Are You In Circumstances You Don't Understand?

Pastor Dean

      I don’t find myself watching too many movies but I did watch an interesting movie several months ago “Contagion.” Contagion follows the rapid progress of a lethal indirect contact transmission virus that kills within days. As the fast-moving pandemic grows, the worldwide medical community races to find a cure and control the panic that spreads faster than does the virus itself. As the virus spreads around the world, ordinary people struggle to survive in a society coming apart. The virus was spread by direct or indirect contact with the carrier. (Made me want to wash my hands every five minutes.) Wherever the carrier went, he or she would infect t all those who came in contact with them.        Chambers’ devotional from My Utmost for His Highest (November 7) made me think of Contagion’s story-line. Chambers reminds us that God sovereignly brings us in contact with people for the expressed purpose of interceding for them in prayer. It may seem random to us, but God brings people into our lives because those people need our intercession…they need to be prayed for. 

      Chambers put it this way:

“God by His providence brings you into circumstances that you can’t understand at all, but the Spirit of God understands. God brings you to places, among people, and into certain conditions to accomplish a definite purpose through the intercession of the Spirit in you.”

      In the movie, the carrier had no pre-planned intention of affecting the lives of those around them, so too, as Believers, God brings us into contact with folks that we might “infect” them with the Spirit of the living God through our intercession….God orchestrates our encounters for this purpose. 

      Chambers again:

“All your circumstances are in the hand of God, and therefore you don’t ever have to think they are unnatural or unique. Your part in intercessory prayer is not to agonize over how to intercede, but to use the everyday circumstances and people God puts around you by His providence to bring them before His throne, and to allow the Spirit in you the opportunity to intercede for them. In this way God is going to touch the whole world with His saints.”

      In the movie, the carriers were passive…that is, they didn’t realize they were carriers and therefore they passed along the virus without any effort or commitment on their part. Here’s where the illustration parts. God brings folks into our lives every day as reminders to pray for them. Our response is not “passive”…that is, we must take the opportunity to be obedient to the Spirit within us and pray for those folks. Intercession involves commitment and intention. 

      As Chambers points out:

“I must do the human side of intercession— utilizing the circumstances in which I find myself and the people who surround me. I must keep my conscious life as a sacred place for the Holy Spirit. Then as I lift different ones to God through prayer, the Holy Spirit intercedes for them.”

     The main thing that separates the movie from this lesson on intercession is the virus ultimately causes harm to the one infected. Intercessory prayer causes the power and peace of God in the one prayed for. 

      Chambers reminds us:

“…without that intercession, the lives of others would be left in poverty and in ruin.”

       Let’s see ourselves as “carriers” today. "Infect" those God brings to our mind today through our intercession for them.

Pastor Dean

I'm thankful that God hears the prayers of widows. "I will certainly hear their cry  . . ." Ex. 22:23