Prayer Secret #7
The Power of Intercessory Prayer
 his next prayer secret is another powerful
prayer principle that has to be added to your arsenal. The
first six prayer secrets all
basically had to do with you learning how to properly
approach God the Father for whatever your own personal
prayer requests may be with Him.
This next prayer secret is now going to
take things one step further. This prayer secret will be
learning how to step into the gap and pray for someone else's
prayer need before God the Father. This is what is called
intercessory prayer.
Though most Christians know what this kind of prayer is, God
the Father makes two very interesting statements in two of the
three verses I will give you below.
In both of these verses, God makes the statement that He was
looking for intercessors, for those who would be willing to
step into the gap for another person to pray directly for them
- and in both of these verses, it says that He was not able to
find one person to do this. I repeat, He could not find one
person to go into the gap at the time that He was looking for
one!
Both of these verses are back in the Old Testament, so He
was talking to His own Jewish people when He was making these
two statements. Think of the ramifications of what was
occurring when He was making these two statements. We are
talking about an entire Jewish people and an entire Jewish
nation - and God could not find one person who was willing to
go into the gap to pray for the land to get Him to move with
His deliverance power on the particular situation He was
dealing with at the time.
When you read these first two verses and how God is
intensely expressing Himself, you will wonder, is He still
having the same kind of problem with His people today, which
are all born-again Christians?
There is obviously no way that we can know the answer to
this question, but what we can learn from these two verses is
that God the Father is always looking for intercessory prayer
warriors who are willing to go into the gap for another person
at a moment's notice.
The Scripture Verses
All three of these verses are from the Old Testament, but
each one of these verses still apply to every single New
Testament born-again believer.
In these three verses, God the Father is giving all of us an
incredible and powerful prayer secret - and that secret is the
power of intercessory prayer and how He can be dramatically
moved to answer prayer if someone is willing to go into the gap
for another person to pray for whatever their personal need or
needs may be at the time.
Here are three extremely powerful verses on this prayer
secret:
- "So 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 no one." (Ezekiel
22:30)
- "He saw that there was no man, and wondered that
there was no intercessor; therefore His own arm brought
salvation for him ... (Isaiah 59:16)
- "Therefore He said that He would destroy them, had
not Moses His chosen one stood before Him in the breach, to
turn away His wrath, lest He destroy them." (Psalm
106:23)
Notice in the first verse that God was actually looking for
an intercessor to "stand in the gap" on behalf of the
land so that He would not destroy it. This verse says that God
had "sought for a man," but literally could not find one
man who was willing to do this.
The fact that God was actually looking for a man to
stand in the gap is shouting out a major prayer secret -
and that secret is: God is looking for intercessory prayer
warriors who will be willing to go into the gap from time
to time to pray for someone else's need or possibly for an
adverse situation that may be developing.
When God the Father is telling us that He is actually
looking for intercessory prayer warriors, then you know He
is shouting out a major prayer secret loud and clear. If
God is looking for intercessors to go into the gap from
time to time - then this means He will answer many of these
intercessory prayers if He is properly approached.
Think of the ramifications and possibilities with this
secret - that we can go into the gap and pray for someone else
and have a good chance on getting God to want to move to answer
the prayer. If God is telling us that He is looking for
intercessors, then that tells us that He will be answering many
of their prayers, otherwise He would have never bothered making
this kind of statement in these first two verses!
Notice in the second verse that He is once more making the
statement that He was looking for an intercessor and once again
could not find anyone. Notice the additional statement He then
makes in this second verse where He says that He then
"wondered that there was no intercessor." The key word
here is the word "wondered."
This key word is telling us that God the Father was
wondering why no one was willing to come forth to intercede for
what was being needed at the time. The way He is wording all of
this, He is basically implying that He cannot believe that not
even one person was willing to step forward to intercede before
Him.
When you put these first two verses together side by side,
God the Father is really shouting out a major prayer secret. He
is not only telling us that He is looking and wanting people to
approach Him on an intercessory prayer basis when it is needed,
but He will be wondering why no one will be willing to step
into the gap for another person or persons to take up a
specific prayer assignment - especially if a prayer assignment
is being given to a person by the Holy Spirit Himself.
The last verse then adds the final piece to all of this when
it finally tells us of someone who did approach God the Father
in the right way on an intercessory basis - and that was when
Moses stepped into the gap
between God the Father and the children of Israel in their
wilderness setting. This was when Moses was receiving the
10 commandments from God the
Father and the rest of the Israelites were down at the bottom
of the mountain already starting to turn away from God by
making false idols to worship and adore.
When God sees this, He becomes furious and literally wants
to consume all of them right there on the spot. But Moses,
seeing how mad God is getting and what He is wanting to do to
His own people, steps into the gap with God and pleads his case
before Him telling Him why He cannot do this.
In my other article, "Prayer
Secret #"4 - Stating Your Case Before God," I give you the
full verse on exactly what Moses said to God the Father to get
Him to change His mind. As the last verse above tells us, Moses
literally got God to change His mind from what His original
intentions were going to be. This is how powerful intercessory
prayer can really be with the Lord!
