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PRAYING IN THE SPIRIT SERIES
THE QUALITIES OF AN
INTERCESSOR
We are going to look into the necessary
qualities in order for us to be a successful intercessor. James 5:15, `and
the prayer of the faith will save the sick and the Lord will raise him up. And
if he has committed sin, he will be forgiven. Confess your trespasses to one
another and pray for one another so that you maybe healed. The effective
fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.’ Elijah was a man with a nature
like one. And he prayed earnestly that it would not rain. And it did not rain
on the land for three years and six months. And he prayed again and the heaven
gave rain and the earth produced its fruit.
Here we have Elijah as an example of an intercessor.
Elijah was a successful intercessor before he was a successful prophet. In many
of the men of God we read about in the Bible, their prayer lives were the
hallmark of their greatness. It was their prayer life and their ability to
speak with God face to face regarding the events of this world that causes them
to stand head and shoulders above the other men who live on the planet earth.
Almost everyone whom we could describe as a great man of God in the Bible was
an intercessor. Abraham was one and so was Moses, so was Elijah, so was Daniel
and so was Our Lord Jesus Christ, so was Apostle Paul. So we see that the
ability to intercede precedes ministry.
If we put ministry above intercession we
will loose the whole meaning of it and become professional in it. We loose the
very purpose of the ministry. Intercession is the key to whatever ministries
God has called us. God may call us to be apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor
and teacher but above all these God calls each one of us to the intercessory
ministry. Before Elijah entered the ministry of an intercessor, James 5: 17 tells us that he was a man like us. But because he was a man
of prayer, he could do things that were beyond what a normal man would have
been able to do. It was him that did it. It was his ability to get God to move.
When Elijah came to King Ahab’s palace and said, `there will be no rain except
according to my word.’ James 5:17 tell us that it is because Elijah had prayed.
It is not like Elijah was doing something and then God came to Elijah and said,
`Go to King Ahab and tell him, there will be no rain except according to my
word.’ That was not the picture. James 5: 17 give us a different picture. It
tells us that in 1 Kg.17:1 that Elijah was praying. He saw the sin of
Lets read carefully in verse 17 it says, `Elijah
was a man with a nature like ours and he prayed earnestly that it would not
rain.’ Notice he prayed for it not to rain. He prayed and he prayed until
he got his answer to his prayer. Then he came to King Ahab. Turn to 1 King
17:1. Notice the impact of his statement. He says, ` there is no rain until I
say so.’ I am the one who turned the tap off. See God will not let rain come
down until the one who stopped it, say start it. That’s the revelation that
James had that was not there in the Old Testament. James tells us it is his
prayer life. That is the reason why he
could speak with such authority to King Ahab and say, `there will be no rain
except at my word.’ Imagine that the rain for the whole nation was controlled
by one man’s word. The rain stopped for 3 years and the heavens were like
brass. There was not even dew on the earth. And king
Ahab send an emissary to look high and low for this man who said, `there will
be no rain.’ At first they may have treated it as a joke. For one month there
was no rain. The trees were looking like autumn. For one year there was no
rain. Things were drying up. Now they are desperate.
Effectiveness
Lets’ get back to that man who said that there will be no rain
until I say so. Now there are certain key forces that Elijah tapped on.
And that is highlighted by James in the book of James 5: 16. In the second
sentence there, `the
effective fervent prayer of a righteous man avail much.’ Let’s look at that
first word there. The word effectual speaks about something that has an ability
to influence and affect circumstances, events or whatever. In order to be
effectual we need to know what the effect is to be. For
example when the carpenters make a chair, whose steel has been molded into a
certain manner. They have a certain shape in mind, a certain design. We
realize that brute force alone is not good. Brute force has to be directed into
a certain direction, into a certain form for it to be effective. So for our
prayers to be effective and result in something, we need a direction to move
into.
So there is where we say first quality, if
you wait to have a successful intercessory ministry, you must know what the
desired result is. We need to know what we want. Kenneth Hagin
once made this statement in the Word of Faith magazine, "The reason why
people don’t receive what they are to receive of the benefit of God, the
promotion of God is because they are not sure whether it is God’s will for
them." They are uncertain of God’s will and that hindered their prayers.
In order to be effective we see that even in that one word, a lot of things
that are involved. We have to know what we want. We have to know exactly what is the ultimate result. We can’t apply forces into whatever
we are praying for if we do not know what we want. A lot of people are not
successful in intercession because they are not specific enough. They do not
know what they want. If we do not know what we want, then we cannot apply the
forces of intercession. It’s like a lot of energy is expended but nothing is
done and nothing is achieved. We have to know in great details what we want to
effect.
Of course the boundary of an intercessor
is bounded by the will of God. The moment you step out of the will of God for
the planet earth or for any life, you completely loose your power. The effect
and the power we release is when we as tiny little human vessels synchronize
with the will of God. That is the power that is released. It is like an opera
singer who has such tremendous voice vibrations that her voice can shatter a
glass goblet placed a distance away.
