When you sense the anointing of God on something in prayer, stay with it and don’t stop until you sense Him leading you in another direction. Pray persistently every time He leads you to do so. God is infinitely kinder than that stubborn, old judge in Luke 18, and when He sees that you know His will and refuse to settle for anything less, He answers.
None of this means that prayer still cannot be simple. Just because we persist does not mean we have to get complicated. As we pray, we are partnering with God by giving voice to His will in the earth. Prayer requires a commitment; it can definitely be an effort, but does not have to be hard. Prayer is even considered by some to be work, and indeed it is. It is a work in the Spirit that accomplishes tremendous things in the earth.
SUMMARY
Many people pray more prayers of petition than any other type of prayer. God wants us to ask Him for what we need and He loves to bless us. However, we do need to make sure that our requests do not outweigh our praise and gratitude.
When we approach God with a petition, we need to do so with boldness and confidence in our position as His sons and daughters. On our own, we are not worthy to pray, but the blood of Jesus makes us totally righteous before God, so we never need to be timid or ashamed when we pray.
Some prayers require persistence—a persevering attitude that refuses to quit praying until God answers. Perseverance is not arrogant; it is a spiritual dynamic that requires spiritual strength. We must not be lazy in prayer. Sometimes, all God is looking for is someone who will ask—ask boldly and persist until the breakthrough comes.
Prayer Points
• Prayers of petition are prayers in which we make our requests of the Lord. It is awesome to pray and ask God for something, believe Him to do it and see it come to pass, but we need to balance our asking with praise and thanksgiving.
• God will give us the desires of our hearts if we delight in Him. We should not allow soulish desires to get out of balance. Instead, we should surrender our desires to God and let the Holy Spirit lead us as we make requests in prayer.
• Jesus makes us righteous. His sacrifice on the cross puts us in a right relationship with God. Therefore, we can approach God with boldness and confidence when we pray.
• The prayer of importunity is prayer that does not quit. It keeps knocking on the door of heaven with persistence and faith until an answer comes.
• Receive “prayer assignments” from God and let Him use you mightily to keep someone else in His will.
• Learn to recognize the anointing of the Holy Spirit on a specific prayer—a grace, a flow, an ease, and a sense of power as you pray about it. As long as the anointing is there, continue to persevere. When it lifts, release the matter and thank God for hearing and answering your prayer.
8
Intercession and
Agreement
Prayer is a personal relationship, an intimate activity that takes place primarily between God and an individual. But, as believers, we do not exist in a vacuum. We are part of God’s family; we are connected to the body of Christ, and part of the power of the Christian life is found in our relationships with other people. God uses them to sharpen us, to strengthen us, to help us, to celebrate with us, and to walk with us through the ups and downs of everyday life.
Just as our relationships are an important part of our social lives, they are equally or more important in our prayer lives. Sometimes we pray for the people around us and sometimes we pray with them. When we pray for them, we are praying prayers of intercession, and when we pray with them, we are praying prayers of agreement. Both types of prayer are extremely powerful and we need to understand them and know how to operate in them.
THE PRAYER OF INTERCESSION
Intercession is simply praying for someone besides yourself. It is crying out to God on someone else’s behalf and taking their needs to Him in prayer. Intercession is one of the most important kinds of prayer because many people do not pray for themselves or do not know how. Why? Because they have no relationship with God. There are also times when circumstances are so difficult, stress is so high, the hurt is too great, things are so confusing, that people do not know how to pray for their own situations. And there are times when people have prayed and prayed and prayed for themselves and they simply have no strength left to pray.
There are all kinds of reasons people cannot or do not pray, but what is most important is when we encounter these people or become aware of a believer who cannot pray, we step in for them before God and pray on their behalf as the Holy Spirit leads. For example, I once visited a friend who was in the hospital suffering with cancer. She had fought a valiant fight and prayed like a warrior, but she reached a point where she was not strong enough to pray the way she wanted to and she said, “Joyce, I just cannot pray anymore.” She needed her friends to pray for her—not just to pray for her, but to really pray for her—to pray in her place because she could not.
I encourage you to draw nearer to God by joining Jesus in His ministry of intercession.
Both Andrew Murray and Watchman Nee write about intercession as a “priestly” function—as a believer’s opportunity to participate in Jesus’ ministry of praying for people. Watchman Nee says, “We stand before the Lord to pray for other people. Actually this is fellowship with the Lord in His high-priestly function. How He Himself intercedes unceasingly for His people and their needs.”1 Andrew Murray writes that a priest “does not at all live for himself. He lives with God and for God.. . .He lives with [others] and for [others]. His work is to find out their sin and need, and to bring it before God, to offer sacrifice and incense in their name, to obtain forgiveness and blessing for them, and then to come out and bless them in His Name.”2
I encourage you to draw nearer to God by joining Jesus in His ministry of intercession. Your family and friends need your prayers; your neighbors and coworkers need your prayers; the people of your church, your community, and the world need your prayers. We live in difficult days and we must pray for one another. Your intercession is the most powerful, most valuable gift you can ever give to those around you and it will make an eternal difference in their lives and in yours. There may be times when you are the only person on earth praying for someone else—and your intercession can change that person’s entire life.
