Interceding

Try making a list of all the people you would want to speak on your behalf.  I am going to go ahead and guess that if you are married, most of you wouldn’t want your spouse even doing that.  And you may love your parents, but having them speak for you just doesn’t always work.  Just think about the possible outcome if you have someone else speak for you at an important meeting.  I can think of TV shows and dramas that have others speak on their behalf, and it rarely goes well.

I would even go so far as confess that I worry what my kids will think one day about something I did on their behalf when they were young.  Maybe it’s just because of my history, but it seems like so often I am thinking through the long-term effect on my children for my occasional intercessions.  Recently when I was at home, I questioned my mom about the first piano teacher she chose for me.  He was a great guy, super gifted, but he just kept pushing me along.  Before I knew it I was playing Bach, but really just faking it half of the time because I never practiced.  Of course this has a lot to do with the fact that most of my lack of progress was my own fault, but I still had the audacity to question my mom’s choice of piano teachers.  In that same conversation, my mom defended herself with the fact that I almost got the role of Winthrop in a production of “Music Man.”  I know many of you are thinking, Will, singing?  I did, folks!  Let’s clear that up.  Even through high school I participated in choirs.  My voice got even lower in college, and completely changed how I used to sing.  I remember a college choir teacher saying to my pre-sem director, “He sounds like a great bass.”  I didn’t respond, but thought in my head that I actually was a tenor.  Reality has sunk in, but back to the point.  All this intercession stuff got me to think about how many people I really want to intercede for me.

Truths of the Bible can so often be like that.  All the things we wouldn’t want to happen are necessary with Jesus.  We need Him to intercede or we are sunk.  We need the Holy Spirit to step up because so often our words proceed from the flesh.  As a teenager I spent time with my dad every other weekend in Assembly of God churches.  The preachers occasionally would say, “I had a sermon all ready to preach on this, but the Holy Spirit told me to talk about something else.”  The skeptic in most of us would say, “Buddy, you just aren’t prepared.”  Yet, that stuck with me in my own preaching.  I liked something about leaving room for inspiration from the Holy Spirit.  Early on I had moments of disappointment as I would get down from the pulpit and remember all the things I meant to say.  I found myself finally coming to peace with the idea that maybe the Holy Spirit had other plans for my words that day.  This is not an excuse to be unprepared, but more to allow for the spontaneity of the Holy Spirit.  Blogs I can write, read over again, and have them proofed by an amazing administrative assistant, but because they are written ahead of time, they lack that spontaneity.  I think because of our human nature we like to be prepared as to what we are going to say, but how amazing it is when we learn from Jesus and let the Holy Spirit take over!  This weekend we talk about exactly that.