Gen 25:21, And Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was barren; and the Lord answered him and Rebekah his wife conceived. 
	This morning we continue our series on intercessory prayer as indicated in our reading. As stated, over the entire course of this consideration, we will be using many sources and approaching prayer from a variety of vantage points. We will spend this morning with three lengthy observations by the Rev. Andrew Murray concerning the absolute necessity of intercessory prayer within the body of believers. 
We have already given focus to the fact that the Church cannot grow without the ministry of prayer being at the core of that spiritual development. We read several encouragements from the Apostle Paul as to the vital need of each of the members of the Lord’s Church to hold one another and the ministry of the Word in continual prayer for the feeding of all. 
The effect of this united heart of prayer is highlighted in the following passage concerning the early Church. Acts 2:41-43, So then, those who had received his word were baptized; and there were added that day about three thousand souls. And they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. And everyone kept feeling a sense of awe; and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles. 
There are many Christians, in our present day, who bemoan the fact that the modern Church is no longer so disposed to this sense of awe and wonder at the working of God’s grace. We no longer see the miracles and the mighty wonders and signs that were the daily experience of the early believers. This may be so because there is no earnestness of desire expressed in true intercessory prayer on behalf of the Church to be that living and growing witness of the Love of God on this earth. The following selection is from Andrew Murray’s Absolute Surrender. As I quote it, please focus on the need within today’s Christians for an increase in effective prayer for the Church, for all believers everywhere. This is so necessary in order for the power of God to be expressed through His people unto His glory and blessing. 
Quote, …Do you know what the hardest and the most important work is that has to be done for this sinful world? It is the work of intercession, the work of going to God and taking time to lay hold on Him.
A man may be an earnest Christian, an earnest minister, and a man may do good, but alas! how often he has to confess that he knows but little of what it is to tarry with God. May God give us the great gift of an intercessory spirit, a spirit of prayer and supplication! Let me ask you in the name of Jesus not to let a day pass without praying for all saints, and for all God's people.
I find there are Christians who think little of that. I find there are prayer unions where they pray for the members, and not for all believers. I pray you, take time to pray for the Church of Christ. It is right to pray for the heathen, as I have already said. God help us to pray more for them. It is right to pray for missionaries and for evangelistic work, and for the unconverted. But Paul did not tell people to pray for the heathen or the unconverted. Paul told them to pray for believers. Do make this your first prayer every day: "Lord, bless Thy saints everywhere."
The state of Christ's Church is indescribably low. Plead for God's people that He would visit them, plead for each other, plead for all believers who are trying to work for God. Let love fill your heart. Ask Christ to pour it out afresh into you every day. Try to get it into you by the Holy Spirit of God: I am separated unto the Holy Spirit, and the fruit of the Spirit is love. God help us to understand it.
May God grant that we learn day by day to wait more quietly upon Him. Do not wait upon God only for ourselves, or the power to do so will soon be lost; but give ourselves up to the ministry and the love of intercession, and pray more for God's people, for God's people round about us, for the Spirit of love in ourselves and in them, and for the work of God we are connected with; and the answer will surely come, and our waiting upon God will be a source of untold blessing and power… End quote. (from Absolute Surrender, PC Study Bible formatted electronic database Copyright © 2003, 2006 Biblesoft, Inc. All rights reserved.)
	The failure of the Church to engage in true intercession is evidenced in the absolute lack of growth unto maturity in the power of God. This is not to say that there is any power to be manipulated and exercised by the Church for its own gains and satisfaction. Let that never be the sorry position of anyone who knows God in a living and vital way! Rather, in prayer, in waiting on the Lord in the true ministry of constant and obedient prayer led by the Holy Spirit, the Lord is enabled to manifest Himself and His way and His will into His Church. The Church will utterly align herself to the every desire and will of her Head, the Lord Jesus Christ. There will be nothing that can stand against His power and His sovereignty as attested unto by His Church.
	Today’s Church seems to be utterly anemic to the reality that was proclaimed by Our Lord in the promise of what it means to abide in Him. As we read in John 15:4-7, "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in Me. "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing. "If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch, and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it shall be done for you. 
	The full force of this is described by Rev. Murray in the following quote. Of all the promises connected with the command, 'ABIDE IN ME,' there is none higher, and none that sooner brings the confession, 'Not that I have already attained, or am already made perfect,' than this: 'If ye abide in me, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you.' Power with God is the highest attainment of the life of full abiding.
And of all the traits of a life LIKE CHRIST there is none higher and more glorious than conformity to Him in the work that now engages Him without ceasing in the Father's presence-His all-prevailing intercession. The more we abide in Him, and grow unto His likeness, will His priestly life work in us mightily, and our life become what His is, a life that ever pleads and prevails for men.
'Thou hast made us kings and priests unto God.' Both in the king and the priest the chief thing is power, influence, blessing. In the king it is the power coming downward; in the priest, the power rising upward, prevailing with God. In our blessed Priest-King, Jesus Christ, the kingly power is founded on the priestly 'He is able to save to the uttermost, because He ever liveth to make intercession.' In us, His priests and kings, it is no otherwise: it is in intercession that the Church is to find and wield its highest power, that each member of the Church is to prove his descent from Israel, who as a prince had power with God and with men, and prevailed. End Quote. (from In the School of Prayer, PC Study Bible formatted electronic database Copyright © 2003, 2006 Biblesoft, Inc. All rights reserved.)    
