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When we accept Jesus as our Savior, our lives are changed forever.  As we embrace our Savior and submit to His will in our lives, we naturally desire to see the lives of those close to us changed forever.  Most of us go through a stage where we think that we are responsible for initiating the spiritual change in the lives of our friends and family members.

At some point, there is an important distinction that we need to come to understand.  We are simply the vessels of Christ’s love.  We do not do the work of bringing others to the Lord.  We, instead, allow Jesus Christ to work through us to perform His redeeming miracles.  We allow others to be able to receive a Savior that they have never seen because they have witnessed His love through our living testimony.

What a wonderful transformation we experience when the Holy Spirit opens our minds to receive and understand things that made no sense to us before or had no value to us in our old ways of thinking.  In the blink of an eye, our blinders are removed.  

Without even understanding the process, we begin to assimilate truths that had been unavailable to us before.  Just as suddenly, we are able to share the truths with those who have been prepared to receive them. 

Through His death on the Cross, Jesus Christ absorbed everything abhorrent to Him.  He absorbed it and washed it away for all eternity.  

Through the sacrifice of His Son, Our Heavenly Father no longer sees our sins when He sees us.  He only sees the perfection of His Son who is in us.

The Crucifixion was not some tragedy in history.  This was an event planned by God because He loved us.  He loved us so much that He allowed His Son to be sacrificed in order to open the gates of heaven to us for all eternity.  

No matter what times we are going through, no matter in what circumstances that we find ourselves, if these times bring evil upon us, they are of Satan.  Do not faint or lose faith.  Through the suffering of Jesus Christ and ultimately through His death and resurrection, we can have victory over Satan and his attacks.  

On His Cross, Jesus secured victory over Satan and all of his evil for all eternity.  As a result of His sacrificial work on the behalf of all mankind, every person now has an open invitation to come before the Throne of God at anytime.  Whatever Satan has wrought upon us, we can take before the Father and ask that it be taken away in the name of the Eternal Victor, Jesus Christ.

Jesus calls us that know Him at different times and in different places throughout our lives.  But at some point in time during our walk with Him, we all end up at the foot of the Cross.  

When we reach our place at the foot of the Cross, we are called to surrender all that we have and all that we are.  Then we are moved to give up all that we will ever have and all that we will ever be.  This is necessary so that He may complete His work in us.  

When Abraham proved to God that he was ready to lead God’s people by sacrificing his son Isaac, God released His kingdom to Abraham.  When prove to God we are ready to give up our world, He will release the fullness of His kingdom to us.

There are opportunities in life that we let go by without taking advantage of them.  Fear or lack of faith in ourselves may have been the reason that caused us to let the opportunities pass us by.  In each case, we may have missed a chance to change our lives entirely.  These missed opportunities may never come by again.

When these missed opportunities were presented to us by the Lord, we missed a large portion of God’s favor on our lives.  Fortunately for us, God works with us through the Holy Spirit to diminish our fears and build our faith in Him so we are prepared to accept His offer the next time.  

He is a God of second chances.  He will return to us with new opportunities to serve Him.  The blessings of the earlier opportunity will be missed forever, but blessings beyond our imagination will be waiting on us if we accept the new opportunity that the Lord places before us.

Once Jesus dwells within us, our interests in the things of the earth diminish relative to our interest in the Lord.  This can become a real problem for those around us who have not received Jesus as their Savior.  They can become threatened, particularly when we begin rejecting things that they may hold dear.  We must be careful not to judge them for they do not know the Lord.  Anytime our thoughts turn to judgement, we should quickly turn those thoughts into intercessory prayer.  

Pray that the Lord will open their eyes to see the way, the truth and the life in Jesus Christ.  Pray that the Lord will open their hearts to receive His Son as their Savior.  Pray that the Lord will mold their hearts so that they will submit to Him as their Lord, Master and King.  Pray that they will be empowered by the Holy Spirit to go out to proclaim their good news, to share the perfect love and forgiveness of Jesus with the world around them, to bear fruit for the kingdom of God and to bring honor and glory to His name.

The apostles were constantly trying to steer Jesus away from the worst elements of society.  Jesus would have no part of it.  By His own claim, He was here on earth to serve those who needed His help – sinners one and all.

So we should be careful not to only extend our intercessory prayers to those we favor.  Those who repulse us are probably in much greater need of the power of intercession from the Spirit within us. 

By seeking the will of God, we will receive the discernment we need for our intercessory prayers.  It should come as no surprise when we find our prayers of love and forgiveness lifted up for our enemies. 

Jesus Christ is our intercessor before God.  His Spirit in us leads us to be intercessors for others.  

To be effective as intercessors, we must go to Jesus to find His concern for those that we pray for.  When we get in line with the cares and concerns of Jesus, our intercessory prayer efforts will most certainly be in accordance with the will of the Father.  When our prayers are in accordance with the will  of the Father, they most certainly will be answered.  

And through this process, our discernment concerning other souls will grow and mature in Christ Jesus.  We will move away from a spirit of criticism to a spirit of intercession for those that the Lord has put into our lives.

He is risen indeed!!  Happy Easter

Intercessory prayer is the perfect service to enter for Our Heavenly Father.  It is in itself an act of communicating with Him and an act of representing another before Him.  If we can separate ourselves from the results of our prayers (it is His power not our actions that produce good results), there are no pitfalls.

In a simple act of love, we go before the Father seeking His divine assistance for another.  Through the process, we are worshiping Him just by acknowledging our belief in His power.  As a result of the intercessory process, our relationship with God matures and grows.