How To Pray Intercessory Prayers, And How To Become A Intercessor?
Question : How to pray Intercessory prayers, and how to become a intercessor? What is this level of prayer actually? Can you please enlighten us by the Holy Sprit's help. Thank you.
Answer: Greetings in Jesus wonderful name! The word 'intercede' means 'intervene on behalf of another.' So Intercessory prayer is the prayers we make on behalf of others to God. In the Old Testament times all men and women of God learned to intercede on behalf of their friends (Job 42:7-10), fellow Brothers, Sisters and Citizens (Exo 32:31-35; Num 11:1-2), armies of their nations (1 Sam 7:7-12), family members (Job 1:4-5, 10; 1 Sam 30:6-8), leaders of their nation (Exo 17:9-16), etc...God answered their prayers whenever they interceded with their pleas for God to intervene in the hopeless situation of all those for whom they prayed for with their whole heart. God loves to answer the prayer of intercession because prayer is the force on earth which is able to bring God in control of his own creation to fulfill His purpose for all of those who are living in it. Jesus taught His disciples a pattern of prayer in which we can see this intercessory statement in all the entire lines of it when it says, "Our Father....Your Kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us...forgive us...forgive our...do not lead us...but deliver us...Yours is the kingdom, power and glory forever. Amen!" (Matt 6:10-13). What do we notice in the above prayer, it does not teach us to say 'I, Me or Myself,' rather it emphasizes the importance of collective prayer of intercession which say 'You, Us and Ourselves,' for all of us together and not just pray for our self individually. Intercession starts when a heart is in love with God and wants to take the burden which is in God's heart to bring it to pass on earth through our prayer for the glory of God. When we love God, we will naturally love others who are created in His image as our fellow humans. The Bible clearly reveals that if we say that we love God and hate our Brothers, we have become liars, in other words our love for God starts when we start to love those whom we see are in need, and do that action that comes out of our love to be actually done as though we are doing for God (1 John 4:20-21). Every actions that we do for others in need considering our work to be done for the Lord actually becomes a work done to the Lord (Col 3:23-25). This is the core principle we are applying in our Intercessory selfless prayers that we do for others, in doing prayers with such motives we actually get the burden of God for others from His heart and then start to love them supernaturally through our Intercessory prayers for them towards God which then is considered by God as the work done for Him (Matt 25:45; Prov 19:17). In other words, Prayer is not just a work that help us to fulfill the greater works that God does through us— intercessory prayer is the greatest work that we can do for God because taking our prayer as a material for the miracle that is in needed in other people's lives, God then starts to work independently based on the space that we have given Him to fulfill the perfect will of God in others lives through our prayer (Col 4:12-13).
God has set a law for earth in heaven that He himself will not break as a righteous God, it is the law of how He should move in partnership with humans through their prayer on earth, and without them not to intervene on it as He himself has given the reigns of ruling the earth to humans (Job 38:33-34; Gen 1:26; Psa 115:16; Matt 19:26). During one of the driest spiritual time in the nation of Israel, God was looking for just one man in partnership to do the intercessory prayer for Him to intervene and change the scenario of the entire nation. But sadly He did not find even one, as a result of lack of Intercessors God's wrath has overtaken the entire nation of Israel (Isa 59:16; Ezek 22:30). Finally when He was not finding any intercessor on earth not even one, God's heart broke and He sent His only begotten Son for the prime purpose of interceding for the entire humanity as a full human so that God's wrath upon the earth can be avoided and delayed until the time of the end in which His Tribulation will be for a moment of time after which blessings of God's rule would be established through Jesus on earth so that His perfect will could be fulfilled for all humans through God's grace that they will receive through Jesus from Jerusalem (Matt 5:35; 1 Tim 2:5). So what is Jesus doing in heaven, He is not sitting idly having no other work but to rule over the universe, but rather He is there interceding for everyone of us on earth who are God's children and also for the unsaved to turn to Him and be saved (Heb 7:25; Rom 8:34; 1 Tim 2:3-4).
