How to intercede biblically. Walter Wink said, "History belongs to the intercessors -- those who believe and pray the future into being. " Now prayer doesn't necessarily create the future, but we can shift things in our culture through prayer.
God made it very clear, If my people, who are called by My name, humble themselves and they will pray and they will seek His face and they will turn from their wicked ways, that He will hear from heaven, He will forgive their sin and He will heal their land. So that means that intercession and prayer, seeking God, repentance, brings a shift in the culture. And this prayer, intercession, repentance is something God expects from us as Christians.
Now when it comes to intercession, whether you're praying for your loved ones, your husband, your children, your neighbors, your co-workers or generally over your neighborhood and your city. There are examples of intercession in the Bible. Job interceded on behalf of his friends, Job 42:10.
Abraham on behalf of sinful Sodom, Genesis 18:23-32. Abraham on behalf of Abimelech, Genesis 20:17-18. Moses who interceded on behalf of Pharaoh, Exodus 8, Exodus 9 and Exodus 10.
Moses who in interceded on behalf of Israel, Numbers 16 and Numbers 21. Samuel who interceded on behalf of Israel, 1 Samuel 7:5. David who interceded on behalf of Israel, 2 Samuel 24:17.
Solomon who interceded on behalf of Israel, First Kings 8:28 verse through 53. Ezra who interceded for Israel, Ezra 9:5-15, and so forth and so on. Esther who interceded, Nehemiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, parents who interceded on behalf of their epileptic child, the Syro-Phoenician woman on behalf of her daughter, the church that prayed on behalf of Peter, Paul who prayed for God's people, and two big Persons who intercede is Jesus.
He intercedes for us, Hebrews 7:2 and the Holy Spirit. He intercedes for us, Romans 8:26- 27. Now, not only we're seeing these examples of intercession, but God is actually looking for intercessors.
He is looking for people according to Isaiah 59:16. "He saw that there was no man, He wondered that there was no intercessor; therefore His own arm brought salvation for Him; and His own righteousness, it sustained Him. " We also see in Ezekiel 22:30-31, "For I sought for a man among them who would make a wall, and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found none.
Therefore I have poured out My indignation on them; I have consumed them with the fire of My wrath; and I have recompensed their deeds on their own heads," says the Lord God. Now God is looking for intercession, very clear from these verses. What is an intercession?
An intercession is an act of bringing requests before God on behalf of others. It's standing in the gap, as we see God says in Ezekiel chapter 22. Why do we need to intercede?
Well we have to understand, when people commit iniquity, they fill the cup that provokes God's judgment. But God then is looking for people who can fill the cup of mercy through intercession, so God can pour out revival, repentance and breakthrough on the land. And so we have people that are crying out to God because of injustice being done against them.
We see this in Genesis 18:21, where God says that I will go and see because of the outcry that has come up to Me; if not, I will know. Now intercession is different than iniquity. Iniquity causes an outcry against the city, but intercession causes a cry for the cities mercy, repentance and revival.
Intercession is a cup that gets filled with prayers and tears and repentance, and then God pours out this cup by answering, forgiving, changing and healing, breaking through and interfering. Now how can we do this intercession biblically? Five things you need to keep in mind to do a Biblical intercession.
We will take the example from Daniel. Daniel chapter 9:2. Daniel understood by the Books, the Word of God through Jeremiah what God would do and he started to pray.
The first principle of intercession is intercession should be done in response to God's Word. So we don't intercede because we have a problem. We intercede because God has a promise.
The second principle of intercession is intercession should be characterized by brokenness. Daniel 9:3. Daniel says, "I set my face toward the Lord God to make a request by prayer, supplication with fasting sackcloth and ashes.
This is not him demanding for anything. This is not him binding stuff, loosing stuff, going into the courts of heaven. This guy is going down, breaking himself, crying and weeping.
There's a brokenness that's accompanied with intercession. Number three. Intercession should be marked with fasting.
We see that in Daniel chapter 9:3 that Daniel not only prayed, supplication, sackcloth and ashes, but there was fasting that was involved. Something happens when you couple your intercession with fasting. It adds this fuel.
It adds fire to it. Number four. Intercession should be identified with God's people.
Now when Daniel was interceding, he didn't say God save those weirdos, save those crazies, save those heathens, save those wicked people. Daniel actually put himself together with God's people. Daniel said we and us 22 times in this chapter of intercessory prayer.
We and us. He didn't say they and them. The proper pronouns of intercession is us and we.
Meaning we identify with God's people. We don't say God save them, but we say, Lord forgive our land. When we're interceding for our neighbors, when we're interceding for a family.
Lord have mercy on my family, have mercy on our family. Don't try to distance yourself from your family, don't try to distance yourself from your co-workers and separate yourself as though you're better than them because if it had not been for the mercy of God, you would be just like them. There's this identification that is done.
Sometimes we go as far as repenting on behalf of our city, on behalf of people who committed abortion. Not so that they could be forgiven and have a free pass to heaven. That's not how that works.
But so God could see that there's somebody acknowledging this crime, acknowledging this injustice and is begging for mercy. If you look at all the people that interceded, they would come and intercede on behalf of God's people. Moses would stand in the gap and say, God, I know Israel messed up.
I know You want to pour Your wrath on them, but Lord please have mercy on them, please have mercy on us. What will the neighboring countries think, God? I mean he would literally just go and God loves that, God wants us to appeal to His mercy, God wants us to ask for His kindness and for His compassion to be extended, and one of the ways we do that is when we identify with God's people.
The fifth principle of intercession is intercession does not involve engaging in second heaven warfare. Now some of you may wonder what is a second heaven warfare? I have a whole video on that which I will pin in the comment below, as well in the description, where you can watch where me and Don Dickerman discuss on how people, especially intercessors a lot of times go into second heaven warfare and they endure needless casualties of warfare.
They think intercession involves binding principalities, binding the kings and the rulers in a spirit realm and then they can achieve great success. We just don't see intercession involving binding, waging war and dethroning principalities. We don't see that in the Bible.
Again you can go and watch that video, and if you do that as an intercessor, we're not given that permission. We don't see that in the Scripture. We're given other assignments, to humble, to fast, to identify with God's people, to cry out for mercy.
To do all of these things, and then God hears from heaven and He responds to our prayer. If you're believing for your loved ones to be saved, if you are believing for your family members to be saved, let's join together in prayer and fasting. One of the things that we do with our Fast Forward Challenge group is that we fast regularly every month.
One of the things we fast for is for the salvation of people who are in our family. We pray for the scales to fall off, we pray for God's mercy to be extended, for God to soften their hearts, for God to send people to present the Gospel to them. For God to supernaturally intervene in dreams, in visions, in just through angels even to get their attention so they will come to know the Lord.
We pray that God will release laborers into His harvest field, and you can join our team so that we can pray together. So we can intercede together for our loved ones. So this year could be the year where we see me and my family serving Jesus.
Hey, thanks for watching this video. In our channel we focus on prayer and fasting a lot, we focus on intercession a lot, and we also have a group that we pray together, fast together, as well as memorize the Scriptures. So by subscribing you're actually signing up to be part of an army that is going to take the world by storm.
No not through the sword and violence and political slogans, but through prayer, intercession and on our knees. So subscribe today, click like to this video and I'm going to see you in the next one.
