Intercessory prayer is the privilege of partnering with God to strengthen others for His Kingdom work. Prayer requests are only the beginning of that partnership.

Lots of prayer requests flood my Facebook page every day. That’s a good thing. I love praying for other people!

My friend, Bev, repeats often that it is a privilege to pray for God’s Saints. I agree. We get to walk right up to the Throne of Grace and intercede for our brothers and sisters in Christ. It really is an extension of God’s grace to pray for each other. You can’t pray effectively for someone else if you hold ill will in your heart toward them. Intercessory prayer shows the strength of my compassion for others as I bring their needs to the One who can be part of the solution.

Recently, words failed me when I heard of a friend’s need. This dear friend, as close as a sister in the flesh, lost two blood relatives in one day. I felt so bad for her. What could I possibly to do to help bear the burden? A card? In the mailbox, but it seemed like such a small effort. A meal? I live 15 miles away and I can’t drive. What else?

There’s always prayer.

How could I pray for my friend?

The typical prayer points came to mind:

• Comfort
• Peace
• Strength
• Family harmony as they worked through funeral arrangements
• Reminders of the hope they have in Heaven

I still wasn’t satisfied. In desperation, I cried out to the Lord, “Show me how I can help my friend!”

Most likely, He was waiting for me to ask.

I’ve heard it said that our prayers are often self-focused, filled with expectations of what we want God to do for us. That’s not such a bad thing. At least, we are admitting that we cannot handle life on our own and we want God to come on board with us. Asking for His help admits we are willing to relinquish the driver’s seat to Him.

Intercessory prayer goes a step further.

By praying for someone else, we’re getting out of our own bubble and acknowledging that others face life issues too. We’re inviting God to work in the middle of their messes and reveal His glory so bystanders might see the glory and presence of our Lord.

Show me how I can help or, to tighten the phrase, Use me, elevates intercessory prayer to yet a higher level. It’s telling God that I’m willing to set aside my day’s agenda to become the hands and feet of Jesus. Instead of standing at arms’ length, I’m willing to step in close and see the details of someone’s need. I partner with God when I make myself available to be part of His solution to someone else’s prayer. I’m yielding my agenda and my ideas to let Him choose how I can best help.

Go ahead. Dare to pray it.

“God, show me how I can help.”

When you do pray that prayer, be willing to respond to those Holy Spirit nudges. The Lord might ask you to do something you feel ill equipped to do, something out of your comfort zone. That’s okay. Step out in faith and do it. When you extend yourself into the difficult and impossible, you’ll know from the results that God was in that moment.

What if I don’t get any ideas?

Maybe the Lord is telling you, He’s got it covered. This time, He doesn’t need you. Relinquish the need to Him and move on to the task for the day to which He has called you. As much compassion as I felt for my friend, there really was nothing I could do. Yet God redirected me to help someone else in our congregation that week, someone who had no family to care for her. For the next few days, we became family to her. We became the answer to her cry to the Lord.

What if I don’t know the person?

That’s the frustration I feel over Facebook requests. I don’t even know these people! Is my intercessory prayer for strangers enough?

I’ve heard our ability to help described in this way. When we hear of a crisis situation, we belong either in a sphere of influence or a sphere of concern. I may be able to help directly if I know the people involved. What if I am only in the sphere of concern? What if the prayer request comes from someone on Facebook half a continent away? Can I do anymore more than pray?

Who is making the request? How well do you know that person? Do they, in turn, know the people involved? If so, how can you help your friend who is closer to the situation and who does live within the sphere of influence? Your ministry may be to the helper, not the one in crisis.
As a minister’s wife, I am often at the front lines of ministering to crisis needs up close and personal. Believe me, it means so much to have the encouragement and prayers of church members. We’ve had times where church members, knowing our schedules were extra heavy with frontline work, have brought us meals, babysat our children, and taken me to the store or doctor’s appointments when Jack has had to be out of town for hours on end. Helping the helper is as crucial as actually doing the work yourself.

If there is still no strong connection, pray once and let it go. Ask once again, Lord, where do You need to use me today?

