Teach Us to Pray Pt. 4 :: Intercession

In John 15, Jesus proclaimed, “apart from me you can do nothing”. In saying this, he invites us into a deep, intimate connection with Him. Not just for ourselves but that we may bear fruit for the sake of the WORLD.

Prayer, as we know, is the blood flow of life in the kingdom. It’s the air we breathe, the food that nourishes our souls, and the drink that quenches our thirst.

Yet for many, it has become too easy for our prayerful connection with Jesus to be pushed to the margins of our lives - squeezed into brief moments between busyness and distraction. 

For others, prayer comes hand in hand with disappointment. Years of seemingly unanswered cries have left many feeling confused and forgotten.

But it’s time for us to reimagine a life of prayer infused with purpose, hope, and power.

Together, we’ll press into what it means to develop a CONVERSATIONAL life with God — both in the secret place AND in communal agreement.

We’ll expand our imagination for what prayer is and what prayer can be.

Both intercession & contemplation

Adoration & petition

Silence & singing

Lamentation and delight

It all belongs together.

Join us for a season of seeking God together.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Thanks for joining us today as you listen to a portion of the message recorded at Vine Life Church in Boulder, Colorado. If you'd like to connect with us further, you can visit us online at www.finelife.com.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us. Nor was it that he would offer himself often as the high priest enters the holy place year by year, with blood that is not his. Otherwise he would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world. But now, once at the consummation of the ages, he has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once, and after this comes judgment, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin to those who eagerly wait await him. Hebrews 7, 26 and 27 says, For it is fitting for us to have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, exalted above the heavens, who does not need daily, like the priest, to offer up sacrifices, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people, because this he did once for all when he offered up himself. And then 1 Peter. But you are speaking to us now, a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. For you were not a people, but now you are the people of God. You had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Okay. Got my glasses, got my paper. Now we have, and so I just want us to focus on the holy place again in Christ. Now we have access to the throne room in heaven, in the true. Let's look at what Paul says. Paul says in 1 Corinthians, do you not know that you are a temple of God and the Spirit of God dwells in you? This word temple in this passage is naus, and it means the holy place and the holy of holies. So when God says that we are a temple, God is referring back to what the Hebrews understood is this place. So I just want us to picture for a moment. We have the sevenfold Spirit of God, the light, the revelation, the amazing anointing that flows from the Spirit of God in this place in our hearts. As we enter into our hearts to bring prayer and intercession before the throne, this is where we are. We have a new covenant in Christ. We get to eat of his flesh and drink his blood. We get to have our daily bread. We get to fellowship and linger and be. I love what Piper's quoted as we get to be held, behold and beheld in this place, before the throne. There is no more veil, so the very presence and throne of God is before us, and we come before Him and we pray according to what Christ has done for us. His intercession happened. He always stands to enforce what he has done before the throne. But the act of intercession in making atonement for our sins is finished. Our prayers then, as high priests, as the royal priesthood following Jesus is to stand and agree with what Jesus has done, to make petitions that are in alignment with what Christ is praying for us. This is the picture of what goes on in our prayer closet as we wait on the Lord and we wait on the Spirit and we hear from Him his voice. And he lights the Word and brings revelation to the Word. So I just wanted you to see this holy place and this throne. I missed a very key piece, and that is that once a year, these are the priests that do this in the whole in this holy place, but once a year, the high priest would take the uh coals from the altar, bring it into the incense, the altar of incense, all in gold. And he would offer prayers and take a censor of what was in this altar of incense, which is the very altar that we read when we first began in the heavenly place that the angel took from. He takes this and he enters behind the veil, and he's got a rope tied to his ankle in case he dies or messes up and he's killed because no one can come back here. And he places that incense, fire, coals onto the mercy seats. That is where heaven touched earth and righteousness kissed mercy. That is the intercession of Jesus on this ark. He would sprinkle this ark in the front and in the back seven times with the blood from the sacrifice. So in our hearts, how that looks for us is that we prepare to come into this holy place, to the throne of God, and we sprinkle with the blood of the Lamb our conscience, the places where we're not sure, we get to apply the blood of the sacrifice to us. Every single believer in Christ is a chosen royal son and daughter of the Most High God, chosen into the priesthood that Jesus started for us to make intercession on behalf of those that God has given to us. So I just want to take a moment and I want you to think about who has God given to you? What are the areas in your life that have been entrusted to you? Because that is the area that we need to come into the holy place, which is now our hearts, and stand before the living God in the very presence of heaven to make intercession as a royal priest. So as you're thinking about these things, I just want to tell you the story of Juliana, my middle child. I went to Jerusalem with her, and we were at a taping of Jesus the one and only with Bethmore. And I've told this to some of you, have heard this before. But in this taping of the Bible study, there were hundreds of us out in the lobby, and we would have to wait for them to set up. And my daughter would start to sing and worship. And the entire hundreds of people then were a cappella just worshiping in the lobby. And Bethmore was so taken, this happened every time we had to wait before another session, that she had a night of worship for all of us because she called us the worshiping crowd. So but there was one night in the hotel room where I was awoken like that, and at the door of the hotel, I saw a demon, and he was cloaked, and he was standing at the door like this. And I was tired. And it's not that I see demons all the time, but I see enough that it was like and I went back to sleep. The next thing I know, my daughter is just literally jumping on top of me and crying. And she had been given a dream of intimidation and fear and just don't you worship and all this stuff on her. But what I wanted you to see is what I had been entrusted with, with my 17-year-old daughter, was a protection. And the enemy could not go to her unless he came to and showed himself to me. And I did nothing. It was just like this for her. And so then I had to pray and pray over Juliana. But I say that because we have been entrusted. It's real, it's it's important, it's real. These are real scenarios where life and death, salvation and hell stand in the balance. So the things that you have been entrusted to, every one of us gets to come into our heart before the throne and stand on the intercession that Jesus has already done and is doing forever before the Father and enforce the things that He has given to us, enforce the things that are ours because of what He did. So I just want to call us, because this is the Lord's doing us this, that we would hit the mark. That we would come before the throne and stand in his intercession and hit the mark. So I'd like to just end with us just standing. And I'm going to just make some uh proclamations about who we are. And if you would, I want you to feel your heart right now, even just right now, let's just go into the holy place in our heart. Because I think sometimes there's confusion about how it all works. But let me tell you, the Lord from Ancient of Days set it up this way. And if you are a believer in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit dwells in you, you are a chosen royal priest. And it is not only that you are, but it is our responsibility. It rests on our shoulders. Those poles were carried. These articles in this place are carried on our shoulders. It is our responsibility to take this up. So I want you to stand and I want you to repeat after me. And this is what we're gonna go through. We're gonna first say, I am a daughter of God or a son of the most high living God. I am a daughter of the most high living God. Now we're gonna talk about that. We are royal, we're royalty because of that first statement. So I am a royal daughter of the most high God, the King of Kings Jesus, he's my Papa husband, brother. Okay, and then the last thing is I am a chosen race. I am a royal priest. I am a chosen race, I am a royal priest, and I get to enter into the Holy of Holies with my Heavenly Father to bring forth the prayers, the praise, the fellowship, the communion, the enforcement, all of it in this place. Amen. Amen.