Prayer Basics - Intersession and Thanksgiving (Daily Devotional)

Greetings and thank you so much for joining us today. It is always our joy to be able to come to you and spend these few moments in God's word and prayer. This week, we've been talking about prayer basics, just going back to scriptures that teach us on various aspects of prayer. We've been looking at 1 Timothy chapter 2, verse 1 where the apostle Paul tells us, "Therefore, I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men." He's talking about different kinds of prayer. The context, of course, is praying for other people, but we are breaking it down and looking at the different kinds of prayer he mentioned here. We talked about petitions and prayers and we'll look at the next two. He says, intercessions and thanksgiving. So, two other kinds of prayer. There's intercessory prayer, which we all know, which is us praying for other people, that means we go to God on behalf of somebody else. We are taking their needs, their concerns, and we are praying for them, we are asking God to intervene in their lives, we are asking God to strengthen them, we are praying God's promises for them. So, that is intercession. Now, one of the ways we actually engage in intercession is with the help of the Holy Spirit. We read about this in Romans chapter 8, verses 26 and 27, where the Bible tells us the Holy Spirit helps us in our infirmities. We don't know what to pray for as we ought, but He Himself makes intercession for us and God who searches the heart, He knows what the Holy Spirit is saying because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. So, the Holy Spirit is praying for us but He also helps us pray for other people according to the will of God. So, a part of what we do when we intercede for other people, pray for other people, is to pray for them with the help of the Holy Spirit because we ourselves may not know everything about their need, about what they're going through in life, we may not know everything that is causing the situations in life, but when we pray with the help of the Holy Spirit, when we pray in tongues for them, we are praying, interceding for them through the knowledge of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit knows everything, He knows the past, the present, the future and so, that's a powerful way to make intercession. To intercede in tongues, to intercede with the help of the Holy Spirit. Then Paul also mentions thanksgiving, giving of thanks and that is a heart of gratitude for things God has done and for things He has promised that He will do. So, thanksgiving is both for things that God has done, we say, "God, thank you for doing this." But thanksgiving is also an act of faith when we say thanks in advance for the word that He said He will do which we are still waiting on. And one of the greatest examples of this is Abraham. It tells us in Romans chapter 4, verse 20, that ‘as Abraham believed God, he gave glory to God being fully persuaded that what He had promised He will perform.’ So, he was giving thanks in advance, he gave glory to God, he gave praise to God saying, "God, I know what you promised you will do and I'm praising you for it." So, thanksgiving is also another way of prayer. We go and spend some time thanking God for what He's done and what He's going to do. We're thanking in advance because He has promised and you know He'll make His promise good. Let's close, Father, thank you for the various ways in which we can pray. We ask that you will continue to help build us in our life of prayer, in Jesus' name, Amen.
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