North Anderson Baptist Church
We have already talked about Discipleship Making, Missions and Evangelism, Biblical Stewardship and now we look at the subject of Intercessory Prayer and how praying can push back the darkness and help fulfil the Great Commission, even right here at NABC. Today we will talk about how intercessory praying can help reach the lost men and women and boys and girls you know and those who are in the world. Early on in this series I asked of you to list names of people whom you know are lost or apart from the church and pray for them and talk with them about the Lord and their need of salvation or to be a part of a local church. Look at that list again or make one if you didn’t, and begin to pray for them by name. Ask God to burden you with their lives for His name sake and for His glory.
The Lord has produced many evangelists/missionaries who have given themselves to reaching the lost. Here are two of them and their petition of the Lord for the lost.
GEORGE WHITEFIELD, famous English evangelist, said, "O Lord, give me souls, or take my soul."
"PRAYING HYDE," a missionary in India, pleaded, "Father, give me these souls, or I die."
There are many scriptures that point out praying for the lost but I have chosen only three to help us focus on this theme. We see in two of the scriptures that Jesus Himself prayed for those who were lost that they might be saved and know the love of God, can we do less?
The first is the passage from Isaiah 53:12,
Isaiah 53:12 NIV
This is that great Messianic passage where the prophet Isaiah wrote hundreds of years before Jesus lived, died and rose again. Here the prophet says of Jesus that He would die with criminals and while yet dying for the sins of many, Jesus prayed an intercessory prayer for all transgressors...like me and you. Where and when did Jesus pray this intercessory prayer? We know that from the cross, Jesus asked the Father not to hold their sin against them (soldiers and Jewish leaders) for killing Him, which is a way of saying to the Father, “Forgive the sinners who have hurt and killed the Son of God and grant them the grace of God so they might know God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ whom they killed on the cross.” How powerful is that prayer! Even though they hurt Him deeply, mocked Him, spit in his face and eventually placed Him on the cross to die a painful and embarrassing death, even in front of His mother, no less, He prayed for their salvation!
Could you do that?
Could you pray for someone who was about to kill you and who had hurt you terribly?
Could you pray for their salvation and that God would have mercy on them and redeem them from the hell-fire of damnation?
If you could, you then would be through intercessory prayer “pushing back the darkness.” That is what Jesus was doing, interceding for those who killed Him that they might be saved and the darkness of sin in their lives would be pushed back and they would be free of sin and saved for eternity. When you pray for the lost you are praying that sin would be forgiven and darkness taken from their lives.
Now take a look at the passage from John 17:20, where Jesus is probably in the Garden of Gethsemane praying to His Father,
John 17:20 NIV
Was this prayer specifically about praying for the lost? Not really, but what I see is that even before the lost were saved they were prayed for by their Savior. He then in this prayer was, once they were saved, that may the new believers become “one with the Father and one another.”
This is basically simple. Jesus prayed for the lost of the world to come to know Him as Savior and Lord and that they would spend eternity with the Lord God. But guess what...not everyone was saved or will be saved from the time Jesus prayed until now. It isn’t the failure of Jesus that people haven’t been saved, it is the rebellion of mankind who have refused to accept the grace of God in their lives and have doomed themselves to a Christless eternity.
What is your responsibility? To pray for the lost that they may accept the forgiveness of God and turn from their sin and choose to follow Christ!!!
Now that leads us to the last passage which Paul wrote to Timothy.
1 Timothy 2:1 NIV
1 Timothy 2:3-4 NIV
Dr. Wilbur Chapman wrote to a friend: I have learned some great lessons concerning prayer. At one of our missions in England the audience was exceedingly small; but I received a note saying that an American missionary was going to pray for God's blessing down on our work. He was known as Praying Hyde. Almost instantly the tide turned. The hall became packed, and at my first invitation fifty men accepted Christ as their Savior.
Paul tells young Timothy that he, and all of us who are Christians, should devote themselves to go to the Lord with “petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving for all people.” Why does Paul think this is the thing to do? Because it is good and pleases the Lord. Amen! Paul then states that God, “wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” So when we do what Paul tells us to do, we not only pray for all kinds of needs people have but just as important, we are to intercede for the lost to be saved because that is what God wants from us, because it “is good and it pleases God our Savior.”
Dear friends it is simple. Do you want to please the Lord? Do you want to do what is good in the sight of the Lord? Then Paul says pray for the lost that they may be saved. For the glory of the Lord and for your sake and the eternal sake of the lost that you know, pray with consistency and fervently.
How do you do that? Set a time up during the day that you take these people whose names are on your list and call them out to God and ask Him to touch their hearts with the Holy Spirit and draw them to Christ. Be faithful to continue to lift them to the Lord God and go see them, write them a letter or call them, but whatever you do, share the love of Christ and the need they have for forgiveness of sin. Don’t stop praying or sharing but continue until God says stop.
Who will take the challenge? Would you start now, even right now during this invitation? Come to the altar and bring your petition to the Lord and call their names out before God.