Jesus now wants all of God's children and the Church as a whole to co-operate in this ministry of intercession with Him. That is why Jesus said to His disciples, "a lot of things I cannot say and make you understand the importance of your intercession before my death, but when I die and then go to heaven to release by God's appointment the Holy Spirit and make Him come in to you, He will hear my heart of intercession in heaven and reveal it to God through your prayer to God on earth to fulfill the Father's heart of blessing and grace for all humanity." (John 14:26; 16:7, 12-15, Paraphrased).
We know that God does not hear the prayer of a unrighteous person because with a heart that regards iniquity, his prayer becomes an abomination to Him (John 9:31; Prov 15:29; 28:9; Psa 66:18; 1 Peter 3:12). But God has made us who believed in Jesus to have become His righteousness, we stand before God now not by our own spiritual qualification or righteousness, but rather in Christ Jesus who makes the Holy Spirit pray through us His will and overcomes our weakness in our natural self that weakens our prayer because of the sin nature that resides in us (2 Cor 5:21; 1 Cor 1:30; Rom 8:26-27; James 5:17-18). The bottom line is, Jesus is praying for us in heaven and so our Heavenly Father God is standing for us and against all those who are standing against us, now God wants us to take the help of the Holy Spirit and pray that prayer of Jesus on earth to release it to God to bring back God's answer for us, our nations, our political leaders, even our enemies who are actually the enemies of God and finally intercede with the help of the Holy Spirit for our own lives and families (Rom 8:34, 31, 26-27). This will only release the huge blessing and grace of Jesus that He has for all of us. So the Church together, and we as individual saints should learn to co-operate with the Holy Spirit to fulfill God's will for us and all the humanity more and more through our everyday Holy Ghost inspired, produced and pronounced prayers of intercession to God through us.
There is an erroneous idea in contemporary Christianity that those who offer up intercessory prayers are a special class of “super-Christians,” called by God to a specific ministry of intercession. The Bible is clear that all Christians are called to be intercessors (1 Tim 2:1-2). The only thing we need to learn to move in the intercessory prayers that God hears is to selflessly move in to pray the prayer of the Spirit, which can be a empowered prayer that comes in our natural language we know or it comes in tongues easily to those who receive "the gift of the Holy Spirit or the Baptism in the Holy Spirit" (Eph 6:18-19; Luke 11:13; Acts 2:4, 38-39; 19:2, 6) by asking Jesus to give them that which He has promised in His Word (Matt 3:11; John 7:37-39; 14:16; Luke 24:49).
Paul sought prayer on his behalf from all the Roman believers (Romans 15:30). He also urged the Colossians and Ephesians to intercede for him and his preaching to come out with the power of God to touch the hearts of the hearers and change their lives for eternity (Col 4:2-3; Eph 6:18-20). The simple believers of the Church interceded for Apostle Peter who was on death sentence, hearing their prayers God miraculously and supernaturally sent an angel to free the apostle and lead him to those who were in prayer for him, to make them know that God hears the intercession of all believers who pray in the will of God for His Glory (Acts 12:5, 11-12). This is not a privilege limited to an exclusive Christian elite or a special group of people who have a intercessory gift; Note that nowhere in the Bible we see biblical request for intercession to a certain group of people who could intercede in the New Testament times. Jesus has clearly said that the least of the saint in our New Testament time has the Kingdom of God within and therefore is greater than the greatest prophet of the Old Testament times who is none other than John the Baptist (Matt 11:11-12). Even the least of the least saint has been given the Holy Spirit personally within them at all times in our New Testament times which was not available during the Old Testament period, so God has to specially give the prophets an unction to intercede during the Old Testament times so that when they fail to intercede with the gift God had given them specially, hence they were held accountable for it and it was considered a sin by God because people perished by their lack of intercession (Heb 13:5; 1 Sam 19:23-24; 12:23; Luke 12:48). The idea of intercession as the privilege and calling of only some Christians is without Biblical basis of the Scriptural revelation, and worse that can happen through such wrong thinking is the snare of pride and a sense of superiority that comes to them where God starts to resist them as time goes on without change in such people's lives. So to intercede in prayer is the command given to to all of us who are believers who have the Holy Spirit within us when we were born again, who gives us His empowered prayers and reveals thoughts of God's will within our mind to help us overcome our weakness to pray the prayer that God hears which is in His will (Rom 8:26-27; 1 John 3:20-23; 5:14-15; James 1:5-8). The Holy Spirit understand the thoughts of God which are in His will and reveals it to Jesus (John 16:15, 13-14), who again intercedes for us by forming the right prayer for it which will get answers from God (Rom 8:34), the Holy Spirit then again takes those perfect prayers of Jesus and prays to intercede within us those prayers which are received by God and answered back to all humanity in every part of the world (Rom 8:23, 26-27).
