This Sunday the 17th I’m beginning a 6-week series of sermons on intercessory prayer. To my chagrin, I realized earlier this summer that during my years at Berkey I’ve never done much with intercessory prayer. I’ve talked often about other types of prayer, but not intercession.
Intercession happens when we pray for someone or something else. (When we pray for ourselves, it’s called petition, or petitionary prayer.) Obviously, intercession is different than thanksgiving, lament, praise and adoration. Each of these voices of prayer has a crucial role in worship and in the life of faith.
Numerous texts in the Bible either are themselves intercessory prayers or tell stories about people who engage in intercession. For this series I’ve selected 6 texts that take different approaches to intercession.
July 17: Genesis 18:16-33
July 24: Numbers 14:1-4, 11-23
July 31: Daniel 10:2-6, 11-14, 18-21
August 7: Ephesians 6:10-18
August 14: Luke 8:1-8 (this one is technically petition)
August 21: Romans 8:18-27
So far I’ve written about half the sermons in this series, and have found that the biblical texts I’m working with are challenging me to rethink a few things about prayer. Maybe they’ll challenge you as well.