God’s divine will has been revealed and found
in Christ. It seems that God has placed a law in the spirit that whenever any
man or woman on planet earth synchronizes with His will, there are tremendous
forces released through them. So powerful are the forces released that they
could change and break existing circumstances that into the circumstances that
God wanted. Even if the enemy designs the circumstances that they are facing
and they are not God’s will. That is why the Bible tells us in the Lord’s
Prayer how Jesus wants us to continually pray for the will of the Father to be
done on the planet earth. There are a lot of things on this earth that are not
God’s will. So what happen is if God could find just a few human beings that
would tap into His divine will, that very power God has unfolded and has placed
in His will would begin to vibrate through that intercessor. They will link up
God’s will in their lives and in the lives of others. And such energy is
released that it will literally break the present things apart and begin to form the future according to God’s will.
So
an intercessor literally has to know the very details of what has to be
effected. That implies that the intercessor needs to see the future clearly.
The more details you can see the more details you can create. The clearer the
detail and the clarity of that vision as you intercede, the more powerful its
effect. So the first quality of an intercessor is to be effectual implies that
you synchronize with God’s will and then secondly implies that you will have
the clarity of what you want in the future. At first as we enter into
intercession things are blur. At first you cannot see
clearly. I am not saying that we try to cough up the vision ourselves. I am
talking about tapping into God’s will and getting more and more clearer pictures
from God regarding what is coming forth. That is the job of an intercessor.
There are different stages of getting the
picture. The first stage of your intercession is what I call getting the
picture. At first when the fetus is conceived in the womb, you can’t tell the
human features from the physical point of view. If doesn’t quite look like a
human being. At first it looks like a tiny curve. Then it grows and grows until
at a certain stage, you could see the human form. After that certain stage, most
of the organs have been formed. The rest is just enlarging. Prayer and
intercession are almost the same.
There are two stages in your birthing
process. The first part is the forming
of the fetus. As you pray along all you are getting is clarity and a greater
picture formed in you. Perhaps you are praying about your life or your
ministry. All you see is something blurred. But as you pray in that direction,
the first part of your prayer is getting the details. You begin to see much
greater details of what God wants you to do. You began to fit into the puzzle.
The picture is forming. As the picture is formed you have the point where the
fetus is recognizable. Then from that point onwards, all you do is hold on to
that clarity of that vision. So in the first part is just getting it formed in you. Without a vision the people perish.
To
be a successful intercessor you must see in great detail. Think about praying
for unsaved loved ones. At first when you start praying for them, the first
picture that comes is you see them as they are. To be effective you got to see
something in the future and not something in the present or in the past. And as
you begin to intercede for them, you can’t quite see how God is going to save
them. You can’t quite see how they are going to change. You can’t quite see how
they are going to respond. The more you pray and intercede
the fetus is forming. You begin to slowly see in the eyes of your spirit man.
You begin to see what they would be like. You begin to see their future as God
sees them. God begin to give you details.
It could have been a business you are
praying about. At first all you have is a general idea, not knowing the
direction, or the details. The more you pray, the more the details come. The
more details come then it can affect the natural. For what you receive in the
natural will only be what you see. You cannot get beyond what you can see. If
today you cannot see yourself as being blessed, you will never be blessed. We
cannot reach beyond the realm of what we can visualize. What you will be will
always be limited by your vision. You can never go beyond the vision that you
saw. What you can believe God and see. That is why it is so important to
enlarge our vision. You can never grow beyond your vision. Your vision is the
thing that carries you. If you can see in the spirit, you have the fetus
according to different degrees of clarity. But that’s not all. That’s the first
part. To get the clarity a lot of people abort the fetus, never see through. On
one side you cannot go beyond what you can see and visualize in the natural and
in the spirit. Yet on the other side even though you can see something,
that is only part of the steps to getting it. Not all the steps.
Fervency
Lets look at the second sentence in James 5:
17, the effective fervent prayer. The word fervent speaks of about great warm
and desire. There is something building up within you. A lot of people who have
started getting some clarity still never bring it through because of a lack of
fervency. See fervency means that the vision begins to consume you. Let’s
illustrate again with the fetus examples. There is a mother who is expecting.
She is pregnant and the fetus is being formed within the first few weeks. The
fetus takes on a human form and human shape that is naturally discernable as a
human being. Then the rest of it is just a growth. Do you know what happens to
the mother’s body? Everything within her body begins to flow and move just to
sustain that baby. As the baby grows bigger, even the backbone has to adjust to
support that baby. The baby was just drawing all the nutrition from her. That
baby really became the whole object of the pregnancy period. So we see that
fervency relates to how after that vision as small as the fetus is formed it begin to consume you. If all you have is the vision, you
only got one step. Unless that vision consumes you until you are literally
breathing it, it may never be birthed. Fervency implies love. Love to see the vision come to pass. All your desire can
only be for that vision. All your energies are turned towards that vision.
Since you live for nothing else but for that vision to come to pass fervency is
required.
