Explaining Intercession [antikvár]

What Intercession Really IsWhen asked about intercession many believers would say that it is prayer. But if that were the case it is strange that the word "intercession" is mentioned separately from the word "prayer". An example is found in 1 Timothy 2 where Paul mentions "supplications, prayers, intercessions and giving of thanks" as four different disciplines of the exercise of prayer. This gives us reason to believe that there therefore is a difference between prayer and intercession. However, let us try first of all to define what "intercession" really is.The English word "intercession" might actually in itself give us a good idea about the meaning of intercession. The word means "to go in between". It describes how someone deliberately goes in between two parties to intervene in a situation of conflict and to try to keep the parties apart from one another. Also, it is interesting to notice how the word "prayer" is not directly implied in the word "intercession", from which we might also conclude that this is something different and implies more than ordinary prayer.First of all, intercession is a position we take before God in a particular situation and for a specific cause, and not just something we can do for a couple of hours at a certain time. When people say that they were at the church to do intercession for two hours on Wednesday evening, they are in fact meaning that they were at the church and prayed for a couple of hours. Intercession cannot be practised for a couple of hours. It is an ongoing commitment to remain in a position before God until the case has been solved. Intercession is in other words a twenty-four hour position, which means that the intercessor is before God in a very conscious way constantly, even if he is not able to actually pray for more than a small part of the time.The power of such a position before God is very great. An example is Martin Luther. A few years ago, when my wife and Inil'I'I'i