Intercession With Jon Tyson Praying in Color Podcast by 24-7 Prayer USA

Francis Schaeffer wrote a book, um, towards the end of his life. He was a statesman, a thinker from another generation, and in this book, he put a warning out to the Evangelical Church. In it, he warned against the two great evils that would corrupt the church of its mission, and he called them personal peace and affluence. He said, “When a person’s life vision is reduced to, ‘Am I good and do I have enough for my people?’ and that is the end of the boundary of their concern, the church’s mission is doomed. He sort of saw where society was headed, what technology would do to us to sort of fracture us, atomize us, and make it you know, sort of about the sovereignty of self. The ways that, um, consumerism and overconsumption have forced us into consumptive units, where everything is Marketed to us like the world is about us, the personalization of media streams where everything is built on our preferences, our filters, and our wants. It’s sort of produced a blizzard of cultural selfishness, all telling us that we are functionally the most important people in the world. As a result of that, it’s very, very hard to move beyond your own concerns. Um If I were to say to the typical Christian, “Tell me your life vision,” I could probably take a shot that it goes something like this: I want to have emotionally well-adjusted kids. I want to make enough money to pay my bills and hopefully go on one Instagram-worthy vacation at least once a year. I want to maybe get married and have a good marriage. When I retire, I want to have enough to be able to sort of live well. The thing is that there’s nothing wrong with those things; they’re not ungodly things. It’s just that any pagan walking down this street who doesn’t know Jesus or care about the Kingdom of God wants the exact same things. Yeah, those are from the narrative of the American dream, more than the narrative of Jesus. Nazareth, we are running after the same things as the pagans, which is Jesus’ great warning in the Sermon on the Mount.

Our vision never gets beyond our own lives and intercession is always an invitation to move with Jesus to his heart, which yes, extends for you but certainly extends beyond you.

You can be sitting at a park one day and notice a group of kids playing basketball and just say, “Why doesn’t someone do something about that?” and maybe the Lord says to you, “Do something about it.” Um, you can have a burden for a particular issue, a justice issue in your city, and you are thinking, “Why doesn’t someone care?” and God’s like, “I’m about to make you care.” And so we’ve got to, number one, realize how small our vision has gotten, and then number two, ask God to expand my heart to match your heart, enlarge my area of concern to match the area of concern you’ve got for me living on mission with you. Vision is always a really important place to fight back on the reduction of vision of personal peace and affluence.

Praying bold prayers of intercession comes with disappointment, yeah, and your heart will be broken, and that’s the other side of the mystery element that we were acknowledging. You will find yourself asking “Why, God?” questions more frequently. You’ll also find your eyes widening and wondering more frequently, but I think that so often there’s a temptation for disappointment to make me withdraw from God, so I stop interceding because I was disappointed by the result of my huge. I think that’s huge, instead of allowing disappointment to connect me. More to the heart of Jesus, Jesus who wept over Jerusalem, saying, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if only you would have… then I would have gathered you up.” That Jesus is not unacquainted with the pain of intercession, and so we have to let our pain join us to Christ’s pain,

Do you see that widow with the mite dropping in? She’s given more than anyone else.” But none of them saw it. Do you see this woman? She’s washing my feet, and you gave me nothing to wash my feet with. Do you, uh, do you see that man beating his breast? He’s the one who’s walking away righteous, not you who can’t see your need for my grace. And so I think to assume that you are moving through practices that are giving you a sophistication bias, or this is a very subtle form of phariseeism that can creep in, and intercession is a cure to those conditions.

You’re not in charge of God; God does what He wants, and He will often drag you out into deep water where you can’t get your heart back. You can’t; you are not in charge of the encounter, and if you get a genuine burden for others, it will disrupt your life. You know, I talk about how you will get an irreparably broken heart that refuses to be consoled, and that is a great burden. It’s very disruptive; you don’t choose it

So, yeah, a lot of times we use prayer as a practice, as kind of self-care, rather than as entering into the terror of the heart of God for others. And, um, so, yeah, there it is very humbling to stand before the Almighty without a guarantee of outcome

And because so much of our life vision has been reduced, in many ways, to the American dream, um, what we’re really asking for is exactly like those who do not. It’s just like a pleasure-based prayer; it’s not an other centered prayer, it’s not a kingdom advancing prayer. It is an increase of the quality of my life and a minimizing of suffering. Offering prayer, and a lot of times God, in His kindness, doesn’t answer that because they’re not the things that form us. So what we need to be praying then, uh, is praying the will of God. And this, to me, the heart of intercessory prayer, is Covenant prayer. This is praying according to what God has revealed about Himself