The Highest Call

Job 9:32 - 35 "He is not a man like me that I might answer Him, that we might confront each other in court. If only there were someone to arbitrate between us, to lay his hand upon us both, someone to remove God's rod from me, so that His terror would frighten me no more. Then I would speak up without fear of Him, but as it now stands with me, I cannot."

I got a taste of the cost of real intercession this past week. When you take upon yourself someone else's burden, it wipes you out. Sitting in the home of a family devastated by the death of their daughter, I prayed to God to allow me to be one who could lift their arms for them. For as it stood with them at that point - they could not, and I felt the weight and I prayed in a way that I've rarely prayed before. And it was very heavy.

I believe that intercession is the highest call a Christian can have on this earth. The call to stand in the gap for the one who cannot stand on their own. To cry out for the one who has lost their voice. To carry the burden of the one who has fallen beneath the load. It's not enough to simply say "Get up!" to the person who can barely breathe. You have to breathe for them.

Romans 8:26 "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we out to pray for, but he Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express."

I am amazed at what Christ did for me - interceding for me - breathing for me - when I was dead in my sins, unable to make even the slightest move towards Him. The heaviness He must have felt makes me love Him even more. It is our call now, as the movable Temples of God, to be this intercessor for those who have been knocked down.

It's hard work, that's why so many Christians follow the paths of their own choosing. When you intercede, you take on the burden of the other person, their pain and suffering, their groans of agony, and it can really wipe you out. But there is no other way.