Thursday October 23, 2025 - Priest, Prophet

 Chapter 21: Priest, Prophet Day 5

Praying the Name:

1 Peter 2:9-10 - 9 But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; 10 who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.

1 Corinthians 14:1-3 - Pursue love, and desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy. 2 For he who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God, for no one understands him; however, in the spirit he speaks mysteries. 3 But he who prophesies speaks edification and exhortation and comfort to men.

Father, 

    I praise You for the opportunity to pray for the people and love them too. I thank You and praise You that I am spending time with You and speaking to You. Help me to think about the ways in which I could serve You and be willing and able to go to church again. I would love to be there. Give me the ability to go. 

    Thank You that You have called me into service for Your kingdom and that i can serve You and stand with You bringing others to Your Kingdom. I have the girls and love them, but I do feel I want more again. 

    I confess if I have selfishness that hinders my prayers, I come to You as pure as I know how, I am sorry for putting myself first in You and not going to church, give me the strength to go and do what I know I am supposed to. 

    I ask that You make my prayers powerful that I have the gift of prophecy and want to share Your Word with those in my life. I thank You that I am praying well again and thinking about my people and my kids each day when I spend time praying for them. I am who You need and can be that for You. Just give me the ability to do it in You and not try to do it in myself. 

    Please give me a great desire to be like You to speak Your Word with a pure heart and to reflect Your love by becoming an intercessor for those I love bringing others to the heart of God so that I can carry them into Your presence Lord in prayer, I ask that You grow me into the intercessor that You desire me to be. I want to be that for the people in my life. 

    Thank You for these lessons and this study. 

In Jesus Name, 

    Amen 

    As Christians we know that our primary purpose in life is to imitate Christ, the goal is to become as much like Jesus as possible expressing His heart to others, but did you know becoming a little Christ also includes taking on certain of His roles. When it comes to Jesus' role as a priest, and prophet the New Testament makes it clear that believers belong to a royal priesthood and that we are all to desire the gift of prophecy. I do not know about You, but I find it hard to imagine myself presiding over a burnt offering or thunderously proclaiming the Word of the Lord to anyone. But of course, this is not how Christians are to express these roles, to put it simply we are to be like priests in that we bear the people to God and like prophets in that we bear God's Word to the people. 

    Jesus was of course the greatest of all prophets, because He was the only one able to represent God perfectly without distortions, but we too should desire to communicate God in our words and through our deeds, 

    But what about being priests? What exactly does that mean, one of the most important ways that priests represented people before God was to intercede for them carrying them in prayer to God. As believers in Christ, we have a great advantage over Old Testament priests because our High Priest has entered not an earthly temple, but heaven itself the holist place in the universe where He continually intercedes for us.

    Our own prayers are meant not to be uttered in isolation but to be spoken in Him and through Him. I like how Michael Ramsy defines intercession, "to intercede is to bear others on the heart in God's presence, intersession thus becomes not the bombardment of God for requests so much as bringing of our desires within the stream of God's own compassion. The compassion of God flows ceaselessly toward the world, but it seems to wait upon the cooperation of human wills. This cooperation is partly by God's creatures doing the things which God desires to be done. And partly by prayers which are also channels of God's compassion.

    Real intercession thus does not consist in presenting God with a laundry list of demands and requests, instead it involves spending time in God's presence seeking His will and being guided by His Spirit as we offer up prayers, on behalf of others. As Underhill put it each time you take a human soul with you in prayer, you accept from God a piece of spiritual work with all its implications and with all its costs, a cost which may mean for you spiritual exhaustion and darkness and may even include vicarious suffering on the cross, On offering yourself on such levels of prayer. for the sake of others, you are offering to take your part in the mysterious activities in the spiritual world to share the saving work of Christ.  Real intercession is not merely a petition but a piece of work involving a costly self-surrender to God for the work He wants done on other souls.