The prayers and supplications that Christ offered up were, joined with strong cries and tears, herein setting us example not only to pray, but to be fervent and importunate in prayer. How many dry prayers, how few wet ones, do we offer up to God!
Intercession
Katherine Walden
We sometimes make our prayer closets storm shelters, refusing to step out in obedience when God calls us to co-labour with him – in essence becoming the answer to our own prayer. There’s no use praying for strategy and insight if you are not willing to act upon it.
Francis Frangipane
Stay with your prayer. Don’t back down. Even if you are hurt or disappointed by those you are praying for, or should you suffer painful delays, stay focused. If you maintain your faithfulness even though you are wounded, you will gain spiritual currency. Indeed, the steadfast prayer of the wounded intercessor holds great sway upon the heart of God.
James Goll
True Intercessors who fall to their knees in a time of crisis are anchored on the One who holds the universe in His hands.
Ed Silvoso
When I became aware of the immensity of God’s love for this world and I compared it to how little I cared for my nation, much less for other nations, I cried out to God in desperation to give me a new heart. He heard me, and I underwent heart surgery at the hands of the great physician, who implanted in my heart compassion for the nations.
Taken from: “Ekklesia: Rediscovering God’s Instrument for Global Transformation”
Corrie Ten Boom
I prayed to dispel my fear, until suddenly, and I do not know how the idea came to me, I began to pray for others. I prayed for everyone who came into my thoughts – – people with whom I had traveled, those who had been in prison with me, my school friends of years ago. I do not know how long I continued my prayer, but this I do know – – my fear was gone! Interceding for others had released me!
Dallas Willard
Individually the disciple and friend of Jesus who has learned to work shoulder to shoulder with his or her Lord stands in this world as a point of contact between heaven and earth, a kind of Jacob’s ladder by which the angels of God may ascend from and descend into human life. Thus the disciple stands as an envoy or a receiver by which the kingdom of God is conveyed into every quarter of human affairs.
S. D. Gordon
God’s greatest agency; man’s greatest agency, for defeating the enemy and winning men back is intercession.
Leonard Ravenhill
I believe the place of prayer is not only a place where I lose my burdens, but also a place where I get a burden. He shares my burden and I share His burden. … To know that burden, we must hear the voice of the Spirit. To hear that voice, we must be still and know that He is God.
Kris Vallotton
Referring to Moses’ dialogue with God:
God speaks to us, and we have the opportunity to talk back. Not in rebellion. Not in disobedience. Not in the way we commonly think of “talking back.” God shares His thoughts and desires with His friends. As friends, we get to respond and say, “How about this, God? Can I have some say in this process and decision?” If the Lord says, “No,” it is clearly no. The problem is that we have long assumed that it is always “no.” God may want to expose us to new levels of relationship with Him through a process of communicating back and forth—talking, listening, and then talking back and listening again.