Prayers

Answers to Intercessory Prayer

by J.W. Phillips
06/10/25
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Answers to Intercessory Prayer

The discrepancy between the results Scripture promises and the actual results believers see from their prayers is discrediting.

But more discrediting still are the rationales the pulpit invents, each designed to assure us that nothing was wrong with our prayers. Our job, they say, is to float these prayers skyward. God’s job is to decide which ones he will answer.

Nice try, preacher, but not true!

Scripture projects an entirely different outcome when it speaks of all the promises of God being affirmed by the great “amen” and the hearty “yes” of God (II Corinthians 1:20).

Conversely, as E.M. Bounds puts it, “Religion and God are dishonored, doubt and unbelief are strengthened, by much asking and no getting.”¹

Of great encouragement to us is the fact the Lord never once talked about unanswered prayer. Why? Because he never had any!

Check out what Jesus had to say and you’ll discover his anticipation of answered prayers. “Ask,” Jesus said, “and you will receive that your joy may be full” (John 16:23).

Isaiah said that the Word will not return void—that is, it will do everything it said it would do. But have you ever stopped to think how the Word is returned at all? It gets returned whenever a believer makes a claim on it, stands on it, believes God for it, and like Jacob clinging to the angel, won’t let God go until the blessing comes. Because it will come!

There is a caveat that has to be acknowledged when it comes to intercessory prayer, and the caveat is this: Our prayers can never guarantee someone else’s response. Jesus stood outside the city of Jerusalem and wept, “O, Jerusalem, Jerusalem! How often I would have gathered you under my wings like a hen gathers its baby chicks, but you would not.”

Isn’t this staggering? The divine, “I would”—offered with so much love, and the human “you would not”—thrown back with such insane perversity. 

What has to be recognized here is that if people then could resist Jesus’ prayers, people today can just as well resist our prayers. For ourselves, there can be a guarantee, but not for others. 

Despite this lack of a guarantee, we can take encouragement from James’ words about how these intercessory prayers can “avail much.” How much you ask? That question was given a partial reply by David Bryant in his book, Concerts of Prayer. David Bryant declares:

There has never been a spiritual awakening in any country or locality that did not begin in united prayer. John R. Mott spent years traveling the globe, investigating spiritual movements among students and churches. He found that the source of those awakenings lay in united intercessory prayer.²

D.L. Moody who went from being a shoe salesman with a sixth-grade education to the most well-known evangelist in the world credited so much of his ministry’s success to an elderly woman whom the world had never even heard of. But hell knew her name! And so did Heaven! For it was her prayers that targeted the very place where the battle was being fought, conquering foes so formidable many of us would run in wild fright if one of them showed up on our doorstep.

In his book Prevailing Prayer, D.L. Moody offered this testimony to the efficacy of intercessory prayer.

Referring to the Reformation, he spoke of how “Luther and his companions were men of such mighty pleading with God, that they broke the spell of the ages, and laid nations subdued at the foot of the cross.” He also told of Richard Baxter, who “stained his study walls with praying breath” until an anointing was unleashed in his city that brought multitudes to a closer walk with Jesus.³

In his book, Revival God’s Way, Leonard Ravenhill declared:

Without exception, all true revivals of the past began after years of agonizing, hell-robbing, earth-shaking, heaven-sent intercession. The secret to true revival in our own day is still the same. But where, oh, where, are the intercessors?⁴

If prayer can create an atmosphere that better enables God to do his work, then it has to be our responsibility to make sure such an atmosphere exists. 

Thomas Watson warned more than four hundred years ago about what may well occur:

Where animosities and contentions prevail, instead of praying for one another, Christians will be ready to petition against one another, like the disciples who called for fire from heaven upon the Samaritans (Luke 9:54).⁵

Fellowship hits rock bottom whenever something like this occurs. This disdain is not ordained! 

True fellowship moves in the depths of God whenever prayer ascends to seek the Father’s blessings for those in the Father’s family.

A.W. Pink said it well: “We cannot do the saints a greater kindness, or exercise our love for them in a more practical and effective way, than by praying for them.”⁶

Have you been doing that? Regularly doing that?

Notes:

       1. E.M. Bounds, E.M. Bounds on Prayer, (New Kensington, PA., Whitaker House, 1997), p.79.

       2. David Bryant, Concerts of Prayer, (Ventura, Regal, 1984), p.40.

       3. D.L. Moody, Prevailing Prayer, (Chicago, Moody Press, 1971), p.14.

       4. Leonard Ravenhill, Revival God’s Way, (Minneapolis, Minnesota, Bethany House Publishers, 1986), preface.

       5. Thomas Watson, The Godly Man’s Picture, (Carlisle, PA., The Banner of Truth Trust, 2009), p.144.

       6. A.W. Pink, Gleanings from Paul, Kindle Locations: 286-287.