Have you ever wondered what the point is in praying for others? I mean, praying for sick loved ones is one thing. Even if our prayers appear not to be answered, we pray for them because we love them.

But what about praying for an end to the refugee crisis? Or peace in the middle east? These things are so big and so far removed from our circumstance. And even though millions of people have prayed for these things, there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight. Is God absent? Does God not care? Why bother?

I bring it up because this coming Sunday is the fourth and final part of our mini-series on Church: Apostolic. Apostolic means that the Church is sent out into the world to witness to Jesus Christ. So part of our response will be to pray prayers of intercession (or prayers for others) as a reminder that we go out into the world.

So, to return to the question, why bother praying for others when so often prayers appear to go unanswered? Well, firstly, we can’t know if our prayers are answered or not (they may in fact be answered in ways we can’t see or understand). But secondly, how our prayers are answered — or even whether our prayers are answered — is not the point.

The point is that we pray.

As modern people, we’re used to answers. Modern science seeks to provide answers for everything and so we come to expect answers for everything. Mystery is something to be solved, to be investigated, to be understood. In this line of thinking, prayer is useless OR, at best, only of value if we can see the results.

But what if the value of prayer is not so much to see results as it is to dwell in God’s mystery and join with Jesus Christ in his prayers to see the world made right?

What we know of God is that through Jesus he is working to redeem the world and reconcile it back to God.

What we know of the world is that God’s plan is not yet fully evident…there is still untold sin, and evil, and suffering.

It is in this tension (between what God has begun and what God will complete) that we pray. We pray with Jesus and we go out with Jesus to see God’s plan come to fruition.

This whole ramble is to remind us that intercession isn’t an optional extra to church (always get suspicious of a worshiping community that doesn’t regularly pray for the world). Intercessory prayer gives us language that shapes us as to be God’s sent-out people. We never exist for ourselves. The Church always exists for the world. Pray for others because Jesus prays for others.

By the way, if you’re totally confused by my choice of pictures, they will make sense on Sunday. Memorise the three pictures and at the appropriate place in my sermon there may be a chocolate for you!