So why wait, start to offer from today your Spirit empowered and uttered intercessory prayers for : all in authority (1 Timothy 2:2); ministers (Philippians 1:19); Jerusalem (Psalm 122:6); friends (Job 42:8); fellow countrymen (Romans 10:1); the sick (James 5:14); enemies (Jeremiah 29:7); those who persecute us (Matthew 5:44); those who forsake us (2 Timothy 4:16); and all men who need salvation (1 Timothy 2:1). Prayer is a skill that is learned by us easily in doing rather in hearing about it. When ever you see any person, within your heart start to speak to God in your thoughts to meet their needs, save them from sin, heal their sickness, give them love if they feel rejection, help you meet their need tangibly if possible, pray for their joy and peace, etc... because of what Jesus has already done for them on the Cross....with this will start your intercessory life of prayer. Believe me, the greatest prayer of intercession starts with revealing and asking God with our thoughts, which then can go on increasing in different types, methods and ways of prayer which we can learn to do further and further as we keep graduating in higher plane in the school of prayer that the Holy Spirit conducts in our Christian life.
A wonderful model of intercessory prayer is found in Daniel 9. It has all the elements of true intercessory prayer. It is in response to the Word (v. 2); characterized by fervency (v. 3) and self-denial (v. 4); identified unselfishly with God’s people (v. 5); strengthened by confession (v. 5-15); dependent on God’s character (vv. 4, 7, 9, 15); and has as its goal God’s glory (vv. 16-19). When we take this prayer of Daniel as a model prayer, we begin to see that he did not say, 'O Lord by my righteous life that I have lived, answer me my Lord, no by no means, but rather identifying himself along with all their people as one who sinned before Him, he realized that they were not worthy to receive His mercy, he understood that God answers only humility in heart therefore through it he appealed to God and received God's answer promptly....' We as the children of God should appeal always in our intercessory prayer to God through the worthiness of Jesus and receive His answers promptly with out our self effort (Acts 3:12, 16). Always when answers come to us or to others through God's miraculous intervention in Jesus name through our intercessory prayers, give all the glory back to God who deserves it all (Psa 115:1; Luke 17:18; 1 Cor 10:31; Col 3:23, 17). As intercessory prayer is self-less, it takes no glory for what God does but instead without fail will give all the glory back to God to whom it belongs. Praise the Lord!
So may the Lord help us all to do intercessory prayers all the time and be an intercessor along with our Jesus who is our lead intercessor with whom we join and alter the destiny of the entire humanity on earth. Here is a promise given to us that our intercessory prayer will be answered if we understand His High priesthood and pray with Him, "Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them." (Heb 7:25). In other words, God is able to save all humanity from all problems through us if we come to Him by joining hands with Jesus to pray the exact intercessory prayer that He has for each of those situations in God's will. So stop procrastinating and start immediately your intercessory prayer to turn the world upside down for Jesus (Acts 17:6). Hallelujah!
