Intercession Is Service

It helps greatly to remember that intercession is service: the chief
service of a life on God's plan. It is unlike all other forms of service,
and superior to them in this: that it has fewer limitations. In all other
service we are constantly limited by space, bodily strength, equipment,
material obstacles, difficulties involved in the peculiar differences of
personality. Prayer knows no such limitations. It ignores space. It may be
free of expenditure of bodily strength, where rightly practiced, and one's
powers are under proper control. It goes directly, by the telegraphy of
spirit, into men's hearts, quietly passes through walls, and past locks
unhindered, and comes into most direct touch with the inner heart and will
to be affected.

In service, as ordinarily understood, one is limited to the space where
his body is, the distance his voice can reach, the length of time he can
keep going before he must quit to eat, or rest, or sleep. He is limited by
walls, and locks, by the prejudices of men's minds, and by those peculiar
differences of temperament which must be studied in laying siege to men's
hearts.

The whole circle of endeavour in winning men includes such an infinite
variety. There is speaking the truth to a number of persons, and to one at
a time; the doing of needed kindly acts of helpfulness, supplying food,
and the like; there is teaching; the almost omnipotent ministry of money;
the constant contact with a pure unselfish life; letter writing; printer's
ink in endless variety. All these are in God's plan for winning men. But
the intensely fascinating fact to mark is this:--that the real victory in
all of this service is won in secret, beforehand, by prayer, and these
other indispensable things are the moving upon the works of the enemy, and
claiming the victory already won. And when these things are put in their
proper order, prayer first, and the other things second; _second_, I say,
not omitted, not slurred over; done with all the earnestness and power of
brain and hand and heart possible; but done _after_ the victory has been
won in secret, against the real foe, and done _while_ the winner is still
claiming the victory already assured,--then will come far greater
achievements in this outer open service.

Then we go into this service with that fine spirit of expectancy that
sweeps the field at the start, and steadily sticks on the stubbornly
contested spots until the whipped foe turns tail, and goes. Prayer is
striking the winning blow at the concealed enemy. Service is gathering up
the results of that blow among the men we see and touch. Great patience
and tact and persistence are needed in the service because each man must
be influenced in his own will. But the shrewd strategy that wins puts the
keen stiff secret fighting first.