Are You the One God is Searching For?

"So I sought for a man among them who would make a wall, and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found no one."

Ezekiel 22:30

Will you stand in the gap?

It is interesting that this statement says nothing about bringing people to repentance. We know from the rest of the Bible that God desires all men and women to repent (2 Peter 2:9) but here He doesn't mention that he was searching for someone who would bring people to repentance. He also doesn't say that He was looking for a political activist who would change the laws of the country in order to keep that country from being destroyed. He was simply looking for someone to "stand in the gap". What does that mean?

"Stand in the gap" is the literal definition of the word intercession.

God was looking for an intercessor. Basically He is saying that there was a gap created by the sins of the nation between Him and His people and gaps between us and God always lead us on a path of destruction. This is why God was looking for an intercessor, someone who would bridge that gap through prayer by interceding for the nation, for the land but sadly He was not able to find one. Because of this the nation continued on a path to destruction. Later in the story we see that an intercessor rose up in Ezra and Nehemiah and the nation was eventually restored but it was forced to go through destruction because at the time God could find "no one".

Are you standing in the gap for your nation?

Bringing this idea to today in our setting, it is easy to see the United States on a path towards destruction. Facebook is blown up by political posts about various laws that are being past which are against the moral code of Christianity and how we need to petition agains these laws. We do not have a shortage of political activists, petitioners, and complainers in the Church today, and yet we are still losing ground. Why?

We have a shortage of intercessors!

In the time of the early church the government was extremely immoral. At times it was so against Christianity that they would kill Christians any time they got a chance, yet the church thrived and grew and became the largest influence in that society. There are probably several reasons for that but I believe the most important reason is that they had intercessors. We constantly see examples in the book of Acts of the church having serious, intense times of intercession. There intercession was so genuine that it got results even when they didn't have much faith in their own prayers (Acts 12:13-16). We need to return to this type of intercession.