Summer 1981
An Urgent Call
Sergio Valori
Pastor, Emmanuel Fellowship

For all of us, life holds its share of upheavals or prolonged periods of relentless pressure, in which our powers of endurance are severely tested and the furtherance of our very existence is brought into question. I am speaking about times of crisis. We have all known personal crisis, but today every Christian who knows the time or day quickly acknowledges that we are caught up in period of both national and world-wide crisis. This demands specific, decisive, and effective intercession: that form of intervention that either compels or prevents an action or that maintains or alters a condition. Should such interventions emerge, then God’s salvation will alleviate the situation, but should such be lacking, the results will be tragic.

Although God may move sovereignly in a situation, generally, intervention requires intercessors. These interceders are so intimately related to God that they become acquainted with His will, nature, and ways and can move His hand to intervene in a given situation. God looks for intercessors, and often His actions are determined by what He finds. How sad is this statement from Ezekiel 22:30-31; “And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none. Therefore, have I poured out mine indignation upon them . . .” The clear implication here is that had God heard the needed intercession, His actions would have been different. Many times down through history, God’s salvation has depended upon intercession rising up somewhere from within the camp of His people. God has chosen to operate this way. How deeply He longs to have an instrument in the earth that will be fully joined with Him in His enterprises! Yet, we often get sidetracked from the high purposes of God because we are too enmeshed n our own interests.

The Holy Spirit is today sounding forth a call and a challenge to the body of Christ to move into an effective ministry of prayer, intercession and warfare. The hour is critical and the needs are great. Crime and violence fill the land; economic confusion and instability are everywhere; and moral erosion is already well-advanced. Principalities and powers are battling to maintain a darkened state over the minds of men, to establish control over cities and countries, and to paralyze all genuine and effective Holy Spirit activity.

Some may think that this language simply glorifies the devil, but may we discern such a thought as a trick of the enemy to divert our attention from his activity, to blind us into concluding that all is well and above all, to prevent effective spiritual warfare from binding and dethroning him. Even God’s Word acknowledges that there will be times when “The enemy shall come in like a flood . . . (Isaiah 59:16). Both the books of Daniel and Revelation indicate that in the end times the enemy shall arise in great fury to make war against the saints and against all that is called of God. Many shall continue to lie in their beds of ease in Zion, but, He will have His prophets who will ascend into the watchtower, correctly discern the signs on the horizon, and sound an alarm in the camp of God’s people. It is time to “Blow the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in his holy mountain . . .,” to “turn unto the Lord with all your heart, with fasting, and with weeping and with mourning . . . ,” to “. . . call a solemn assembly, to gather the people, to sanctify the congregation.” Yes, it is time for “. . . the priests, the ministers of the Lord, to weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say Spare thy people O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach. . .” (Joel 2).

May there be a discerning company of people who are aware that God’s judgments are even now in the earth. Intercessors, who are instructed in the ways of the Lord, know that the tide of events can be stayed. “If my people which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and will heal their land” (II Chronicles 7:14).

The Bible has much to reveal about intercessors and their ministry:

Intercessors are identified with God’s will and purpose.

Thus a clear understanding of God’s mind is required. “. . . if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us. . .” (I John 5:14).

Intercessors are identified with the need.

There has never been any higher form of intercession than the identification of Jesus with the sins of the world. He fully drank the cup, being made sin for us, that we might be the righteousness of God. “Surely he hath born our griefs and carried our sorrows . . . and the chastisement of our peace was upon him. . .”

Intercessors are gripped by a sense of urgency.

Sometimes intercession requires action instead of, or along with prayers and supplications. When young David heard the scornful taunts of Goliath and saw the fear that had overcome Saul’s army, he was deeply stirred. Here was a crisis situation that demanded action and David intervened for his people.

When Peter was apprehended by Herod and put in prison, the church knew it was a critical time. The house of Mary, and no doubt many other places, became the scene of continual prayer and supplications that God would intervene. They were constrained of the Spirit to pray without ceasing, and there was no letup until God’s angel brought deliverance.

Intercessors are willing to lay down their lives.

They will not spare the element of self. God Himself spared not His only Son, but delivered Him up for us all. Esther became convinced that her whole life was designed of God to make intercession for a nation about to be annihilated. She responded to the crisis of the hour by putting her very life on the line; “. . . if I perish, I perish. . .”

Intercessors are unconditionally obedient.

The ministry of prayer and intercession demand absolute obedience, regardless of the cost. Intercession is more than saying prayers or storming heaven for the release of God’s blessings. It means standing with God in His verdicts and in His determinations.

In Numbers 25, Israel was committing whoredom with the daughters of Moab, and the fierce anger of the Lord was turned against them. The Lord decreed that judgment must be executed. Psalm 106:30 summarizes the intercession “Then stood up Phinehas, and executed judgment, and so the plague was stayed.

Intercessors are submissive to training and preparation.

When God’s people returned from Babylon, they knew not the law or the ways of God. But a teaching scribe was ready, “For an Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach in Israel . . .” (Ezra 7:10).

Intercessors are generally unknown and unrecognized.

In Ecclesiastes 9:14-15, we find a new short episode about a small city of few men, which was besieged by a great king. We are simply told that in this city was a wise poor man, who by his wisdom delivered the city yet no man remembered that same poor man.

The ministry of intercession is not a glamorous one. You will never get to the world’s stages, the church’s platforms, or into the headlines. You will never be acclaimed as God’s “man or woman of the hour.” Yet, if you will respond to this call and are found faithful, you will have the praises of God rather than the praises of men.

Today God is again seeking for a man . . . that should make up the hedge . . . and stand in the gap. Will you be part of that man?