It Could Be Me

I’m racing home during my break to get something. On the way there, I'm thinking of how grateful I am to have a car, so that I can just up and go somewhere. I arrive home, get in, get out and a few minutes later I turn around to head back to IHOP, the same way I came. I couldn’t help but notice this huge accident that was at the intersection that I was just at! Fire trucks, airbags, cars off to the ditch, the whole nine.

The first song that comes to mind: “It Could’ve Been Me”

“It could’ve been me, with no clothes, no shoes and no food to eat.”

In the same vein, I think “but it’s her;” it’s that elderly woman, and this middle-aged woman, and that guy, and their cars. None of them planned this, they are children of God. They may be saved too. I’d like to think the middle-aged woman was praying, post-accident, otherwise she was actively engaging with an invisible person, hand motions pointing and all.

Are they more deserving of this accident than I am? Are other cities and nations more deserving of judgment than me in my comfortable square footage in the city I call home?

Not at all.

I feel this way with several of the intercession topics.

Sometimes we pray for the persecuted church in China or the end to sex trafficking and child exploitation.

Then I just remember how that could be me, a 25-year-old woman that cannot practice religion without physical persecution; persecution that many of us in the West have barely even smelled. I could be a 25-year-old woman and all I’ve ever known in life is oppression and sexual exploitation. At any given time, a man can and will enter my cage and rape me!

But, it’s not me, for God’s reason, but through the enemy, yet under God’s sovereignty, it is someone else. So we pray, we intercede for these children and women, halfway across the globe and in this very city, Atlanta, as the nation’s sex trafficking capital. We intercede for these people who will likely never know we are praying for them. That’s okay, no one needs to know.

That’s praying what’s on the Father’s heart. Feeling what He feels towards these injustices. Hating what He hates, and loving what He loves. Praying for what He would have us pray about, not just about what we want and what will satisfy our present desires.

It could've been me, yet it is someone else, so we pray. That’s intercession. You feel bad – for the injustices, You feel good – as in feeling His presence. You feel God.