Devotion and Obedience to God gives Power in Prayer

“Tell me wherein thy great strength lieth.”  It is the question we fain would have answered the men of old, and in later times, as intercessors for others, have had power with God, and have prevailed.  More than one, who has desired to give himself to this ministry, has wondered why he found it so difficult to rejoice in it, to persevere, and to prevail.  Let us study the lives of the leaders and heroes of the prayer world.  Maybe some of the elements of their success will be discovered to us.

The true intercessor is a man who knows that God knows of him that his heart and life are WHOLLY GIVEN UP TO GOD AND HIS GLORY.  This is the only condition on which an officer at the court of an earthly sovereign could expect to exert much influence.   Moses, Elijah, Daniel and Paul prove that it is so in the spiritual world.  Our blessed Lord is Himself the proof of it.  He did not save us by intercession, but by self-sacrifice.  His power of intercession roots in His sacrifice; it claims and receives what the sacrifice won.  As we have it so clearly put in the last words of Isaiah 53, He poured out His soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors, and He bare the sins of man.”  Study this in connection with the whole chapter of which it is the crown—“and made intercession for the transgressors.”  He first gave Himself up to the will of God.  There He won the power to influence and guide that will.  He gave Himself for sinners in all-consuming love, and so He won the power to intercede for them.  There is no other path for us.  It is the man who seeks to enter personally into death with Christ, and gives himself wholly for God and men, who will dare to be bold like Moses or Elijah, who will persevere like Daniel or Paul.  Whole-hearted devotion and obedience to God are the first marks of an intercessor.

These are quotes from The Inner Chamber by Andrew Murray on Moses the man of prayer.