My Utmost for His Highest - May 3rd - Vital Intercession

With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints, - Ephesians 6:18

    As we go on in intercession we may find that our obedience to God is going to cost other people more than we thought. The danger this is to begin to intercede in sympathy with those whom God was gradually lifting to a totally different sphere in answer to our prayers. Whenever we step back from identification with God's interest in others into sympathy with them, the vital connection with God has gone, we have put our sympathy, our consideration for them in the way, and this is a deliberate rebuke to God.
    

    It is impossible to intercede vitally unless we are perfectly sure of God, and the greatest dissipater of our relationship to God is personal sympathy and personal prejudice. Identification is the key to intercession, and whenever we stop being identified with God, it is by sympathy, not by sin. It is not likely that sin will interfere with our relationship to God, but sympathy will, sympathy with ourselves or with others which makes us say--"I will not allow that thing to happen." Instantly we are out of vital connection with God.

    Intercession leaves you neither time nor inclination to pray for your own "sad sweet self." The thought of yourself is not kept out, because it is not there to keep out; you are completely and entirely identified with God's interest in other lives.

    Discernment is God's call to intercession, never to fault finding.

- From Oswald Chambers, "My Utmost for His Highest" - Classic Edition

Highlights and Underlines are courtesy of Mom from her print edition.

My thoughts

Chambers has these words that he uses repeatedly in these devotions. Today's words are sympathy (7) and a form of intercession (6). He makes the point here that we are to be about intercession for others in our prayers and not praying for ourselves because others will take care of this. We can do this because we are sure of God and the way He will work in others to pray for me. And there is this idea that the greatest waste or dissipater of our relationship to God is being too focused on self and personal sympathy.