“Know, therefore,.. you are a stubborn people. Remember and do not forget how you provoked the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness… You have been rebellious against the Lord. At Horeb… the Lord was so angry with you that he was ready to destroy you… [He] said to me, ‘Arise, go down quickly.., for your people… have acted corruptly… They have made themselves a metal image…
“‘Let me alone, that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven…’ I looked, and you had… made yourselves a golden calf… So I took hold of the two tablets and threw them… and broke them before your eyes. Then I lay prostrate before the Lord… I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all the sin that you had committed… I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure that the Lord bore against you… But the Lord listened to me…
“So I lay prostrate before the Lord for these forty days and forty nights… And I prayed, ‘O Lord God, do not destroy your people and your heritage, whom you have redeemed through your greatness, whom you have brought out of Egypt… Do not regard the stubbornness of this people, or their wickedness or sin, lest the land from which you brought us say, “Because the Lord was not able to bring them into the land that he promised them, and because he hated them, he has brought them out to put them to death in the wilderness.” For they are your people and your heritage, whom you brought out by your great power and by your outstretched arm.’” Deuteronomy 9:4-8,12,14,16-19,25-29
One of Moses’ most significant ministries among the people of God was his ongoing intercession for them. From reluctance to maturity as God’s leader of the nation, he grew through ongoing communion with his Sovereign. Over years and trials he deepened his understanding of how God worked and the facets of His character. He learned to love His honor and His people, however fickle and rebellious they were. (Exodus 4:10-13)
Prayer does that. Humbling ourselves before the Almighty, the Holy One, puts us in our place as His instrument. It reminds us of our smallness before His greatness, our fallibility and weakness before His perfection and might. Coming by His mercy reminds us to be merciful, and acknowledging His undeserved favor awakens graciousness in us toward others. (Job 1:5; Psalm 8:3-6; Matthew 6:12; Luke 18:13; Hebrews 4:15-16)
How vibrant is our ministry of pleading for others? Does our own secure salvation cause us to be smug and uncaring toward the lost, or regularly spur us to grief over rebel spirits and ignorance, compassion, desire for God’s holy intervention? How well do we try to understand their resistance or reluctance? Would we ask God for a heart like His for their souls?
Whom has the Lord placed alongside us in workplace or neighborhood for whom there may be no other to plead? What evidence do we display, visibly or in the private place, that we care deeply and personally for their eternal state, and are concerned that God’s honor be known? The Lord hears the powerful, effectual prayers of His people. When and for whom will I prostrate myself and plead today? (Psalm 34:17; 138:3; Jeremiah 33:3; James 5:16)
Loving Father, compel me to passionate, merciful pleading for the lost, seeking You and Your highest and best for their sake and Your glory.
As the rain and snow 