“So I sought for a man among them who would make a wall, and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found no one.” – Ezekiel 22:30
For some weird reasons I am still trying to figure out, every time people are presented with different options or roles of what they can do regarding global missions and world evangelization, the vast majority tend to choose the option or role of prayer or praying. It’s amazing! The question I keep asking myself is “why?”
We often hear about anything from five to six or seven roles advocated for missions, including giving and or sending, going, mobilizing, advocating, praying, and welcoming. If you talk to a group of 100 committed Christians and you ask them which of these roles, they believe God is calling them to play, you will often find that most people chose praying. I have experienced it many times in my many years of seeking to mobilize the church into God’s Global purposes and agenda.
Some might think this is a good thing and calls for celebration, for many people are choosing to commit to praying for missions, to praying for the nations. But alas, it alarms me more than it excites me, and leaves me more cynical than hopeful.
Now, I wasn’t always like this, but I have just become more and more distrustful of all of these many quick-easy-peasy prayer commitments. In my early years, I used to be very happy and enthusiastic about people wanting to pray for me, for the labors, and for missions in general…
Then came the unsettling discovery. Then my optimism snapped. Then my excitement fizzled.
I started to re-visit many of the people who made commitments to pray…I would ask, “how’s it going?” or “how’s God dealing with your heart as you’re praying?” The responses were devastatingly and eerily similar, it was as if people had already agreed on a few sets of answers, because well over 90% of the people would tell me “Oh no, I forgot!”, many with a feigned look of embarrassment on their faces. I started to become fearful of asking the question. “Forgot?” I said to myself. “Did they really forget?”, “How could so many people forget?” I soliloquized as I tried to make sense of these answers.
Then came the second blow; for even among those who said they were praying, who apparently did not forget, a meagre 10% of the folks who committed to pray, I realized it was not something they took as seriously as the moment called for, or at least as I expected. Perhaps the answer that best encapsulates the attitude and approach to these kinds of prayer commitments came from one who told me “Every time I am about to eat dinner, I include you when I give thanks”.
Well, “What’s wrong with that?”, you might ask. Many things, if not everything! While at face value, it appears to be a good thing that some people at least remember to throw in a line or two about missions during a thirty-second prayer of thanks at the dinner table, the real question is not about remembering to appendix it at the end of a perfunctory prayer, but about the total misunderstanding of what it means to intercede and stand in the gap. There is a million miles between intercession or standing-in-the-gap and giving thanks over a meal. To try to do them both together is like trying to swim in the pool and fly in the sky at the same time. I dare to say it is impossible.
While it is okay to give thanks or mention other people and situations during such a flirting moment of prayer, that should never be the complete story. If that moment at the dinner table is the complete picture of your commitment to kingdom praying, and if your commitment to intercession has no further depths or other aspects, it is a complete farce and great self-deception to claim you are interceding or that you are an intercessor. It is a travesty, a complete caricature of what it means to stand in the gap.
So, you see why I am no longer excited about many people rushing to the front of the line on commitments to pray? It is starting to feel like most people are playing rather than praying. Perhaps, the playing starts from the moment people tick that box that says, “I want to be praying”, it might be because most people are just looking for something they believe is easiest, most convenient and has less or zero accountability, and so prayer for them becomes the easy option. It’s not like giving where people will notice if the check doesn’t come in the mail, or the transfer alert doesn’t happen, right? So, maybe people are wanting to pray more than anything else because they don’t want to be responsible, or because they don’t want to make a sacrifice or distort anything they’ve got going, and so they immediately forget they made a commitment to pray or merely find a few seconds in the middle of a few seconds of giving thanks for dinner.
These are not the kind of people God says He “sought for” or is seeking for today. We need to be honest. This is not what God had in mind when he speaks of “standing in the gap” and “making up the hedge”. I keep wondering, is this why missions, and God’s global agenda continue to linger? Because more people are playing rather than praying? Because more people are choosing convenience over commitment and sacrifice? Because more people are standing on the edge rather than in the hedge?
Jesus understood the significance of prayer. When he spoke about the “plentiful harvest”, he immediately followed it up by saying “pray”, thus setting up prayer as one of our optimal responses to the need of global harvest today (Matt. 9:38). This article is not about minimizing the role and significance of prayer, in fact it is the very opposite of that. Far from minimizing prayer, I am seeking to highlight the danger of how we have trivialized prayer, especially the prayer of intercession. I am not trying to overcomplicate prayer either, but to illuminate it in it’s true nature and glory. Prayer is neither simplistic nor complicated.
Having said all of that, the pertinent question now becomes ‘how should we pray so that we’re not merely playing’? What should be our commitment to prayer that puts us in the trenches of the fight for God’s kingdom to come among the nations rather than on the edges of personal comfort and convenience? Has God called you to be an intercessor? Have you sensed a call to stand in the gap? If so, what can you do to correctly respond to God’s call to stand in the trenches and hedges?
Let’s face it; it is not comfortable in the trenches, among the hedges…we have to be prepared to make sacrifices, to suffer inconveniences, and to be bothered if we are to be effective and meaningful intercessors that move the hand of God and push back the enemy. God has never been moved from the armchairs of comfort, or those who sit in them. No wonder David didn’t want to offer to God what didn’t cost him nothing (2 Sam. 24:24), he understood that convenience and cheap comfort don’t get on God’s radar. God is moved from the hedges and from the trenches. To stand in the gap, like God wants us to do, we can’t do so effectively if we don’t want to pay any costs or have absolutely no disruptions in our lives.
Everyone who stood in the gap or who interceded in the scriptures that we know of, didn’t do so cloaked in comfort and convenience, but in sacrifice and selflessness. Ask Moses, who stood on a hill with weary-lifted hands so that Joshua could win the battle (Exo. 17:10-13). Ask Elijah, who climbed mount Carmel and “bowed down on the ground and put his face between his knees” seven times so that God could end the drought and send rain upon Israel again (1 Kings 18:41-44). Ask Moses who “pleaded with the Lord” not to destroy Israel upon the mount (Exodus 32;11-14). Ask Abraham who positioned himself before the Lord to intercede for Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18;22-33). Oh, and what about Nehemiah mourning and refusing to eat as he interceded for Jerusalem (Neh. 1:1-4) or Mordecai and Esther who rent clothes, sat in ashes and fasted so an extermination edict against them could be overturned (Esther 4) or the disciples interceding for Peter to be released from Prison (Acts 12:5-17), or Paul who referred to his intercession for the Galatians as “suffering labor pains” so that Christ will be formed in them? (Eph. 4:19).
If you’re going to pray so that the kingdom of God will come and that darkness will be pushed back among the nations, can you decide too to make it more than a commitment of convenience? Can your commitment go beyond the tenuous kind and be so substantial that it will be impossible for you to forget? Can you commit so passionately to it that you’ll be a pray-er and not a play-er? Imagine what would happen, if these are the kinds of people who are always ticking that box and saying, “I want to be praying”?
What needs to happen, or what do we need to do and become so that we can be this kind of intercessor? How can you become someone who will move the hand of God by your praying?
Remarks:
To avoid making this post too long, I will share answers to these questions and more in the next blog post. In my next update, in part two of this post, I will share details on how you can effectively pray for God’s kingdom to come, how you can be an effective intercessor for missions, or for anything for that matter. In my next post, you’ll find out how you can move away from the edges and into the hedges. I will be looking forward to sharing these thoughts with you next…
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JoJo on Mission 