As
we look at people in the Bible, we realized that we have to learn the
principles they learned and tapped on. Remember this, you can learn everything
you can about how they do things and what they do, but if you don’t love God
like they love God you still miss it. Some people learn all the principles from
another man of God, but they never love God the same way and they never
succeed.
Think about Abraham. How many of us would obey
God to the extent of taking your beloved only child and willing to sacrifice
that child? What stands out is not only their ability to tap on the wisdom of
God but also that they have tap on the heart of God. Why some people cannot
learn from another ministry is not that they didn’t learn some principles. They
learned the principles all right but they don’t love God the same way. So
sometimes the first generation love God so much they stumble upon some
principles. Then the second generations come along and the second-generation
taps on the principles but don’t love God as much. Some thing begins to be
lost. One obvious difference between King David and Solomon is King David love
God.
And in order for the vision to work for
intercessor to move into the depths of it, we must love God very much. We must
love God above things. We must love God above our family. We must love God
above any other things that can take away our love for God. You could copy a
man of God 100% in principles, in method but you cannot copy the love for God
because you must develop your own love for God. God sees your heart and knows
your heart. That’s the thing that in the end God backs up because He knows you
love Him. Sometimes because you love God, you have to make choices in this life
where you will say `no’ to a lot of things that men offer, no to a lot of
things the devil offer. To love God is not only learning to say, `yes’. It is
also learning to say `no.’ If you say `yes’ to God and have not learned to `no’
to the devil, your love is shaky. When you learned to say
`no’ to the devil, God knows that you love Him. You have made a choice
in the midst of trial and temptation. And yet you choose Him. I tell you that
delight the Father. So fervency can only come through a consuming desire and
love for God and love for His will to be done, love for His vision to be
accomplished. That is the other quality that needs to bring in. to bring a
total successful birth in the spirit of an intercessor. We need to be
effectual. We need fervency.
Righteousness
And you notice the third point in James 5:
15 the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man. So righteousness is the
`no’ we say to the world and choose God, God’s method and God’s way. Our
success in prayer has a lot to do with our success in overcoming sin. You can
come to a meeting like this and groan and pray. But if you go out and sin, it
affects your effectiveness. If out there you keep falling into sin and picking
yourself up, your effectiveness is only that much. So it’s important for us to
live a righteous life in order for our prayers to be effective. It’s a part in
the whole thing.
In comparison to the pregnant mother righteousness is taking and eating the right food. That has an effect on the child that you have. Research has discovered that if a pregnant woman smoke, it has a very bad effect on the child that she carries. If she takes the wrong food into her body, it has dramatic effect on her body and finishes the child’s life. So righteousness speaks about our contact with this life, with this world where we choose the right walk, where we choose to obey God’s word in the midst of a world full of sin and imperfection. And it is not an easy choice. We are not just talking about the 10 commandments. For example, when I sense people's conversation grieving the Spirit, I withdraw. I know that unrighteousness will come sooner or later. Righteousness is choosing to obey the Spirit of God, to flow in the Spirit of God, to follow in the law of God. Righteousness is not to be in a situation where you would condone the sin. You not only do not sin, you neither condone it nor you promote it. So it’s important for us to realize how effective we are right now in the prayer closet. It’s determined by how well you have walked with God out there on the streets where the choices are made. Where you have to choose, you have to make the right choice. You could have been tempted out there to be covetous and you choose `no.’ You could have been tempted out there to be sinful and you said, `no.’ All the choices you made outside are now going to play a role in your effectiveness when you pray. How you live out there is going to affect your prayer life in your prayer closet. How effective you are in your prayer closet has a positive effect in giving us strength to combat the enemy on the street. So we cannot compartmentalize our life and say this is this. This is that. As we flow in God we realized that life is one big flow, one big river that flows together.
Earnestness
Then the fourth area in James 5:17 Elijah
was a man with a nature like ours and he prayed earnestly. The word earnestly
implies continuity and not giving up. That talks about the ability to maintain
that stand day in and day out. It is fervency that is persistent. That is a
never- give-up kind of quality. If it’s God’s will then pray
it through. You don’t give up. You pray it through. No matter how long
it takes, you pray it through. You will hold fast to it long enough until you
birth it forth even if it takes a hundred overnight prayers. You will pray it
through and you know that this is the key. You know that this is God’s plan.
You will hold fast to it and never give up. If you are an intercessor that is sometimes
up and sometimes down, you are a baby intercessor. You must press on and
develop until the intercessory qualities within you are so developed. When you
have something that you know you have to intercede about, you put yourself into
a lock position. You lock yourself into that kind of prayer. Having discerned
clearly that is the will of God, grab it and never let go. That’s why some men
of God let go too easily because they are only in the 5-fold ministry but not
in the intercessory ministry.
Those who have the ability to stick to
something usually developed it in the prayer closet. That is why those who want
to enter the 5-fold ministry without first entering the prayer closet never has
the ability to pull through a lot of things. They die half way. They are laid
aside half way. They give up the ministry half way. If you could pull through
it in the prayer closet, you could pull through anything outside the closet.
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