When we consider that this has ever been the fulfilled ministry of Christ in the keeping power of God, we can begin to come to some understanding of why this intercessory prayer is so vital within the Church. We are but the vessels through whom the Holy Spirit has the unbridled opportunity to work in this realm. It is as the Church gives herself over to this unparalleled ministry of her beloved Husband that the heart of God, The Father, will find all the satisfaction that He has manifested in the salvation freely given in His Son. 
This is recorded throughout scripture. The Prophet Isaiah was shown this mission of Christ as we read in Isa 53:11+12. As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, As He will bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great, And He will divide the booty with the strong; Because He poured out Himself to death, And was numbered with the transgressors; Yet He Himself bore the sin of many, And interceded for the transgressors. 
Inherent in the salvation work of the Suffering Servant is that vital component of intercession for the sake of the transgressors. He did not just offer up His life for us, He offered the every fabric of Himself in taking into the depths of His heart our burden. He fully covered us with the very tears of His grief before the throne of God on our behalf. We truly have no idea of the profundity and intensity required in true intercession if we do not see its perfect expression in Jesus Christ.
And please keep this before the Lord in prayer; Christ’s intercessory ministry did not end at the Cross. This was not a simplistic mentioning of our names for a short period before the Father. As we are so instructed by the Writer to the Hebrews, as we read once again in Heb 7:25-27, Hence, also, He is able to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them. For it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens; who does not need daily, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins, and then for the sins of the people, because this He did once for all when He offered up Himself. 
In offering up Himself for our sakes, He took up our burdens in prayer forever. He intercedes on our behalf always. We are ever the focus of Christ’s heart of love in prayer, before we were born, throughout our earthly lives, and into and through the eternal ages of the ages. He always makes intercession for His Body of Believers. 
This is a key reality that we must take to heart in the manner in which we come before the Lord God in our prayers for ourselves, for others, and most especially for all the saints of God. We are to join our entire being with Christ in the unity of His intercession. As the Rev. Murray writes in the preface to his book, In the School of Prayer: 
I feel sure that as long as we look on prayer chiefly as the means of maintaining our own Christian life, we shall not know fully what it is meant to be. But when we learn to regard it as the highest part of the work entrusted to us, the root and strength of all other work, we shall see that there is nothing that we so need to study and practise as the art of praying aright. If I have at all succeeded in pointing out the progressive teaching of our Lord in regard to prayer, and the distinct reference the wonderful promises of the last night … have to the works we are to do in His Name, to the greater works, and to the bearing much fruit, we shall all admit that it is only when the Church gives herself up to this holy work of intercession that we can expect the power of Christ to manifest itself in her behalf...
In connection with this there is another truth that has come to me with wonderful clearness as I studied the teaching of Jesus on prayer. It is this: that the Father waits to hear every prayer of faith, to give us whatsoever we will, and whatsoever we ask in Jesus' name. We have become so accustomed to limit the wonderful love and the large promises of our God, that we cannot read the simplest and clearest statements of our Lord without the qualifying clauses by which we guard and expound them. If there is one thing I think the Church needs to learn, it is that God means prayer to have an answer, and that it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive what God will do for His child who gives himself to believe that his prayer will be heard. God hears prayer; this is a truth universally admitted, but of which very few understand the meaning, or experience the power. If what I have written stir my reader to go to the Master's words, and take His wondrous promises simply and literally as they stand, my object has been attained.
And then just one thing more. Thousands have in these last years found an unspeakable blessing in learning how completely Christ is our life, and how He undertakes to be and to do all in us that we need. I know not if we have yet learned to apply this truth to our prayer-life. Many complain that they have not the power to pray in faith, to pray the effectual prayer that availeth much. The message I would fain bring them is that the blessed Jesus is waiting, is longing, to teach them this. Christ is our life: in heaven He ever liveth to pray; His life in us is an ever-praying life, if we will but trust Him for it. Christ teaches us to pray not only by example, by instruction, by command, by promises, but by showing us HIMSELF, the ever-living Intercessor, as our Life. It is when we believe this, and go and abide in Him for our prayer-life too, that our fears of not being able to pray aright will vanish, and we shall joyfully and triumphantly trust our Lord to teach us to pray, to be Himself the life and the power of our prayer. May God open our eyes to see what the holy ministry of intercession is to which, as His royal priesthood, we have been set apart. May He give us a large and strong heart to believe what mighty influence our prayers can exert. And may all fear as to our being able to fulfil our vocation vanish as we see Jesus, living ever to pray, living in us to pray, and standing surety for our prayer-life. End Quote. (from In the School of Prayer, PC Study Bible formatted electronic database Copyright © 2003, 2006 Biblesoft, Inc. All rights reserved.)
Please take this to heart as we earnestly join in the prayer that we will discover what it means to truly become those prayer warriors after the heart and mind of Jesus Christ. Lord willing, we will be brought into the fulfillment of the depth of how the Church’s prayer truly affects the heart of God as we continue in this series on prayer. So be it!
And Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was barren; and the Lord answered him and Rebekah his wife conceived. Amen.

This morning’s benediction is Ps 135:1-3. Praise the Lord! Praise the name of the Lord; Praise Him, O servants of the Lord, You who stand in the house of the Lord, In the courts of the house of our God! Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good; Sing praises to His name, for it is lovely. Amen.