Standing in the Gap
A gap is a space between two things; it keeps two objects, two spaces, two entities, or two people from being connected to each other. When I preach in foreign countries, there is a gap between the audience and me. There may be a physical gap if I am on a platform; there may be a cultural gap; but I am most concerned about the language gap. If I want the people to understand me, I need a translator, someone to stand in the language gap for me so that I can communicate the message effectively. The translator has to work on my behalf so that the gap can be eliminated and the people can comprehend what I am saying.
Ezekiel 22:29–31 talks about standing in the gap—and I think this passage contains one of the saddest statements in the Bible: “The people of the land have used oppression and extortion and have committed robbery; yes, they have wronged and vexed the poor and needy; yes, they have oppressed the stranger and temporary resident wrongfully. And I sought a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the gap before Me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none. Therefore have I poured out My indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of My wrath; their own way have I repaid [by bringing it] upon their own heads, says the Lord God” (emphasis mine).
God was basically saying, “I needed somebody to pray, and I couldn’t find anybody who would, so I had to destroy the land.” All He needed was one person to pray, and the whole land could have been spared. Do you see how important intercession is? Just one person could have made a major difference in an entire country and saved the entire place through prayer! We need to be willing to pray; we need to be sensitive to those times when the Holy Spirit is leading us to intercede and we n
eed to obey. We never know when our prayer might be the very one needed to fill a gap and result in connecting God’s power with a desperate situation.
God Changes His Mind
You can see from the story in Ezekiel that intercession is mighty and that one person’s prayers could have saved many others. But do you know that intercession can also change God’s mind? As a result of prayer, God can actually reconsider something He had planned to do.
Remember this story? “The Lord said to Moses, Go down, for your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves; they have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them; they have made them a molten calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, These are your gods, O Israel, that brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” (Exodus 32:7–8).
What happened was Moses went up Mount Sinai to get the Ten Commandments and was gone longer than the people wanted him to be. In the absence of their leader, they forgot the Lord, gave in to their fleshly desires, and decided to melt all their jewelry to make a golden calf and worship it. God spoke to Moses on the mountain and said, essentially, You better get back down there, because the people have really gotten themselves in a mess. And I’m angry about it. (Thank God, Psalm 30:5 says that His anger only lasts a moment, but His mercy is forever!)
The story continues: “And the Lord said to Moses, I’ve seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people; now therefore let Me alone, that My wrath may burn hot against them and that I may destroy them; but I will make of you a great nation” (Exodus 32:9–10).
It’s a good thing Moses was a godly man, or he might have said, Terrific idea, God! Forget about them, and do something great with me. Instead, Moses began to intercede for the people because he cared so much about them. The Bible says, “Moses besought the Lord his God” (Exodus 32:11). That means he would not leave God alone. But God had already said, Leave me alone. Don’t come praying, because if you do, I’m going to have to hear you. But Moses persisted: “Lord, why does Your wrath blaze hot against Your people, whom You have brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand?” (Exodus 32:11). Moses refused to give up because the issue was not settled in his heart. He loved the people; he knew the nature of God; and he knew the character of God. On top of that, he knew that God really loved the people and did not really want to leave them stranded.
So how did Moses approach this situation as He prayed and talked to God about it? He actually asked Him to change His mind (see Exodus 32:12) and basically said, Now, come on, God. You don’t want Your reputation to be ruined among the Egyptians. You don’t want them to say that You aren’t able to deliver Your people. You don’t want them to think You just let Your people suffer and die out in the wilderness. Come on, God, this is not about us, this is about You. I’m just asking You, God, to deliver them, not for themselves, because they are really rascals, but for the sake of Your name. I really don’t want Your reputation to be affected by all this, so, God, why don’t You just go ahead and deliver them so that everybody knows You’re great? (see Exodus 32:12, 13).
The Bible says God changed His mind. Exodus 32:14 actually reads: “Then the Lord turned from the evil which He had thought to do to His people.” That’s part of the purpose and the power of intercession. We can make a difference when we pray!
