people converting to faith in Jesus. What’s happening as God’s people pray over their neighborhoods is the same thing that happened as Moses prayed over the battlefield. The forces of evil go into retreat.
What we need most for solving the problems in our society is not more money, more education, more ideas, books, or strategies. Our prime need is hands lifted up in prayer. An author, who wished to remain anonymous, wrote in his book The Kneeling Christian: “We can accomplish far more by our prayers than by our work. Prayer . . . can do anything God can do! When we pray, God works.”
Where are your hands right now? Are you partnering with the Triune God through prayer? Partnering with the Trinity in prayer is co-laboring with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to accomplish God’s will on earth. What a wonderful privilege and awesome responsibility!
1Ben Jennings, The Arena of Prayer (Peachtree City: Campus Crusade for Christ, 1999), p. 32.
ALVIN VANDERGRIEND is the prayer evangelism associate for Harvest Prayer Ministries and a member of America’s National Prayer Committee. He is the author of several books, including Love to Pray and Praying God’s Heart (PrayerShop Publishing).
