God is looking for someone. Someone among the rest. Someone who will stand in the gap. Someone who will pray for those still far from him.
Will you stand with us in the gap?
“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.”
Ezekiel 22:30 NASB
In the times of the Old Testament, cities had walls to defend them from attack. Broken places in the wall created a gap where they were vulnerable. Ezekiel prophesied at a time when the people of Jerusalem were intensely rebellious toward God. They were distant from God, and their sin had created a “gap” where they were opening themselves up to God’s wrath and judgment. God was looking for someone – anyone – who would stand in that gap, who would intercede and seek his mercy for his people.
To intercede is literally to “go between.” This is what we do when we pray for others. We stand in the gap, if you will, between them and God, facing God for them in that gap and pleading for them. We stand in the gap for those who are unable to pray for themselves. They may not know how to pray, or to whom they can pray.
World Mission Prayer League was founded on the belief that God has commissioned us to pray for those who have not yet received the Good News of Jesus Christ. He has assigned us to be their advocates before him, standing in that gap on their behalf, just as Moses once did for the Israelites (Psalm 106:21-23). This, my friends, is our commission.
You may be familiar with the account of Jesus sending seventy-two of his disciples out in pairs as his “advance teams” to towns and villages where he himself was to go. They boldly journeyed into the geographical and spiritual voids that remained between those communities and the Savior. They addressed those audiences with the news that “the kingdom of God has come near” (Luke 10:9), and they did so as “lambs sent out in the midst of wolves” (Luke 10:3). Something very similar to this is part of “the commissioned life” God has in mind for many of us, including WMPL workers around the globe. But prior to sending these disciples out, Jesus commissioned them to something else – he commissioned them to pray.
After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go. And he said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
Luke 10:1,2 ESV
Twenty-nine percent of the people in today’s world still have no access to God’s Word or a relationship with a Christian. That is over 2 billion souls who still have no way of hearing about God’s saving love for them in Jesus Christ. These are the ones who live at the “ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). That’s a very big gap – physically, culturally and spiritually.
Surely God is looking for some – many, even – who will hear and respond to his call to go, faithfully traveling into that gap as intercultural workers, delivering Good News in word and deed to those far away, even in uncomfortable and dangerous places. However, he is also looking for those who will step into that gap in the comfort and safety of their own homes, workplaces and churches. He is looking for those who will come stand before him, in the merciful and powerful name of Jesus, and advocate for the billions of people, in over 4000+ distinct people groups, who still have no opportunity in their lives or communities to hear of God’s love toward them in Jesus Christ.
Can you imagine a greater calling? Can you think of a more worthwhile task? I can’t.
Through the centuries God has looked for, found, called, and empowered many, many laborers who stood in the gap, either going to the lost of the world, or standing before the throne of God. As a result, billions have come to know his love for them in Jesus! We praise him for his goodness and mercy!
The task, however, is not yet completed. Billions still wait. God’s commissioning continues.
God is looking for someone. Someone among the rest. Someone who will live this commissioned life, standing in the gap.
In the World Mission Prayer League we believe that God has found us! He loves us and calls us to the privilege of standing in the gap. Will you stand with us?