Intercession Makes a Difference
Throughout this book, I hope you have been learning from various stories and examples how much power there is in prayer and what a great difference prayer makes in people’s lives when we pray for them. Let me share one specific and very practical situation in my life in which intercession really made a difference. I was having great difficulty disciplining myself to exercise. I am normally a disciplined person, but I just could not seem to stay on a regular exercise program. Frankly, I hated it! Exercise was absolutely the worst kind of bondage for me. Now, of course, Dave has been exercising all of his life. So his great discipline was always lurking nearby, condemning me every day. On top of that, every doctor I went to wanted to know: “Are you exercising?” And I always had to say, “Well, no.” Worst of all, I kept seeing more of my body move from where it was supposed to be to places it was definitely not supposed to be. When I looked in the mirror, I asked myself, “Where did Joyce go?” And when I finally realized I was the woman in the mirror, I asked, “What do we do about all this ‘dimply’ stuff?” The answer was always the same: exercise. So I groaned and grumbled and started all kinds of exercise programs, which only lasted until my muscles became sore. Then I would stop the program, because I did not enjoy intentionally making myself uncomfortable.
Then a very anointed friend of ours called me and said: “Joyce, I feel like God’s put it on my heart to pray for you for one thing that you want personally—not anything to do with your ministry, just something you want.”
Well, I know this man to be a powerful intercessor, so I thought: I’m going to think this over carefully, because I’ll probably get whatever he prays for. I thought and thought and came to the conclusion that I would ask him to pray for me to be able to develop the discipline to exercise. I knew I needed to because I want to be around for the long haul. I want to be around to aggravate the devil until Jesus comes back! So I finally responded, “I want you to pray that I’ll be able to discipline myself to stick with a good exercise program.”
Simply sharing that weakness with that intercessor and saying, “I cannot discipline myself in this area” was incredibly powerful and very freeing. After he began to pray for me, I was able to exercise—consistently and in a disciplined way—for the first time in my life. Not long after I started, I even got to the point that I could say, “I’m beginning to actually enjoy exercising.”
A Burden to Pray
Sometimes, as you are praying for others, you will get what is called a burden, or a prayer burden, or an intercessory burden. A burden is something that comes to your heart and feels weighty and important; it is something you cannot shake. Sometimes you do not even know what the burden is or you do not fully understand it; you only know that you have to pray.
A burden is something that comes to your heart and feels weighty and important; it is something you cannot shake.
I had a prayer burden not long ago. I was trying to watch something on television, a program I really wanted to watch. But I had a hard time concentrating on the show and just felt weepy. I could not figure out what was wrong with me, but my insides seemed to be saying, “Ugh!” So I turned off the television, lay facedown on the floor, and started to pray and weep before the Lord. Suddenly, a young lady came to my mind. I knew that she was going through a rough time, and for about fifteen minutes, I prayed and interceded and cried and prayed for her. Once I did that, after I prayed through it, the burden lifted. I got back up, watched my movie, and everything was fine.
Let me share something about a prayer burden: you cannot make it up and you cannot fake it. But if you try to ignore a prayer burden, you will not be able to find relief. If you have never experienced anything like what happened to me and you do find yourself with a prayer burden at some point, do not start wondering if something is wrong with you. God does not give me burdens like that often; most of my prayers are just simple, normal, ordinary prayers. On the other hand, some people seem to get a prayer burden every time they close their eyes. I have a good friend who is an intercessor, and every time she begins to pray, within five minutes, she is bawling like a baby. She has a different kind of call than I do, but I do not feel unspiritual when I pray with her. When God gives me a burden, I respond appropriately; but when He does not, I do not feel condemned or start wondering if there is something wrong with my spiritual life.
As intercessors, we must learn how to get our assignments from God, and know how to distinguish whether something is a real burden from God or not. Also, intercessors do not try to do what God has called someone else to do; they simply obey God by faithfully praying for the things for
which God is calling them to pray and they stick with it until the burden lifts.
We all have the ministry of intercession, the responsibility to pray for others as God leads. Some people are called and especially gifted in the ministry of intercession and we might say that they stand in the spiritual office of an intercessor. They may pray for others many hours every day or several times a week. They often speak of God waking them up at night to pray. These people may experience things in prayer that others do not, but remember that God is teaching us to pray as individuals. We don’t have to be intimidated by someone else’s experience in prayer.
Find Your Place in Prayer
Every believer is called to pray and intercede, but not everyone is called into the “spiritual office” of an intercessor. For example, I believe God has called Dave as an intercessor for America. He seems to have an “official” assignment from the Lord to pray for our country, a true burden for national issues and affairs, a longing to see revival in our land and a deep sustained interest in the things that concern the United States. He diligently studies American history and stays informed about what is going on in the government of our country. There is also an unusual fervency that accompanies his prayers. That’s what I mean by a person who functions in the office of an intercessor.