Ask · Prayer

What is intercession?

The short answer

Intercession is praying on behalf of other people, standing between them and God with their needs when they cannot, or do not, pray for themselves. Paul urges that requests be made for everyone, including rulers. Above every human intercessor stand two greater ones: Christ, who intercedes for his people in heaven, and the Spirit, who intercedes within our own prayers.

The fuller answer

Intercession is the part of prayer that faces outward. Instead of bringing your own needs to God, you bring someone else's: their illness, their unbelief, their danger, their grief. The word itself carries the picture of stepping between. An intercessor stands in the gap between a person and God and pleads that person's case, sometimes for people who are praying for themselves too, and sometimes, most movingly, for people who would never pray and do not know anyone is standing there.

God once described the gap himself, in a bleak passage in Ezekiel. He said he searched for someone who would build up the wall and stand in the gap on behalf of the land, so that he would not have to destroy it, and he found no one. The image stuck in the church's imagination because it names both the honour and the weight of this work. Intercession is not decorative. In God's own telling, a person standing in prayer for a place or a people is a real part of how he deals with them.

The New Testament then shows intercession perfected. Paul says Christ Jesus, who died and was raised and is at God's right hand, is interceding for us, which means your Saviour's work of praying for you did not end at the cross and has not paused since. And Job's story ends with intercession on earth: God restored Job's fortunes when Job prayed for the very friends who had wounded him with bad theology. Praying for people who have hurt you is not an advanced extra. It is in the pattern.

Practically, intercession grows best with a list and a habit. Keep names: family, neighbours, your church's sick, your town, its leaders, people in hard places in the world. Pray for a few each day, specifically, and keep going after the first keen week fades. Tell people when you are praying for them, and ask them what to pray. And when you run out of words for someone, remember you are not the only intercessor in the room. The Spirit himself is already praying, better than you can.

Sources

• Berean Standard Bible (BSB)

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