Much Blessings....
Answer: Greetings in Jesus wonderful name! The word 'intercede' means 'intervene on behalf of another.' So Intercessory prayer is the prayers we make on behalf of others to God. In the Old Testament times all men and women of God learned to intercede on behalf of their friends (Job 42:7-10), fellow Brothers, Sisters and Citizens (Exo 32:31-35; Num 11:1-2), armies of their nations (1 Sam 7:7-12), family members (Job 1:4-5, 10; 1 Sam 30:6-8), leaders of their nation (Exo 17:9-16), etc...God answered their prayers whenever they interceded with their pleas for God to intervene in the hopeless situation of all those for whom they prayed for with their whole heart. God loves to answer the prayer of intercession because prayer is the force on earth which is able to bring God in control of his own creation to fulfill His purpose for all of those who are living in it. Jesus taught His disciples a pattern of prayer in which we can see this intercessory statement in all the entire lines of it when it says, "Our Father....Your Kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us...forgive us...forgive our...do not lead us...but deliver us...Yours is the kingdom, power and glory forever. Amen!" (Matt 6:10-13). What do we notice in the above prayer, it does not teach us to say 'I, Me or Myself,' rather it emphasizes the importance of collective prayer of intercession which say 'You, Us and Ourselves,' for all of us together and not just pray for our self individually. Intercession starts when a heart is in love with God and wants to take the burden which is in God's heart to bring it to pass on earth through our prayer for the glory of God. When we love God, we will naturally love others who are created in His image as our fellow humans. The Bible clearly reveals that if we say that we love God and hate our Brothers, we have become liars, in other words our love for God starts when we start to love those whom we see are in need, and do that action that comes out of our love to be actually done as though we are doing for God (1 John 4:20-21). Every actions that we do for others in need considering our work to be done for the Lord actually becomes a work done to the Lord (Col 3:23-25). This is the core principle we are applying in our Intercessory selfless prayers that we do for others, in doing prayers with such motives we actually get the burden of God for others from His heart and then start to love them supernaturally through our Intercessory prayers for them towards God which then is considered by God as the work done for Him (Matt 25:45; Prov 19:17). In other words, Prayer is not just a work that help us to fulfill the greater works that God does through us— intercessory prayer is the greatest work that we can do for God because taking our prayer as a material for the miracle that is in needed in other people's lives, God then starts to work independently based on the space that we have given Him to fulfill the perfect will of God in others lives through our prayer (Col 4:12-13).
God has set a law for earth in heaven that He himself will not break as a righteous God, it is the law of how He should move in partnership with humans through their prayer on earth, and without them not to intervene on it as He himself has given the reigns of ruling the earth to humans (Job 38:33-34; Gen 1:26; Psa 115:16; Matt 19:26). During one of the driest spiritual time in the nation of Israel, God was looking for just one man in partnership to do the intercessory prayer for Him to intervene and change the scenario of the entire nation. But sadly He did not find even one, as a result of lack of Intercessors God's wrath has overtaken the entire nation of Israel (Isa 59:16; Ezek 22:30). Finally when He was not finding any intercessor on earth not even one, God's heart broke and He sent His only begotten Son for the prime purpose of interceding for the entire humanity as a full human so that God's wrath upon the earth can be avoided and delayed until the time of the end in which His Tribulation will be for a moment of time after which blessings of God's rule would be established through Jesus on earth so that His perfect will could be fulfilled for all humans through God's grace that they will receive through Jesus from Jerusalem (Matt 5:35; 1 Tim 2:5). So what is Jesus doing in heaven, He is not sitting idly having no other work but to rule over the universe, but rather He is there interceding for everyone of us on earth who are God's children and also for the unsaved to turn to Him and be saved (Heb 7:25; Rom 8:34; 1 Tim 2:3-4).
