Bold Intercession
Opening Prayer
Lord, thank You for taking unclean rags and making them beautiful fabrics.
Read ISAIAH 64:1–12
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
that the mountains would tremble before you!
2 As when fire sets twigs ablaze
and causes water to boil,
come down to make your name known to your enemies
and cause the nations to quake before you!
3 For when you did awesome things that we did not expect,
you came down, and the mountains trembled before you.
4 Since ancient times no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.
5 You come to the help of those who gladly do right,
who remember your ways.
But when we continued to sin against them,
you were angry.
How then can we be saved?
6 All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
7 No one calls on your name
or strives to lay hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us
and have given us over to our sins.
8 Yet you, Lord, are our Father.
We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
9 Do not be angry beyond measure, Lord;
do not remember our sins forever.
Oh, look on us, we pray,
for we are all your people.
10 Your sacred cities have become a wasteland;
even Zion is a wasteland, Jerusalem a desolation.
11 Our holy and glorious temple, where our ancestors praised you,
has been burned with fire,
and all that we treasured lies in ruins.
12 After all this, Lord, will you hold yourself back?
Will you keep silent and punish us beyond measure?
New International Version (NIV)
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Reflect
“Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord; Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy” (Psa. 130:1,2).
Try reading Isaiah 64 aloud. What tone of voice do you detect? Is it protest or complaint? When you get to the confession of verse 6, what do you feel? Isaiah’s words are very daring. As Isaiah previously said (Isa. 45:9) and another prophet later reiterates (Jer. 18:6), the potter’s sovereignty over the clay strips it of the right to argue with its Creator.
We approach God with reverence and begin our urgent pleas acknowledging
his goodness. Prayer is a wonderful way to lay the full range of our emotions open before him. Nothing in our transparency before the Father surprises him, and nothing angers him.
A few years ago, I was working with a group of pastors in a theological
college in South Sudan. Most had experienced 20 years of communal strife, precarious existence and loss of loved ones in the local in-fighting. We were studying the psalms. As they found comfort in the expressions of protest and complaint found so often in the psalms, I invited them to write their own psalm of complaint to God for what they had suffered. The outpouring of grief, which does not always vent in church life, was moving for me to hear and healing for them to experience.
How does your church tradition handle prayer? Do you use the prayers of the liturgy or of others skilled in the use of words of pain and protest? On a recent Sunday after a disturbing national event, I realized that our church neglected to acknowledge the pain our country was experiencing. We make no room in our service for corporate pastoral prayer. This must change.
Apply
Will God reply to Isaiah’s complaint? Sometimes God’s silence is harder to accept than his rebuke.
Closing prayer
Lord, hear us when we pour out to You our innermost frustrations with life and take up our cause.
Click here to sign up to receive the EXTRAs via email each quarter.
© 2024 Scripture Union U.S.A. All rights reserved. Reproduction of the whole or any part of the contents without written permission is prohibited.
Encounter with God is published in the USA under license from Scripture Union England and Wales, Trinity House, Opal Court, Opal Drive, Fox Milne, Milton Keynes, MK15 0DF.