Hello All,
(Just a general disclaimer that I must insert here at the beginning. I am but a lay person, like most of you. And these weekly “thoughts” are but my own. Not the definitive word on this or any topic. Just my own conclusions derived from my own study and faith in God. The greatest hope I have for these weekly “thoughts” is to have them be a springboard for further study on your part. Not to be a weekly treatise to be blindly accepted. So, please read them with this intent, this motive in mind).
This week’s lesson from the “Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide”, is titled “The Power of the Exalted Jesus”. As our quarterly states, “… prayer is a central, or even the central, task of Christian faith” (Sunday’s lesson). “Prayer does not bring God down to us but brings us up to Him” (Steps to Christ pg. 93). So true. Bible study enables God to talk to us, prayer enables us to talk to Him. And the Holy Spirit, the very representative of God Himself, is the agent by which God and man are connected. That is what makes the Holy Spirit’s intercession for us so powerful. “We do not know what we should pray for” (Romans 8:26). Therefore, the Holy Spirit brings God home to us “with groaning’s which cannot be uttered” (ibid). Intercession is always God bringing Himself and us together, bringing Himself down to us. “Now a mediator does not mediate for one only but God is one” (Galatians 3:20). The Intercessor, the Intervener, the Mediator between God and man is… God Himself in the Person of His Son. Not mediating Himself, not one Member of the Godhead pleading with another Member. The Trinity is all “One” … all working for us. Therefore our prayer, which is the reciprocal and equal reaction to God’s initial action, is our thoughts and minds reaching back to Him in thanksgiving, worship, praise and supplication.
“He who searches (our) hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:26). God’s intercession is always one way, bringing Himself down into intimate connection with His creatures who know not how to pray and know not Him. “He (the Holy Spirit) will not speak on His own authority but whatever He hears He will speak... He will take of what is Mine (says Jesus) and declare it unto you” (John 16: 13-14). “It is the work of the Holy Spirit to move us to pray, to teach us what to say, and even to speak through us (SDA Commentary Book 6, page 573). We neglect prayer, this reciprocal response to God’s intercession to us, to the enfeeblement of our own souls. It is the vital connection we make to the very person of God, through the Holy Spirit.
Likewise, with prayerful Bible study. God is with us through the Holy Spirit as we study, bringing to our understanding the very words the Holy Spirit prompted to be written centuries before. These words become alive again, despite the centuries, by the same Spirit that inspired the writers. There is a union between the mind of the Biblical authors, the mind of the prayerful student… both united with God through the Holy Spirit in this endeavor. Praise God for it!
Prayer is not a means of getting things, it is that we may get to know God Himself. Prayer does not so much change things as it changes me… and then I change things. Prayer alters the way I look at things. Prayer does not so much alter things externally but of working wonders in me internally. It places me in communion with God and enables Him to work in me and through me. And in this, I become the intercessor for God to others. This is true intercession. God working through each of us to reach and save the lost. It is Christ’s intercession, the Holy Spirit’s intercession, our intercession. Not coming between the sinner and a wrathful God in order to change God. But between a loving Father and His lost child to bring the Father’s “Home-fire” to the child, and so change the child. Changing the child’s lost-ness to security, his anxiety to peace, his heart back to its Home and to the Father’s heart. May we be that intercessor, for lack of which the world is perishing… bringing the things of God to our fellow brothers and sisters. May our prayer-life lead us to exclaim like Isaiah when God shows us the needs and suffering and pain all around us that He alone has seen and heard and suffered. May we be His intercessors as we see it and we too exclaim, “Here am I… send me” (Isaiah 6:8).
With brotherly love,
Jim