Remarks
When you study the wording in the above three verses and put
all of this revelation together, we are receiving a major and
powerful prayer secret from God the Father. God is literally
giving every single one of us an open invitation to step into
the gap from time to time for either another person or persons,
or for any type of situation that will need God's help to
properly handle.
When God is telling us that He is actually looking for
intercessors, you know this is something that He wants all of
us to learn how to do.
For those of you who may be new to all of this, here are a
few things you will need to know about this kind of powerful
prayer.
1. Notice in the first verse that God is
looking for those who are willing to "stand in the gap."
Here is what God is meaning when He is using the words to
"stand in the gap."
Imagine you have a friend who is dying of cancer. He is
lying on his deathbed and he is simply too sick to be able to
pray for himself anymore. Imagine that this person is lying off
to the left of your field of vision. Now imagine God the Father
Himself off to the right in your field of vision. As you are
looking at this scenario, your friend is too weak and too
incapacitated to reach God anymore with his own prayer
efforts.
What you will now have to do is step into the gap between
your friend and God the Father. Imagine yourself jumping right
in the middle of this vision in between your friend and God the
Father. Now you turn to the right facing direct to God the
Father and you start praying on his behalf direct to God since
he can longer do it for himself, asking God to heal him with
the healing prayers that you will now present before Him.
What you are doing when you do this is stepping into the
"gap." A gap has occurred because your friend can no
longer pray for himself. As a result, he now needs someone else
to pray for him, which means someone now has to step into the
place where he was initially praying at and take over the
prayers for him to God the Father.
When you really study what God is asking us to learn how to
do - this is really "superman saves the day" kind of activity.
This is green beret, special forces type of activity. This is
the same thing that a heroic soldier would do when he would
step onto a battle field to save someone else who may have
fallen behind enemy lines. The wounded soldier is incapable of
fighting for himself and he is now needing someone else to come
in and rescue him.
When you step into the gap for another person with God the
Father, you may sometimes be going on a rescue and deliverance
mission depending on exactly what you may be praying for.
2. I believe that many of the times God simply
wants us to learn how to pray for our own needs all by
ourselves direct to Him. We do not have to be bothering twenty
other mighty prayer warriors for minor and trivial things that
we may need from Him.
However, there will be other times that we will either need
other people to possibly step into the gap for us, or we may
see someone else that we will have to step into the gap
for.
If God is wanting to answer many of our prayer requests with
us just going one-on-one with Him, why would He then want to
set things up from time to time where we would have to step
into the gap for someone else, especially if that person is a
born-again believer and who already knows how to pray to
Him?
Here are some scenarios that can occur where someone would
have to step into the gap to pray for another person:
- Praying for someone who is not saved
- Praying for someone who is too sick or too
incapacitated to pray for himself
- Praying for someone whose faith levels are too low
with the Lord
- Praying for someone who is too weak in the
Word
- Praying for someone who has very little, if any,
personal relationship established with the Lord
- Praying for someone who has a sudden emergency
getting ready to attack them
- Praying in agreement with others on an united prayer
cause
If you have any loved ones who are not saved, you will
definitely want to go into the gap and pray to God that He move
to get them saved. They obviously do not know how to pray for
themselves or have enough knowledge of the Word to be able to
put it all together, so they will need others to pray for them
to God the Father along with the right laborers being sent
their way to properly witness to them.
In reference to stepping into the gap to pray for someone
else's healing - there will be times that the person you will
need to step into the gap for may be too sick, too weak or too
incapacitated to pray for themselves anymore.
Someone else may be too high or too strung out on drugs to
help themselves, and they thus will need someone to step into
the gap for them to ask God to move in with His healing and
deliverance power to be able to reach them so as to set them
free from the bondage of their drug addiction.
Someone else may get hit with some type of adversity, but
they either have very low levels of faith built up in God as a
result of no personal relationship ever established with Him,
or they may be too weak in their knowledge of the Word because
they have not spent enough time trying to understand and
assimilate it all.
As a result, God may ask you to stand in the gap and pray
for them because you do have high enough levels of faith in Him
and a good enough personal relationship established with Him,
along with having enough knowledge of the Word and how to
properly apply if for the emergency situation that may now be
facing this person.
Other times, God may ask more than one prayer warrior to
stand in the gap and pray for a particular person or situation.
What you will be doing on this is coming into agreement with
other prayer partners to all pray together for the same prayer
request. This is called the prayer of agreement.
There are literally an infinite number of reasons and
scenarios where you may have to step into the gap for another
person to pray to God on their behalf - asking God to move in
with either His help, His guidance, His knowledge or wisdom, or
possibly His healing or deliverance power.
3. So how do you know when to go into the gap
to pray for another person so you do not waste your time and
God's time? As I have stated numerous other times before, for
those of you who have established a good personal relationship
and a good inside connection to the Holy Spirit, many of the
times you can pick it up directly from Him whether or not you
should be going into the gap to pray for another person.