Jesus now wants all of God's children and the Church as a whole to co-operate in this ministry of intercession with Him. That is why Jesus said to His disciples, "a lot of things I cannot say and make you understand the importance of your intercession before my death, but when I die and then go to heaven to release by God's appointment the Holy Spirit and make Him come in to you, He will hear my heart of intercession in heaven and reveal it to God through your prayer to God on earth to fulfill the Father's heart of blessing and grace for all humanity." (John 14:26; 16:7, 12-15, Paraphrased).
We know that God does not hear the prayer of a unrighteous person because with a heart that regards iniquity, his prayer becomes an abomination to Him (John 9:31; Prov 15:29; 28:9; Psa 66:18; 1 Peter 3:12). But God has made us who believed in Jesus to have become His righteousness, we stand before God now not by our own spiritual qualification or righteousness, but rather in Christ Jesus who makes the Holy Spirit pray through us His will and overcomes our weakness in our natural self that weakens our prayer because of the sin nature that resides in us (2 Cor 5:21; 1 Cor 1:30; Rom 8:26-27; James 5:17-18). The bottom line is, Jesus is praying for us in heaven and so our Heavenly Father God is standing for us and against all those who are standing against us, now God wants us to take the help of the Holy Spirit and pray that prayer of Jesus on earth to release it to God to bring back God's answer for us, our nations, our political leaders, even our enemies who are actually the enemies of God and finally intercede with the help of the Holy Spirit for our own lives and families (Rom 8:34, 31, 26-27). This will only release the huge blessing and grace of Jesus that He has for all of us. So the Church together, and we as individual saints should learn to co-operate with the Holy Spirit to fulfill God's will for us and all the humanity more and more through our everyday Holy Ghost inspired, produced and pronounced prayers of intercession to God through us.
There is an erroneous idea in contemporary Christianity that those who offer up intercessory prayers are a special class of “super-Christians,” called by God to a specific ministry of intercession. The Bible is clear that all Christians are called to be intercessors (1 Tim 2:1-2). The only thing we need to learn to move in the intercessory prayers that God hears is to selflessly move in to pray the prayer of the Spirit, which can be a empowered prayer that comes in our natural language we know or it comes in tongues easily to those who receive "the gift of the Holy Spirit or the Baptism in the Holy Spirit" (Eph 6:18-19; Luke 11:13; Acts 2:4, 38-39; 19:2, 6) by asking Jesus to give them that which He has promised in His Word (Matt 3:11; John 7:37-39; 14:16; Luke 24:49).
Paul sought prayer on his behalf from all the Roman believers (Romans 15:30). He also urged the Colossians and Ephesians to intercede for him and his preaching to come out with the power of God to touch the hearts of the hearers and change their lives for eternity (Col 4:2-3; Eph 6:18-20). The simple believers of the Church interceded for Apostle Peter who was on death sentence, hearing their prayers God miraculously and supernaturally sent an angel to free the apostle and lead him to those who were in prayer for him, to make them know that God hears the intercession of all believers who pray in the will of God for His Glory (Acts 12:5, 11-12). This is not a privilege limited to an exclusive Christian elite or a special group of people who have a intercessory gift; Note that nowhere in the Bible we see biblical request for intercession to a certain group of people who could intercede in the New Testament times. Jesus has clearly said that the least of the saint in our New Testament time has the Kingdom of God within and therefore is greater than the greatest prophet of the Old Testament times who is none other than John the Baptist (Matt 11:11-12). Even the least of the least saint has been given the Holy Spirit personally within them at all times in our New Testament times which was not available during the Old Testament period, so God has to specially give the prophets an unction to intercede during the Old Testament times so that when they fail to intercede with the gift God had given them specially, hence they were held accountable for it and it was considered a sin by God because people perished by their lack of intercession (Heb 13:5; 1 Sam 19:23-24; 12:23; Luke 12:48). The idea of intercession as the privilege and calling of only some Christians is without Biblical basis of the Scriptural revelation, and worse that can happen through such wrong thinking is the snare of pride and a sense of superiority that comes to them where God starts to resist them as time goes on without change in such people's lives. So to intercede in prayer is the command given to to all of us who are believers who have the Holy Spirit within us when we were born again, who gives us His empowered prayers and reveals thoughts of God's will within our mind to help us overcome our weakness to pray the prayer that God hears which is in His will (Rom 8:26-27; 1 John 3:20-23; 5:14-15; James 1:5-8). The Holy Spirit understand the thoughts of God which are in His will and reveals it to Jesus (John 16:15, 13-14), who again intercedes for us by forming the right prayer for it which will get answers from God (Rom 8:34), the Holy Spirit then again takes those perfect prayers of Jesus and prays to intercede within us those prayers which are received by God and answered back to all humanity in every part of the world (Rom 8:23, 26-27).
