Derek Prince - What It Means To Be An Intercessor?
This is an excerpt from: How To Pray For Israel
Our final proclamation this evening in the last of this series of messages is the last two verses of the epistle of Jude, which we think are glorious. Now unto Him who is able to keep us from falling and to present us faultless before the presence of His glory, with exceeding joy to the only wise God, our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever, amen. Can you say amen?
Now this being the final message in this series I felt it would be appropriate to take as my theme how to pray for Israel. I'm trusting that you and others who eventually receive this message will be prompted by the Holy Spirit to pray for Israel. I'm going to give you eleven suggestions to make prayer for Israel effective in your life and ministry. I'm not suggesting that you could go through all of these in one prayer session, they're different aspects of approaching prayer for Israel. They are all based on personal experience and observation.
So here we are. Suggestion number one, stay within the parameter of God's Word. That's one reason why I took so much time to go through what I believe is revealed in Scripture concerning God's purposes for Israel. Because, to pray outside the purposes of God or contrary to the purposes of God is to waste your time. I gave some examples of that, I won't go back. But let me give you just one pattern prayer in Matthew 24:20. Jesus, speaking about a crisis that has not yet developed but will develop in Israel, He says to those who are followers of His: "Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the Sabbath..."
Now that sets very clear parameters to how they are to pray. He doesn't say pray that you won't have to flee because you will have to flee. That is fixed in the purposes of God. The only limitations you have that you can pray, that you may not have to flee in the winter because it would be a great hardship, especially for pregnant women; and pray that you may not have to flee on the Sabbath because in the present state of Israel, fleeing on the Sabbath would be very difficult and would make you very conspicuous. So I'm suggesting that's a pattern of how to pray within the parameters of the Word of God.
Don't ask God to do something He said He will not do because you won't change God. You need to have an understanding of God's prophetic purposes for Israel in order to pray effectively for them. There is a good deal of praying for the Jews which is sentimental. It's soulish. And, I don't think it accomplishes much. I have learned by painful experience that the Holy Spirit is ruthless. He will bring us into line with God's purposes whether they suit us or not, whether we think they're right or not, they are right.
One of the features of American culture today is the slogan "The customer is always right". And a lot of people approach God as customers. They have their wants and their requests; they want a certain style, a certain color, a certain price. But, it's not true that the customer is always right. That's a psychological gimmick of people who want to sell things.
The truth of the matter is only one person is always right and that's God. If you want to pray intelligently and effectively, you've got to start from the fact that God is right and what He says is what's going to happen. But, He gives us the privilege of praying into being His Word. That is the most powerful prayer that you can ever pray, is in line with the Word of God.
In 1 Chronicles 17, David had a plan to build a temple for the Lord. The prophet Nathan told him to go ahead, it's a wonderful idea. But God dealt with Nathan in the night and said, "That's not my idea. David is not the one to build the temple for me. So go and tell David, You wanted to build a house for me but the Lord says, I'm going to build a house for you". That's God's level; it was as high above David's level as heaven is above earth. David said, "I'll build a house for the Lord". The Lord said, "No, David, I'll build a house for you".
So David came before the Lord the next day and in his prayer he said these words, "Do as you have said". You cannot pray a more powerful prayer than that. Praying God's Word into being makes you, in a sense, irresistible. In the New Testament the virgin Mary received the astonishing news that she was to be the mother of the Messiah and when the angel gave her that message she didn't understand it, she didn't know how it could happen but she said, "Be it unto me according to thy Word". I believe the greatest miracle ever experienced by a human being, other than Jesus, was the birth of the Messiah through a virgin. It came to pass when she said, "Be it unto me according to thy Word".
You cannot pray anything higher than the revealed Word of God. One of the great functions of intercessors is to pray into being what God has already said will happen. That's why God has set intercessors on the walls of Jerusalem. I said it, I think, in my first meeting, at any rater, in one of my meetings, the Hebrew word for an intercessor in Isaiah 62 is Maskir, which means someone who reminds someone else.
So, according to the Hebrew understanding, the function of a secretary is to remind her boss of what's on his calendar. And as an intercessor, a maskir, masculine; maskira, feminine, your job is to remind God of what's on His prophetic calendar and say to Him, "Do as you have said". There's more to intercession than that but that is the base of intercession. Therefore, an intercessor has to be familiar with the Word of God, has to be clear about God's purposes and their outworking. So that's the first principle I want to lay down. When you pray for Israel stay within the parameters of the Word of God.