1 Samuel 7:5-6 – Be an intercessor today

The people of Israel repented after twenty years. They put away the idols and turned to the Lord with their whole heart. Single-mindedly they committed themselves to Him. So, Samuel told them to gather at Mizpah, a city of Benjamin, so that he could pray for them. Samuel, at this point, was acting as their intercessor. Besides God, no one was more needed to Israel than Samuel now. They had a fractured relationship with God and for 20 years they had gone after other gods. Now they needed someone to stand in the gap for them. And Samuel was that man. He had his heart set on pleasing God and His purpose, and who would also keep a watchful eye over the people of God. How the church of God needs intercessors like him! God’s desire is for each one of us to be an intercessor for our nation.

As instructed, the people of Israel gathered at Mizpah. Verse 6 said that they “…drew water and poured it out before the Lord, and fasted on that day and said there, “We have sinned against the Lord.”” They had repented. They showed their sincerity drawing water and fasting. The act of drawing water and fasting indicates that they were turning their back on their self-serving ways. They were willing to deny themselves. They clearly acknowledged that what happened in the last twenty years was caused by their waywardness. In acknowledging that “We have sinned against the Lord.”, they were showing that they had to stop putting themselves at the center but was instead placing God right at the throne of their lives. How needful this is. When one chooses to put oneself at the center of life, God would of necessity be placed at the peripheral. The activities of his or her life would be revolving around the self. Even if God were to speak loudly, they would be so engrossed with the self that God’s voice will be drowned by all the self-centered activities.

The last part of verse 6 summed up Samuel’s role. It says, “And Samuel judged the people of Israel at M Mizpah.” He set things right in Israel.  Where Eli the priest failed to do, Samuel picked up and made the needful amendment to please God. And fundamentally we know that he placed prayer at the core of his ministry. Will we like him make prayer an essential part of our walk with God? We pray that God will find in each one of us an interceding heart. Let not Ezekiel 22:30 where God said, “I searched for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand in the gap before Me for the land, so that I would not destroy it; but I found no one”, become a description of us. So, let us rise up and each take our position and be an intercessor, and be that man God is looking for and pray for our church and nation!