Encouragement for Intercessors.

Your greatest success is your relationship with God.

Know that your success as an intercessor is not measured by how many things you averted or how many times you changed God’s mind. Your true success is found in your closeness, proximity, and intimacy with God.

Moses interceded for Israel when God spoke of destroying the nation. He pleaded that God would remember His word and fulfill the promise for which He had brought Israel out of Egypt. Yet Moses himself never entered the Promised Land. Of all the adults who left Egypt, only Joshua and Caleb entered the land.

If Moses had calculated his success as an intercessor solely by how many of his prayers appeared to be answered, he might have considered himself a failure. But his life proves that the stature of an intercessor cannot be measured only by visible outcomes. His closeness to God was itself the great evidence of his success.

Consider Abraham as another example. Abraham interceded for Sodom and Gomorrah, pleading from fifty righteous people all the way down to ten. Abraham’s intercession did not cause God to decide that there must be another reason to preserve the cities. When ten righteous people could not be found, God went ahead and destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.

Even Jesus Christ prayed from the cross, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Yet not long afterward, Jerusalem was destroyed under Titus, and for almost two thousand years Israel was scattered throughout the world.

Let me make the point again: your greatest success as an intercessor is your relationship with God—not how successful your intercession appears to have been.

Exodus 32:11–14 · Deuteronomy 34:4–5 · Numbers 14:29–30 · Genesis 18:22–33 · Luke 23:34

Delay does not mean that God has ignored your prayer.

Sometimes the greatest discouragement intercessors face is how slowly God appears to respond to the things for which we intercede. But when you understand that God begins answering from the moment we utter a word, you begin to see victory in a different light.

There are several things God may begin to do the moment we start interceding. Those actions are themselves a great success, even before the answer to our prayer becomes visible.

Daniel prayed and fasted for twenty-one days without receiving an answer. Then an angel came and explained what had been happening. God had heard Daniel and sent the answer from the very first day, but the prince of Persia had resisted its arrival.

That resistance produced spiritual warfare. Michael entered the conflict against the prince of Persia and came to the assistance of the angel bringing Daniel’s answer. The angel then disclosed that, after the conflict involving the prince of Persia, he would go out to face another prince—the prince of Greece.

Think about that for a moment. From Daniel’s earthly perspective, he had fasted and prayed for twenty-one days without receiving an answer. Yet during those same twenty-one days, his intercession had become connected to warfare affecting kingdoms and nations. Spiritual powers associated with those nations were being confronted and bombarded through spiritual warfare.

What appeared to Daniel to be a delayed personal answer was producing movement in the unseen realm. Nations could experience breakthrough and revival through battles taking place while one intercessor remained faithful in prayer.

What an encouragement this is to intercessors: while you are waiting for the answer you can see, God may already be accomplishing far more than you know.

Daniel 10:2–3 · Daniel 10:12–14 · Daniel 10:20–21

Intercession is a backstage ministry.

One more encouragement intercessors need arises from the fact that the office and ministry of intercession is a backstage—or behind-the-stage—ministry. It is not usually a popular ministry.

Most of the time, intercessors are simply men and women who prayed while God moved. And when God moved, He most often used other people publicly. Intercessors were the people who were satisfied to pray for God to move and then allow God to use someone else to carry out that movement.

That can be difficult when recognition goes to the person through whom the visible work was done. The intercessor must remain content to know that the prayer mattered, even when another person became the public face of the answer.

The greatest consolation we can take from this is that there will be a true and spiritual accounting when we get to heaven. Intercessors will be rewarded mightily for the things they have done, including the things that were never seen, celebrated, or properly attributed to them on earth.

If you can endure without worrying about earthly fame, earthly recognition, or earthly influence, know for certain that God is not unjust to forget the labor of your love.

Hebrews 6:10 · Matthew 6:6 · 1 Corinthians 3:8