David's Daily Diversions

The Fullness of Intercessory Prayer

If I ring just about any television ministry, prayer partners are standing by. They will write down my need, pray with me on the phone, and put my need in with all the others from that day and someone will pray over it again. Yes, prayer is available for the price of a long-distance phone call.

Do I know anything about the person praying for me? No. Do I know where they stand with God? No. Do I know that they will actually pray for me? No.

In addition to 1/3 of the OT, one of the things I was deprived of as a Protestant was the fullness of intercessory prayer. Growing up, we talked a lot about intercessory prayer. We had prayer chains and all night prayer meetings. We had no trouble asking for the Church Militant to pray for us. Unfortunately, the gap between the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant was insurmountable.

I never knew what saints in heaven were doing. If you ask most Protestants, they don't either. They know that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, but most discussion of heaven ends up as, "When I see Jesus, I have things I want to ask Him," or "I can't wait to see my mansion!" Heaven is like a giant playground where everyone has an eternal day off. Where did this idea come from?

They are so busy trying to interpret what St John saw in his revelation that they can't just pay attention to what he actually saw. They don't see the Church at prayer in a combination of adoration and intercession. Or if they see any of that, they see the adoration part like some sort of heavenly praise band (visions of Phil Keaggy's "What a Day") -- as if the saints are totally oblivious to what is going on with the Church on earth and really couldn't care less. We don't think of the great cloud of witnesses actually witnessing anything.

As a Protestant I was told that the invocation of saints in heaven is incompatable with the sole mediation of Christ, or if anything, second best. Why ask for the saints to pray for us when we can just pray directly to Jesus? Why would we ask anyone to pray for us? If that were the case, then why would St Paul instruct us that "all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men" in I Tim 2:1 if in verse 5 he is going to remind us that "there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus"? Somehow there is an assumption that if someone is on earth, they are interceding, but if they are in heaven they are mediating.

This is an assumption not made by St Paul, nor is it held by the Fathers. St Basil, St Gregory the Theologian, St Gregory of Nyssa, and St John Chrysostom are a few that I found quite comfortable with the intercession of the saints in heaven. I'm sure they are quite comfortable interceding now.

I think it is quite important for those of us on earth to pray for each other. But if there is power in prayer by the Church Militant, how much more power is there when it joins with the Church Triumphant? Prayer reports and newletters are all good, but if you want intercessors for America, how about St Innocent of Alaska, St John of Shanghai and San Francisco, or St Raphael of Brooklyn?

As our needs and crises arise, I have been known to send out an e-mail or make a phone call, though never to an anonymous voice at a teleministry. However, e-mail and the telephone are not my sole resource. I look over at our icon shelf and I'm reminded that prayer partners are standing by.