So why wait, start to offer from today your Spirit empowered and uttered intercessory prayers for : all in authority (1 Timothy 2:2); ministers (Philippians 1:19); Jerusalem (Psalm 122:6); friends (Job 42:8); fellow countrymen (Romans 10:1); the sick (James 5:14); enemies (Jeremiah 29:7); those who persecute us (Matthew 5:44); those who forsake us (2 Timothy 4:16); and all men who need salvation (1 Timothy 2:1). Prayer is a skill that is learned by us easily in doing rather in hearing about it. When ever you see any person, within your heart start to speak to God in your thoughts to meet their needs, save them from sin, heal their sickness, give them love if they feel rejection, help you meet their need tangibly if possible, pray for their joy and peace, etc... because of what Jesus has already done for them on the Cross....with this will start your intercessory life of prayer. Believe me, the greatest prayer of intercession starts with revealing and asking God with our thoughts, which then can go on increasing in different types, methods and ways of prayer which we can learn to do further and further as we keep graduating in higher plane in the school of prayer that the Holy Spirit conducts in our Christian life.
A wonderful model of intercessory prayer is found in Daniel 9. It has all the elements of true intercessory prayer. It is in response to the Word (v. 2); characterized by fervency (v. 3) and self-denial (v. 4); identified unselfishly with God’s people (v. 5); strengthened by confession (v. 5-15); dependent on God’s character (vv. 4, 7, 9, 15); and has as its goal God’s glory (vv. 16-19). When we take this prayer of Daniel as a model prayer, we begin to see that he did not say, 'O Lord by my righteous life that I have lived, answer me my Lord, no by no means, but rather identifying himself along with all their people as one who sinned before Him, he realized that they were not worthy to receive His mercy, he understood that God answers only humility in heart therefore through it he appealed to God and received God's answer promptly....' We as the children of God should appeal always in our intercessory prayer to God through the worthiness of Jesus and receive His answers promptly with out our self effort (Acts 3:12, 16). Always when answers come to us or to others through God's miraculous intervention in Jesus name through our intercessory prayers, give all the glory back to God who deserves it all (Psa 115:1; Luke 17:18; 1 Cor 10:31; Col 3:23, 17). As intercessory prayer is self-less, it takes no glory for what God does but instead without fail will give all the glory back to God to whom it belongs. Praise the Lord!
So may the Lord help us all to do intercessory prayers all the time and be an intercessor along with our Jesus who is our lead intercessor with whom we join and alter the destiny of the entire humanity on earth. Here is a promise given to us that our intercessory prayer will be answered if we understand His High priesthood and pray with Him, "Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them." (Heb 7:25). In other words, God is able to save all humanity from all problems through us if we come to Him by joining hands with Jesus to pray the exact intercessory prayer that He has for each of those situations in God's will. So stop procrastinating and start immediately your intercessory prayer to turn the world upside down for Jesus (Acts 17:6). Hallelujah!
Much Blessings....
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