Cavite Mission Trip

This reflection is based on my experiences in the most recent mission trip I was a part of. Though I have many highlights and learnings I can share from this experience, I am choosing to focus on intercession because it has been a journey since last year when I first saw intercession with disdain, thinking it was a very impractical gift and a waste of time. Over a few months, I finally came to acceptance, delight, and intercede as led and with limited understanding. I have been wanting to better understand what intercession is, and the experiences from this trip feel like a beginning of revelation deposited to continue stewarding beyond this trip.

I was resting by the side where the children were playing. One boy caught my attention as he kept wheeling over his train in my direction. Later, he progressed to show me an interesting flag he had. There were four rows of various country flags - two at the top; and two at the bottom. At the center was the blue star of Israel.

He kept naming countries I had not seen before. In my curiosity to find out if he was just naming randomly, I pointed to one flag I knew and he gave me the correct name for it. I wanted to point to more flags I knew. But, he kept pointing to other flags I could not recognise and proceeded to name them again. He continued like this for two days and I treated it like a normal playtime. Upon conversing with the father, he confirmed that his son had been memorising country flags since the age of two and is not randomly inventing country names to me.

On the third day, while worship was going on, I was in the hall shooting photos as usual, when I felt God stopping me in my tracks and saying, “My affections are for the nations...” Being oblivious that He was getting my attention, I was going to continue being task-oriented. He continued the sentence with “…but I am not having them.”

I was taken aback and found it confusing because I was immersed in an environment the locals were worshipping, so I asked, “What about this nation? Don’t You have them?” He reminded me about the entrenched practices of the locals and the playtime when I could not recognise most flags. He replied, “Not fully. I long for this nation to fully return to Me. I long for all nations, even those that you have no recognition of their existence - the unreached and unknown to you - to return to Me. I long for every nation to respond to the question “Is He worthy?” with a resounding “yes.” My affections are for all nations, but I am not having them.” For the first time, I felt my heart breaking like His.

Through this experience, I gained a deeper understanding of the heart of intercession. It became clear to me that intercession does involve creating a space to hear the very intercessions of Jesus Himself and then aligning mine with His. As I reflected on John 17 and Hebrews 7:25, which reveal that Jesus is continually interceding for us, I realised that the practice of intercession requires me to attune my heart to the longings of Christ. I have to be willing to listen for His specific burdens and intercessions, and then pray them back to the Father in accordance with what is on the heart of the Son. It begets the question, “Jesus, what are you interceding for today?”

Moreover, my perspective on intercession expanded beyond mere spoken words - something I have been very used to doing alone. As I joined in corporate worship, singing about the worthiness of Jesus, I sensed a transcendence occur. The songs became more than just music and lyrics for me to engage in worship myself. I realised how singing those words leads to an embodied response of hope and intercession welling up from within – a unified cry for all nations to one day sing praises to the Worthy One and for the fulfillment of Revelation 15:4. Intercession allows me direct access to His heart and includes engaging in songs that prophetically usher in the day when He fully has the worship of all nations for Himself. The songs are what He wills for the nations to sing, and He deserves to have all nations reconciled to Himself because He is worthy.