Making myself available to God takes the focus off me. Instead of demanding God fill my requests my way or planning out what I can do to help someone, praying the prayer, “Use me” shows I’m willing to buy into God’s plan. Instead of approaching prayer with, “Here’s what You can do for me,” it focuses on, “Lord, what can I do for You? How can I serve You?”

Servant hearted intercessory prayer is, after all, the best kind of God’s Grace on Parade.

 

Who has God put on your spiritual radar today?

Would you describe Jesus as beautiful?

I lead music at my small church once a month. Each month, I select a theme and choose a set of songs to fit my theme. For this month, the thought of Jesus as beautiful came to me and my mind immediately flooded with possibilities. Wow! There were so many choices.

• Fairest Lord Jesus
• Beautiful One
• O Lord, You’re Beautiful
• More Precious than Silver
• I Stand in Awe (You Are Beautiful Beyond Description)
• I’d Rather Have Jesus (look at the third verse)
• Beautiful
• How Beautiful
• Isn’t He
• Let The Beauty of Jesus
• How Beautiful

Can you add to my list?

My next step was to plan a Scripture reading to coincide with my song selections. Yet, surprise to me, a word search on the words beauty or beautiful came up empty. Well, except this prophecy from Isaiah:

“He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” – Isaiah 53:2

Why do so many hymns, choruses, and contemporary songs describe Jesus as beautiful?

What is beautiful anyway?

When I say the word, beautiful, what comes to your mind?

• A sunset
• A robin redbreast in flight
• A rose in bloom
• A bride on her wedding day (there is no such thing as an ugly bride)
• The face of a newborn (especially when it’s your grandchild!)
• A waterfall

What is it about these things that we would call them beautiful?

Webster’s dictionary defines beautiful as having qualities of beauty. That’s not helpful. I get annoyed at dictionaries when they play with my brain like that.

The next definition is:

having aesthetic pleasure.

Guess what aesthetic means? Relating to the beautiful. Not helpful!

Let’s try the word beauty:

. . . qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses.

Reading further, I find this:

a particularly graceful, ornamental, or excellent quality

Now we’re getting somewhere.

My walking talking encyclopedia preacher creature husband defined beauty as:

The harmonious blending of all components that leads to a pleasing whole.

And, to Webster’s credit, the second definition of beautiful is:

Generally pleasing.

Jesus. What makes Jesus beautiful?

According to that verse from Isaiah, he was nothing much to look at on the outside. It’s what He did, it’s what He represents that arouses our pleasure and our desire to be in relationship with Him. Jesus offers that harmonious blending of everything good and right and righteous and satisfying and pleasing. He satisfies my life longings like no one or no thing can do.

My enjoyment of a sunset or rose is temporary; both will fade. Brides wake up with bad hair days. Babies are born with squashed red faces, have poopy diapers, and grow into emotion-ridden preteens. As much as I love the waterfalls of Niagara, Bear Canyon, and Hocking Hills, there comes a time I have to leave them behind and return to things less pleasurable.

Jesus is permanent and perfect.

And yes, there is a Bible passage that describes the beauty of Jesus.

“The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. – Colossians 1:15-20

The Creator of all things is the source of beauty. We find beauty in Him because He is permanent, powerful, and perfect. God finds pleasure in Jesus, and through Jesus, all things in heaven and earth are reconciled into a harmonious blending that is pleasing to God and to us.

Did you catch the word peace in that Scripture passage? I would describe most beautiful things as peaceful. It is what Jesus did to bring peace that makes Him the most pleasing to us. He sacrificed His life so that we could be brought back into the presence of God.

Beautiful just like Him

The words of one song on my list haunt me:

Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me,
All His wonderful passion and purity;
O my Savior divine, All my being refine,
Till the beauty of Jesus be seen in me.

My life is to serve as a picture frame, as a snapshot of the beauty of Jesus. I need to reflect His beauty, not in a way that yields praise for my own efforts but that will draw others to Christ.

If you saw a framed art of Niagara Falls, the artist would be dismayed if you said, “Oh what a pretty frame.” They would get an ego boost if you gushed over the artistic techniques in the pictures. But the best, most satisfying praise of all would be if you said, “Look at that beautiful waterfall. I wish I could go see it in person.” Then they would know they had capture the beauty of the scene.

