“When Ethelred, the Saxon king of Northumberland, invaded Wales, and was about to give battle to the Britons, he observed near the enemy a host of unarmed men. He inquired who they were, and what they were doing. He was told that they were monks of Bangor, praying for the success of their countrymen. "Then,' said the heathen prince, 'they have begun the fight against us; attack them first.’” -Austin Phelps

For many Christians there is a strong association between prayer and engaging in a kind of spiritual battle. Have you ever heard the term ‘prayer warrior’ before? Perhaps you know someone who you might consider a ‘prayer warrior’, someone who you know actively prays and someone you would call if you had a specific prayer need. In some churches people like this are sometimes called ‘the intercessors’.

Where do we get these terms and what do they mean? How is intercessory prayer different from other forms of prayer? This is the topic I hope to explore in this blog post.

Recently I’ve been reading a book called Spiritual Rhythm by Mark Buchanan, where his looks at the four seasons of nature through a spiritual lens and how we experience different spiritual seasons in our spiritual journey. The season that really caught my attention was the season of winter; one of the main reasons is that having just come through the COVID pandemic experience, life has in many ways felt like an extended season of winter. The theme of this post is ‘abiding in Christ’, which is a phrase that largely comes out of John 15 and Jesus’ teaching that we must ‘abide’ or ‘remain’ in Him in order to flourish and grow and for our lives to produce the kind of spiritual fruit that God desires for us (Jn. 15:8). What I want to write about here is about what the spiritual season of winter teaches us about prayer and particularly how prayer is one of the primary ways in which we ‘abide Christ’.

“One of the unique prayer expressions that we do here at House of Prayer Edmonton is what we call ‘devotional prayer’. Each week we choose a specific passage of Scripture and we spend time together each day praying over that portion of the Bible. It is amazing to experience how God speaks through His Word during those times of group prayer. I remember one week when we were looking at Joshua 24…”

In my life I regularly have experiences of thinking of someone and sensing a call to pray for them. This can happen at any time during the day or when I am walking, hiking or biking. At times I wake up during the night and He brings someone to mind and I sense a call to pray for them.

Given the numerous examples of prayer in scripture and the scriptural calls to engage in prayer, it seems important to look at what relationship prayer has to holding an Eternal Perspective. The inspiration for “An Eternal Perspective: Living in Time, Preparing for Eternity” was my awareness that everything we do in time has ripples in eternity. Prayer is one of those things.

“John calls himself “the friend of the bridegroom” in context to Jesus’ ministry increasing and thus his ministry is dissolving and about to become nothing; it is here that John’s joy is greatest. To be a friend of the bridegroom is to rejoice when Jesus may use other people more than ourselves, and yes even prefer it when Jesus choses to exalt others higher than ourselves.”

One of the great truths about prayer is that God actually desires to partner with us through prayer. There are many ways in which God wants to move within the lives of people in the world and He invites us to join Him in seeing those things happen through the activity of prayer.

How do we pray when we are in the midst of really hard and difficult times? How do we stay motivated to bother trying to pray when we feel depressed or sad and it seems that maybe God has forgotten us or has stopped “taking our calls”?