Prayer Covering

Aaron and Hur held his hands up — one on one side, one on the other.

Exodus 17:12

During my first decade of pastoring in D.C., I often felt like the Lone Ranger. I was doing my thing my way. I was so busy trying to build our church that I forfeited potential friendships with other local pastors. Then one day the Lord convicted me that it was easier for me to pray for a church four states away than a church four blocks away. So I started praying for area churches. We started investing in local church plants, and I started inviting local pastors to share their stories and their hearts with our team during staff devotions. Many of those staff meetings turned into prayer meetings. We would inevitably end up on our knees interceding for each other. Each time a local pastor did devotions, I felt the stronghold of territorialism being weakened.

I firmly believe we need many different kinds of churches because there are many different kinds of people. As long as a church is preaching the gospel, it’s all for one and one for all. We may have different church names over the door, but there is one church and one Shepherd of the church. So I’m praying for revival in our nation’s capital, but it doesn’t have to start with National Community Church. I just want in on it.

In the last few years, God has blessed us with some tremendous pastor friends. Lora has cultivated friendships with four pastors’ wives — Donna, Heather, Jill, and Taryn. And I’ve cultivated friendships with a handful of pastors whom I’ve grown to love and respect as brothers and fathers in the faith. Even pastors need pastors, and the Lord has blessed me with an Aaron and a Hur.

Bob Mathieu and Michael Hall have pastored in D.C. almost as long as I’ve been alive. Without my knowledge, they covenanted together to circle me in prayer every day. It’s hard to describe what it means to have two seventy-something pastors praying for me daily, but I feel those prayers lifting up my arms.

Part of what makes these newfound friendships so meaningful is that they are the answer to a prayer I didn’t even know was being prayed. A member of my prayer circle recently revealed that they had been specifically praying for God to strategically place older pastors in my life. Over the last few years, God has answered those prayers. The answers are spelled Michael, Bob, Amos, Mike, Stuart, Dennis, and Glenn, just to name a few.

Aaron and Hur

If we are going to intercede for others, we had better be sure that others are interceding for us. We need a prayer covering, especially when we enter an intense season of prayer and fasting. When we hit our knees, we pick a fight with the enemy. And the enemy will fight back. Make no mistake, there is a target on our back. The enemy wants to take us out, but he cannot touch us. He has no jurisdiction in our lives if we are covered by the blood of Jesus, but we also need a prayer covering.

Intercession is spiritual warfare. It’s not for the faint or the feeble. By definition, praying hard is hard. There will be times when our hearts are breaking because of a prayer burden. There will be seasons when the labor pains become intense because the Holy Spirit is birthing something new in us. And there will be times when we feel the enemy launching a frontal assault on our family or business or church. That’s when we need to stay on our knees and pray through.

Spiritual warfare can be scary and lonely, but I’ve always been strangely encouraged when I encounter increased spiritual opposition or oppression. It means I’m doing something right. It means I’m riling up the enemy. It’s means I’m inching closer to the breakthrough. And just when the fighting gets fiercest, I know that God is getting ready to go to battle for me.

In Exodus 17, we find a blow-by-blow description of an ancient battle between the Israelites and the Amalekites. As long as Moses was lifting up his arms, the Israelites were gaining ground. But when Moses grew tired and lowered his arms, the Israelites lost ground. That’s when Aaron and Hur stood alongside Moses and lifted up his arms until sunset.

Spiritual battles are fought the same way. The victory is won with knees bent in prayer and hands raised in worship to God. The enemy cannot be defeated any other way. No victory has ever been won apart from prayer and praise.

We will have moments when we lack the ability, strength, will, or faith to pray for ourselves. That’s when we need a prayer partner or prayer circle to hold up our arms, just as Aaron and Hur did for Moses. I’m so grateful for my personal prayer circle. There are a lot of people who pray for my family, but I have an inner circle that prays with a little more specificity, consistency, and intensity. I know they are on their knees interceding for me every day. I may unfairly get credit for the things I have done, but they get the assist.

Footnotes

The day after the Israelites defeated the Amalekites, I’m sure Moses made the headlines. But in the grand scheme of God’s story, there is a footnote behind every headline. The footnote is prayer. And the true heroes of the kingdom are the Aarons and the Hurs.

In the words of Walter Wink, “History belongs to the intercessors.”^a

Charles Finney was the most famous evangelist of his generation. He made headlines during the Second Great Awakening, but there is a footnote to the story. Finney had an “Aaron” named Daniel Nash. At the age of forty-eight, Father Nash quit his pastorate to devote himself to full-time intercession. Several weeks before Finney would visit a city, Father Nash would rent a room, recruit two or three intercessors, and begin laying a prayer foundation for the revival that would follow. By the time Finney showed up, the hard work had already been done. The victory had already been secured in the spiritual realm.

During one of his revivals,^b Finney was contacted by a woman who ran a boarding house in town. She asked him, “Brother Finney, do you know a Father Nash? He and two other men have been at my boarding house for the last three days, but they haven’t eaten a bite of food. I opened the door and peeped in at them because I could hear them groaning, and I saw them down on their faces. They have been this way for three days, lying prostrate on the floor and groaning. I thought something awful must have happened to them. I was afraid to go in, and I didn’t know what to do. Would you please come see about them?” Finney replied, “No, it isn’t necessary. They just have a spirit of travail in prayer.”

When public meetings started, Father Nash rarely attended. He stayed in his prayer closet pleading with God for the convicting power of the Holy Spirit to fall on the crowd and melt their hearts.

Shortly before his death in 1831, Father Nash recorded these words in his journal.

Father Nash is buried in a small cemetery near the border of New York and Canada. The headstone on his grave contains the following epitaph:

Prayer is the pen that writes history. Don’t worry about making headlines; focus on the footnotes. And if you focus on the footnotes, God will write the headlines.

If you intercede for others, make sure others are interceding for you.