Intercession Over Infatuation
Two of entertainment’s biggest nights land two weeks apart this month — the Emmys on September 14, the MTV Video Music Awards on September 27. Red carpets, acceptance speeches, the year’s most celebrated work, all broadcast to a culture that pays close attention to who gets crowned.
There’s a normal pull in watching that: admiration, comparison, maybe a little envy, maybe a quiet fantasy about being the one walking that carpet someday. None of that makes you a bad creative. It makes you a creative watching other creatives get celebrated for the thing you’re also trying to do well.
But there’s a choice in how to hold that pull, and it comes down to a posture AXL keeps coming back to: intercession over infatuation.
Infatuation watches awards season and asks, mostly, what does this mean for me. Am I ever going to be in that room? Is my work good enough to be recognized like that? It fixes attention on a version of yourself that hasn’t arrived yet, measured against people you’ve never met.
Intercession watches the same broadcast and asks a different question: what is being shaped here, and who’s in the room shaping it. It prays for the actual people — the artists, writers, and performers being celebrated, many of whom are carrying real pressure, real isolation, and real spiritual need behind the applause. It prays for what’s being platformed and normalized in front of an audience of millions. It prays for the AXL creatives watching at home, that their own hunger for that stage wouldn’t quietly become the thing they worship.
This isn’t a blanket endorsement of tuning in, and it isn’t a warning to stay away either. Both instincts skip the actual work. Treating the broadcast as harmless entertainment everyone should watch ignores what infatuation can quietly do to an unguarded heart. Treating it as something to fear and avoid altogether skips the possibility that God might actually assign some creatives to that exact room, on that exact night, to carry presence into it.
The real question isn’t is it okay to watch. It’s do I know my assignment for this season. Some of AXL’s own creatives may be called to watch closely — to intercede in real time, to understand the culture they’re being sent into, to build relationships and credibility in rooms like that one. Others may be in a season where the wiser move is distance, because their heart isn’t currently steady enough to watch without infatuation taking over. Neither posture is more spiritual than the other. What matters is knowing which one is actually yours right now, rather than defaulting to a rule because it’s easier than discernment.
That’s wisdom, not a policy. Ask God directly: is this mine to watch this year, and if so, for what purpose? If you don’t have a clear answer, that uncertainty itself is worth sitting with before you press play.
If you do watch, a few practical ways to hold intercession instead of infatuation: When someone’s name is called, pray for them by name before you react to the result. Notice envy or comparison when it shows up, and bring it to God honestly rather than letting it sit unexamined. Ask what culture is being formed in that room — what’s being celebrated, what’s being normalized — and pray into that, not just the individual moments. Let the broadcast prompt intercession for the industry itself: the people in it who don’t yet know they’re known and loved by God.
Awards season will keep happening every year, with or without AXL’s attention. Whether you tune in or sit this one out, know your assignment, know your season, and let wisdom — not habit, not fear, not a blanket rule either way — make the call. And if you do watch, watch as someone interceding for the people on that stage, not someone infatuated with a stage they haven’t been given.