Scripture: "0 Thou that hearest prayer, unto Thee shall all flesh come." PSALM lxv. 2.
When God gave the world into the power of man, made in His own image, who should rule over it as a viceroy under Him, it was His plan that Adam should do nothing but with God and through God, and God Himself would do all His work in the world through Adam. Adam was in very deed to be the owner, master, and ruler of the earth. When sin entered the world, Adam's power was proved to be a terrible reality, for through him the earth, with the whole race of man, was brought under the curse of sin.
When God made the plan of redemption, His object was to restore man to the place from which he had fallen. God chose His servants of old, who, through the power of intercession, could ask what they would, and it should be given them. When Christ became man, it was that, as man, both on earth and in heaven, He might intercede for man. And ere He left the world. He imparted this right of intercession to His disciples, in the seven-fold promise of the Farewell Discourse (John xv.-xvii.), that whatsoever they should ask He would do for them. God's intense longing to bless seems in some sense to be graciously limited by His dependence on the intercession that rises from the earth. He seeks to rouse the spirit of intercession that He may be able to bestow His blessing on mankind. God regards intercession as the highest expression of His people's readiness to re¬ceive and to yield themselves wholly to the working of His almighty power.
Christians need to realize this as their true nobility and their only power with God—the right to claim and expect that God will hear prayer. It is only as God's children begin to see what intercession means in regard to God's Kingdom, that they will realize how solemn their responsibility is.
Each individual believer will be led to see that God waits for him to take his part. He will feel in very truth that the highest, the most blessed, the mightiest of all human instrumentalities for the fulfilment of the petition, "as in heaven, so on earth," is the intercession that rises day and night, pleading with God for the power of Heaven to be sent down into the hearts of men. Oh that God might burn into our hearts this one thought: Intercession in its omnipotent power is according to His will and is most certainly effectual!
