WONDERFUL THING IN THIS PASSAGE – When you’re desperate for God’s help, if you are wise, you ask Him for it and you ask others to pray to Him on your behalf – especially others whose prayers you believe God will answer.
Hebrews 7 identifies your most effective prayer partner: One who already knows your need, who is already standing before the throne of God praying for it, and whose prayers are always answered: The Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
“He is able to save completely those who come to God through him, since he always lives to intercede for them” (Heb. 7: 25).
We tend to think that Jesus completed His work for us on the cross and that He’s now just waiting for us in heaven. We think of Him as preparing heaven for us, not realizing that His main activity now is preparing us for heaven. He works at this in two ways:
- He sends His Spirit into us to lead us and to make us more and more like Him. We “are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18); and
- He intercedes to the Father for us, asking Him to work in our lives in more ways than we can count.
WONDERFUL THING IN OUR LIVES – If you and I could stand at the edges of the throne room and hear what Jesus asks on our behalf, we’d try harder to cooperate with His prayers. We can’t see into heaven like that, but He has shown us how He prays for His followers:
He prays for our faith. – Just as He did with Peter, He anticipates our temptations, understands our weaknesses, and asks the Father to make our faith strong enough to resist or to recover: “Simon, Simon, look out. Satan has asked to sift you like wheat. But I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail” (Luke 22:31-32a).
He’s confident that His prayers for us will be effective. – Notice the very next words in verse 32: “And you, WHEN you have turned back, strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:32b). He never doubted that the Father would answer His prayer and that Peter would turn back. He’s just as confident that God will grant what He’s asking for you and me. That’s because…
He prays for us from the most favored position in heaven. – “Christ Jesus is the one who died, but even more, has been raised; he also is at the right hand of God and intercedes for us” (Rom. 8:34).
But, dear friends, we are not simply passive recipients of these blessings. We have an essential part to play: “Therefore, let us approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need” (Heb. 4:16). Christ has offered His prayers; the Father wants to answer them; but we must “approach the throne of grace…that we may receive.”
[Extra: Read John 17 to hear Jesus pray for our protection (v. 15), holiness (v. 17), unity with each other, intimacy with Him, and effectiveness as His witnesses (v.21). While He’s praying those things in heaven, we can cooperate on earth by resisting the devil, seeking holiness, loving and forgiving one another, drawing near to Him, and acting as His witnesses.]
