Freely adapted from Intercessory Prayer by Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892)

Intercessory prayer is exceedingly prevalent. What wonders it has wrought! It has stayed plagues, healed diseases, and raised the dead. As to how many souls intercessory prayer has instrumentally saved, recording angel, thou canst tell!

There is nothing which intercessory prayer cannot do. O believer, you have a mighty engine in your hand; use it well, use it constantly, use it now with faith, and thou shalt surely prevail.

Brethren, I will ask you a personal question. Do you always pray for others? Guilty or not guilty here? Do you think you have taken the case of your children, your church, your neighbourhood, and the ungodly world before God as you ought to have done? How can you and I repay the debt we owe to the church unless we pray for others? How was it that you were converted? It was because somebody else prayed for you. How are you to prove your love to Christ or to His church if you refuse to pray for men? You do not love the brethren unless you pray for them. Brethren, how can you be Christians if you do not intercede for others? Christians are priests, but how priests if they offer no sacrifice? Christians are lights, but how lights unless they shine for others? Christians are sent into the world, even as Christ was sent into the world, but how sent unless they are sent to pray?

Christians are meant not only to be blessed themselves, but in them shall all the nations of the earth be blessed—but how if you refuse to pray? O brethren, let us unite with one heart and with one soul to plead with God for this neighbourhood! Mothers, bear your children before God! Fathers, carry your sons and your daughters! Men and brethren, let us take a wicked world and the dark places thereof which are full of the habitations of cruelty! Let us cry aloud and keep no silence, and give to the Lord no rest till He establish and make His church a praise in the earth (Isa 62:6-7). Wake, ye watchmen upon Zion’s walls, and renew your shouts! Wake, ye favourites of heaven, and renew your prayers! The cloud hangs above you, it is yours to draw down its sacred floods in genial showers by earnest prayers.