The Need for Corporate Intercession
Our world is a hot mess. And the news of the day bears this out. When we watch the news or read news feeds, we see what is going on politically and socially in our nation and across the globe. We can read the news through a two-dimensional lens like left-right political glasses. Or we may read the news through our consumer culture, personal freedom, or social justice lenses. And all that does is it sets us up for more conflict and confusion.
If, however, we look at the news through a three-dimensional, biblical lens, then we can understand what’s driving both our politics and culture. And what is going on in the news today has very little to do with Republican or Democratic political extremism, American consumerism, individual liberty, or racial injustice. What is going on is the spirit of antichrist is raging war against God.
We are in a Psalm 2 crisis that requires a Joel 2 response in order for us to experience an Acts 2 outpouring and an Acts 4 spiritual nuclear reaction.
A Psalm 2 Reality
The psalmist David opened his psalm with these three verses:
Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying, “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us” (Psalm 2:1–3 ESV).
Though David’s words addressed realities in his time, he was also prophesying millennia in advance about the days in which we are living. He was speaking about the rage that happens at the end of the age—right now—before we see the fullness of the Kingdom of God come on earth. This rage has an evil unifying force behind it, and it’s the spirit of antichrist.
Secular presidents, kings, rulers, corporate leaders, and social influencers are coming together globally with the attitude that says, “Let’s break off God’s bonds. Let’s cast off His chains. Let’s be free from Him once and for all.” And this is what produces the violence in homes, on streets, in cities, and throughout the nations.
So, what are we to do? How should we respond?
A Joel 2 Response
If we’re honest, many of us leaders are afraid to speak up or challenge today’s politics and culture. Should we dare to remind others of what is true, right, or just, we may find ourselves belittled, berated, or completely cancelled. That’s the reality we experience. But there is a biblical pattern for us in how to respond to the spiritual war going on in our day. It’s called corporate prayer.
Psalm 2 demands that we have our heads on a swivel, as it were. We should be constantly on the lookout, ready to be engaged in the battles happening around us. And we leaders should serve as an alarm. It’s a Joel 2 response: “Blow a trumpet in Zion; sound an alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming; it is near, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness!” (Joel 2:1–2 ESV).
It takes an alarm—a loud, annoying noise—to awaken people, to shake them out of their sleepy-eyed complacency. People must not only be interrupted but disrupted by our blaring the warning. As leaders, we cannot afford to avoid cancellation, conflict, or all-out spiritual war. After all, lives are hanging in the balance.
Not only do we need to sound the alarm, alerting people to the hour in which we live and the enemy that we are facing, but we need to call people to return to the Lord:
“Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster (Joel 2:12–13 ESV).
This is the mentality and action that Psalm 2 demands. “Call a solemn assembly; gather the people” (Joel 2:15 ESV). “Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep and say, ‘Spare your people, O Lord, and make not your heritage a reproach, a byword among the nations’” (Joel 2:17 ESV).
Our response, then, as leaders is to sound the alarm and call God’s people together to the holy place of corporate intercession. It’s time to return to the Lord and cry out to Him to spare His people and to turn our nation and the nations of the world to Him. We must fast and pray corporately for God to work miraculously in the nations.
An Acts 2 Outpouring
In the second chapter of Acts, we read how the followers of Jesus were in a corporate prayer meeting in the upper room. Nothing can knit hearts together like praying together around the purposes of God. There is a synergy, a unity that happens. It was what happened to those present in the upper room as they were “all with one accord in one place,” as the New King James Version tells us (Acts 2:1). Theirs was a unity that resulted in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.
Jesus had told them before He had ascended to heaven, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8 ESV). And so, after having received the promise, men and women empowered by the Holy Spirit gave testimony of Jesus that resulted in the birth of the Church, with thousands being added to the Church daily. What we read in the ensuing pages of the book of Acts is simply how the gospel spread to the nations and how the Church responded to crisis: The Church came together and prayed. “And when they had prayed,” Acts 4 tells us, something happened.
An Acts 4 Spiritual Nuclear Reaction
The Church in its early stages began to face persecution. Peter and John were placed in prison, and the cancel culture of their day told them that they had to stop speaking in the name of Jesus. The two apostles didn’t agree to do as they were being told. They were released from prison anyway because those who imprisoned them were afraid of the people, “for all were praising God for” the miracle of a lame man, which was done through Peter and John (Acts 4:21 ESV). But the threats and imprisonment didn’t stop Peter and John.
What was the first thing that the two apostles did upon their release? They went to their friends—to the Church—and told them about the threats and treatment they had received. And then, the Church prayed:
And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.... And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all (Acts 4:31, 33 ESV).
What happened? A spiritual nuclear reaction of seismic proportions happened. The place where they came together and prayed was physically shaken. They received a fresh filling of the Holy Spirit that empowered those present with boldness to continue to testify of Jesus and His resurrection. Instead of caving to the demands of the religious leaders, the Church was emboldened to preach the gospel.
This is exactly why we must have a Joel 2 response. It is the only thing that will bring an Acts 2 outpouring and an Acts 4 spiritual nuclear reaction. It is the best answer to the Psalm 2 crisis of the end of the age. It is the best way to wage war against those who have gathered together against the Lord and His Anointed.
Leaders, we must sound the alarm, call a holy convocation, and engage in corporate intercession for the Church and for the nations of the earth to come to God. Leaders, we must lead in this hour. And we must start leading in corporate intercession. Only then will we see what the early believers saw in the book of Acts—men and women boldly, fearlessly proclaiming the gospel in the nations and the Kingdom of God increasing exponentially.