That’s what my life needs to do—capture the beauty of Jesus and make others want to meet Him in person.

How do I do that? That’s what I’m learning to do, day by day.

What ways have you found to portray the beauty of Jesus?

Riding in a turboprop doesn’t sound like my idea of an adventure. I’m the girl who doesn’t do roller coasters or carnival rides. I carry motion sickness pills whenever I fly. A turboprop sounds like a practical acronym for intentional tummy eruptions.

When I made reservations to fly a commuter airline from Burlington, Iowa to St. Louis, Missouri, I didn’t stop to think about what kind of plane I would take. I was just trying to honor my husband’s request to keep the price of my flight to see my mother under $350.

Moreover, I wasn’t able to reserve a calm, cloudless day for my travels. We awoke to cloudy skies and a line of thunderstorms draped across the mid-section of the country, heading straight toward my line of flight.

When we arrived at the airport at 6:30 in the morning, my trusty, dusty air-chariot graced the tarmac. “You get to ride a Turboprop,” my husband commented.

“This should be fun,” I smirked. Not. The last time I rode a turboprop, we intersected a massive cold front between New York and Ohio. Let’s just say I was too scared to be sick.

I was in for more surprises.

This turboprop had only eight seats. The moment I stepped up to the ticket counter, the clerk instructed me to step on a scale. The gate attendant calibrated our seat assignment to our body weight so the plane would stay balanced. That did a number on my nerves.

We boarded the plane. Yes, eight seats. One cabin. No captain’s cabin. No flight attendant. No package of peanuts. The captain turned to us, gave us the typical safety instructions, and then added. “It’s not bad here, but it may get bumpier the closer we get to St. Louis.”

As we taxied down the runway, I wondered what his definition of “not bad” was. We hadn’t even left the ground before the little plane started to shimmy and shake. As it disconnected from the ground, the plane dipped to one side. My mind accelerated into worry mode. Had we cleared enough ground so the wing wouldn’t crunch on the runway? I forgot to take my motion sickness pill. I don’t like unexpected tips and turns. What have I gotten myself into?

I started to sing.

Engine noise was so loud, no one could hear me. Not wanting others to see my mouth move, I turned my face to the window where I saw nothing but a sea of white. White-out conditions from a snowstorm could not have been any worse. And pilots relied on instruments to get them through the murky skies? My fiction-driven imagination ignited. What if another plane or a big buzzard suddenly materialized right in front of the front window? We’d have one second to say, “Oh my . . .” Crash!

I kept singing. I repeated memory verses. Funny how all the songs and verses I chose to sing had to do with trust. “You Are My Hiding Place.” “Unto Thee O Lord.” “Trust and Obey.” Psalm 143:8. I changed my repertoire. Best to sing a praise song. If the Israelites could praise God while going into battle, so could I. So I started to sing, “How Great Thou Art.”

Right before I reached the line, “I hear the rolling thunder,” a bright flash filled my peripheral vision. I stopped singing after the word rolling. That was lightning. We were in the midst of a thunderstorm. As if in response to my new found awareness, the plane listed to the side.

At that moment God got my attention with these thoughts:

• He created the thunder and the forerunning lightning.
• He made the wind. If he could create the wind and rain, he could maintain and control it too.
• Even though I or the pilots could see nothing through the fog of darkening clouds, God could. God’s radar was far more accurate than any on-board instrument panel. God could see what was out there and He could move it out of the way.
• If He chose not to, then that was His plan for my life or end of it.
• If He chose this moment to be my final one on earth, He could do amazing things with the events of my death that would bring Him glory and honor.

The words spoken by a fellow passenger, an older woman named Carol, in the waiting room at the Burlington airport, replayed in my brain as if summarizing my meandering thoughts: “I’m not concerned. God knows when it’s my time to go.”

Did I believe it or not?

Did I claim faith in Christ or didn’t I? My brain leap-frogged to the next logical conclusion. If God is in control, if God knows what is out there and is steering this little plane around the obstacles, and if I can’t do anything about the situation, I might as well sit back and enjoy the adventure.

So I did. And I lived to tell the rest of you about it.

Scary bumpy rides in turboprops during a thunderstorm aren’t so bad when you know and trust the One at the controls.

