God Seeks Intercessors

And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none. EZEKIEL 22:30

Murray’s teaching on prayer did not end in the inner chamber. It went out from there to the whole world. He believed that the highest form of prayer is intercession — prayer for others — and that the church’s missionary task depended on it more than on money, organisation or even workers. The Ministry of Intercession ends with two chapters that gather this conviction together: God Seeks Intercessors and The Coming Revival. They are the natural end of this book too.

The magnitudes

God Seeks Intercessors opens with an image from astronomy. A person who looks at the night sky without any sense of the size and distance of the stars cannot understand what he is seeing. So, Murray says, it is with intercession: everything depends on a right sense of the magnitudes.

He named three. There is a world, with needs beyond counting, waiting to be helped by intercession. There is a God in heaven, with an all-sufficient supply for every need, waiting to be asked. And there is a church, with its high calling and sure promises, waiting to be roused to its responsibility. Between the world’s need and God’s supply stands the intercessor.

I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night: ye that make mention of the LORD, keep not silence, … and give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. ISAIAH 62:6–7

Pray the Lord of the harvest

In With Christ in the School of Prayer there is a lesson titled Prayer Provides Labourers. Murray noticed that Jesus rarely told His disciples what to pray for, leaving that to their sense of need and the Spirit’s leading. But here He gave them one specific request.

Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest. MATTHEW 9:37–38

Why should the disciples pray for this, Murray asks, when the Lord of the harvest already sees the need, and Christ could pray Himself? His answer is that Jesus spoke the deepest truth: He really believed their prayer was needed and would help. Prayer is not a form. It is one of the means God has appointed for the ingathering of the harvest and the coming of His kingdom.

This conviction shaped Murray’s whole ministry. He pressed his church to become a missionary church, founded a training institute for mission workers at Wellington, and helped establish missionary societies. He later wrote a book specifically on the subject, The Key to the Missionary Problem, arguing that the root of the church’s missionary weakness was spiritual, and its cure was prayer.

The marks of an intercessor

In the chapter Because of His Importunity, on the parable of the friend at midnight, Murray drew out what makes a Christian an intercessor. He listed them in one sentence: “A sense of the need of souls; a Christlike love in the heart; a consciousness of personal impotence; faith in the power of prayer; courage to persevere in spite of refusal; and the assurance of an abundant reward.”

Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him? LUKE 11:5–6

Notice the third mark: a consciousness of personal impotence. The man in the parable had nothing to set before his guest. That is the intercessor’s starting point. We cannot save anyone, heal anyone, or send anyone. We can only go to the One who can, and keep knocking.

Anyone can do it

Murray was convinced that intercession was not a special calling for a few, but the privilege of every believer. There are tens of thousands, he wrote, who work with little prayer, and as many more who do not work because they do not know how, who might be won to swell the host of intercessors. The bedridden, the elderly, the unnoticed — all can take their place in this ministry.

And he added a word that every believer should test: “Nothing will so test and stimulate the Christian life as the honest attempt to be an intercessor.” It is easy to talk about prayer. It is humbling to try to pray daily, by name, for people and nations, and to persevere. The attempt reveals how little love and faith we have, and drives us back to Christ for more.

I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men. 1 TIMOTHY 2:1

The Intercessor behind the intercessors

All of this rests on Christ. The One who ever lives to make intercession is the pattern and the power of every intercessor. In the preface to With Christ in the School of Prayer Murray wrote that the believer, abiding in Christ, is taken up into His priestly work, and that it is in intercession that the church is to find and wield its highest power.

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. 1 PETER 2:9

Where care is needed

Murray sometimes wrote as though God were held back from acting until His people prayed enough, and his missionary appeals used vast numbers to press the urgency. Both need a steadying hand. God is not a prisoner of our prayerlessness. He is sovereign, and He works in ways we do not see. What Scripture teaches is that He has chosen to work through the prayers of His people, and that He invites us into His purposes. That is a privilege, not a burden laid on us to carry the world’s salvation. The intercessor prays because God has asked him to and because love compels him, not because the fate of millions rests on the length of his prayer.

It should also be said that Murray’s missionary vision grew up in a colonial age, and some of its language reflects that. The heart of it does not. Christ’s compassion for the multitudes, and His command to pray for labourers, belong to every age and every people.

For the love of Christ constraineth us. 2 CORINTHIANS 5:14

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Consider Murray’s three magnitudes — the world’s need, God’s supply, the church’s calling. Which have you underestimated?

2. Obey Matthew 9:38 this week: pray by name for a people, place or mission that needs labourers.

3. Choose three people who do not know Christ and pray for them daily for a month.

4. Measure yourself against Murray’s six marks of an intercessor. Ask God for the one most lacking.

5. If you are housebound, elderly or unnoticed, take up intercession as your ministry. It is one of the greatest there is.

A PRAYER

Lord of the harvest, the harvest is plenteous and the labourers are few. Send forth labourers into Your harvest.

You sought for someone to stand in the gap. Make me one, though I have nothing to set before those in need.

Give me a sense of the need of souls, a Christlike love, faith in prayer, and courage to persevere.

And let my small prayers be joined to the intercession of Your Son, who ever lives to pray for us. Amen.