Tell us about a time you learned to enjoy the adventure.

What were your favorite Mother’s Day gifts?

My family spoiled me with their Mother’s Day gifts this year. Daughter Katherine made a beautiful plaque that we’ve already hung in our breezeway. Daughter Christine bought my favorite pastry from a specialty bread store and treated us to Mexican food for Mother’s Day lunch. And Katherine’s boyfriend potted some beautiful lilies in a very nice pot. My boyfriend forever (aka, Jack) surprised me with a lovely ruby heart necklace. You should have seen the huge bag he touted into the Mexican Restaurant. I had to go through several bags and boxes to get to the tiny jewelry case!

We all convened in Quincy, Illinois the Saturday before for a picnic lunch of Hyvee friend chicken, fruit salad, potato salad, rolls (from the same specialty bakery), and deviled eggs. It was the first time each of us contributed to the meal. Hooray! I didn’t have to cook it all. I’ve been waiting for the day my adult daughters can share in the cooking.

As wonderful as the Mother’s Day gifts and gatherings were, these weren’t my favorite part of Mother’s Day. I told someone at church I didn’t care what we did. We could have gone to McDonald’s for all I cared. All I wanted was my family.

“Family and God,” he answered.

Well, yeah. Yeah, God is definitely part of the equation. Part and parcel, in fact. That’s what makes being with my family so special. I get a front row seat to watch what God is currently doing in their lives.

In fact, seeing how God is at work in my children’s lives and knowing I had a hand in where they are today were the best Mother’s Day gifts of all.

Christine, my about-to-be-fourth-short-term-missions-trip girl, shared her plans to go to Poland and Germany during our church’s worship service. Katherine told us how she and boyfriend Kevin want to plan a game night at a local nursing home.

Have you ever heard the story of the woman who felt called by God to go on the foreign mission field but instead married and had four children? She felt she had let God down until someone pointed out that all four of her children were on the mission field. She had multiplied her effectiveness by raising four missionaries.

Christine calls that kind of mom a mobilizer.

When God calls you to serve in world evangelism, Christine says, He may be calling you to one of five categories. A go-er, the one who actually relocates to a foreign mission field, can’t do the job without the other four. That includes senders, pray-ers, mobilizers, and the welcomers. The moms and dads who instill a Christian world view and kingdom need into their children are doing exactly what 2 Timothy 2:2 tells us to do: teach them so they can teach others.

“And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.”

Some parents feel it’s the church’s responsibility to teach kids about Jesus. Others want to allow their children to make their own decision about faith and religion. Still others feel satisfied and fulfilled if their child accepts Christ as Savior, the younger the age, the better.

But I’ve come to realize none of that is enough. Our job as parents is to disciple our children well enough that they become what is known as a global Christian, one who cares what happens eternally to the rest of the world.

Jesus had only three years to impart His program to a group of twelve men. Parents have eighteen years to plant and cultivate the seed of the gospel in our children’s lives, to go far beyond just a life-time commitment to Christ. Through countless mealtimes, car rides and weekend discussions over game boards, parents have a captive audience to whom we can share our passion and compassion for those who need Jesus in their lives.

That mom who thought she’d failed God? She’s singing my song. I am so grateful I have two daughters who care deeply about whether the people around them know who Jesus Christ is and where they stand in their relationship with him. God showed me that he had used me and their dad to bring forth two more people to work in His harvest fields. I can’t take all the credit, in fact, I won’t take any credit because I know there are all too many faithful Christian parents and even Christian worker parents whose children rebel against faith in Christ. I’m blessed and I don’t deserve it.

Instead, it’s a call to me to continue the discipleship and encouragement of my daughters into their adult years and throughout their lives. It’s a call to invest my life in any children who come across my path, whether children of the church or my own future grandchildren. It’s a call to not stop with a child’s conversion. There is so much more work to be done!

The Great Commission in Matthew 28:18-20 tells us we are to baptize AND teach converts all that Jesus has commanded. My goal as a parent should be two-fold: to win my child to Christ AND to teach them ALL that Christ has commanded, including his mandate to teach others and to be his witnesses.

Observing my daughters’ passion for righteous living and compassion for those who don’t know Jesus—those are the best Mother’s Day gifts of all.