The Holy Spirit can save you hours of wasted time in the
prayer room if you can learn to pick it up from Him ahead of
time whether or not you should be taking on a particular prayer
assignment. Some of the times, God may not want to move in with
His help, guidance, healing or deliverance power at the time
you are looking to move in on the situation. Many of these
kinds of prayer assignments are really battle situations and
you will need to be guided by the Lord as to when to move and
how to move on the situation.
Maybe God does want to heal a person, but He may tell you to
hold your position for awhile before stepping into the gap
because He may want to try and reach that person with a lesson
or some knowledge before He will want to move to heal him.
Maybe that person has brought on a lot of his own misfortune
due to his own pride or stubbornness, and God may want him to
experience the full consequences of his actions for engaging in
something that was not right in His eyes to begin with.
On many of these types of deliverance situations, you are
sometimes dealing with a timing factor with the Lord, and you
simply have to learn how to wait for God's timing on when to
move and when not to move. If you move ahead or out of God's
timing on a particular situation, you will end up wasting both
your time and His time in the prayer room since He will not be
ready to move in on the situation for whatever His personal
reasons may be at the time.
For those of you who have established this kind of
good personal connection with the Holy Spirit, you really
have to learn to rely on His guidance and His leadings on
these types of situations. Just like no soldier will ever
move into battle on his own without a green light from his
superiors, in the same way we have to learn how to be led
by the Holy Spirit as to when to move into a battle
situation and when not too.
For those of you who have not developed this
kind of connection and sensitivity to the Holy Spirit at
your present level of spiritual development with the Lord,
realize that this is something that can be given to you by
the Lord. If you really want to learn how to become a
mighty and powerful prayer warrior in the Lord, you will
need to learn how to develop this connection and
sensitivity with the Holy Spirit.
If you can, you will end up saving yourself
hours and hours of wasted time, blood, sweat and tears in
the prayer room for praying amiss for things the Lord
really may not want you praying for. The Holy Spirit is God
and Lord Himself, and He will always know when to move in
on a certain situation as a result of His perfect union
with God the Father.
For those of you who do not have this kind of connection and
sensitivity opened up yet with the Holy Spirit, simply go to
God the Father in sincere and heartfelt prayer and ask Him to
open this realm up for you. Over the course of time, the Holy
Spirit will then start to move in your life in many different
ways and in many different circumstances so you can learn how
to pick Him up and read Him when He does start to try and
communicate with you. This is something you will have to learn
by trial and error - but it can be learned! You can learn how
to be led by the Holy Spirit.
Until that happens, just analyze each prayer situation that
may come across your path and do the best you can to decide if
you should step into the gap to pray for another person. If you
see a situation that you would really like to give a try, do
not be afraid to jump right in and go full force with God the
Father. This is the only way you will learn how to do this - by
actually stepping into the arena and taking the prayer
assignment head on with full force and full intensity in your
prayers to God on the other person's behalf.
4. Another thing that will occur in this realm
is that the Holy Spirit Himself will all of a sudden come up on
you and prompt you to want to step into the gap for another
person or possibly a particular situation. He may give you what
is called a prayer burden. A prayer burden is a manifestation
that will come directly from Him. When it comes up on you, you
will know it. Sometimes He will tell you who or what you are to
pray for, other times He will not.
What you do in these types of situations is be guided by Him
as to when to pray and how long to pray. You may end up praying
just once or twice for a short period of time and that will be
it. You will feel a "release" from the Holy Spirit that the
prayer assignment has been completed and you will not need to
go any additional rounds with it.
Other times He may have you stay with a particular prayer
assignment for some length of time before He will officially
release you from it. This length of time could be a matter of
days, weeks or possibly months depending on the gravity and
intensity of the situation you may be dealing with.
If someone is dying of cancer, and God is wanting to heal
that person, but He is looking for a more prevailing type of
prayer before He will release His healing power into the
situation, you may have to stay with it until the healing is
manifested by the Lord, no matter how long that may take.
I cannot stress enough how powerful this particular realm is
where the Holy Spirit Himself will be the One to initiate you
stepping into the gap for another person. With the Holy Spirit
being God and Lord Himself, He can see into the future and
whether or not someone has an unexpected tragedy about ready to
hit them full force.
In the Testimonies section of our site, we have an article
titled "TBN
Testimony #1 - Standing in the Gap." In that testimony, a
woman was prompted by the Holy Spirit right in the middle of
Home Depot to go into the gap for her husband. Her husband was
just about ready to have a man walk into his office and shoot
him dead in cold blood.
Since this woman already knew how to do this with the Lord,
she immediately went into the gap for her husband and properly
prayed to God the Father to stop the impending tragedy. As a
result, God moved in just in the nick of time and she ended up
not only saving her husband's life that day, but she also ended
up getting the man who was going to kill her husband saved that
very same day.
But had she not been open or willing to be used by the Lord
for this kind of immediate emergency, she could have lost her
husband that day along with the man who was going to kill him.
She later found out that this person was also going to kill
himself after he had killed her husband.
I wonder how many Christians have gone home too early
because God could not find anyone close to their situation and
circumstance to stand in the gap for them as this woman did in
the middle of Home Depot for her husband? The first two verses
mentioned at the top of this article are telling us that there
are times that God may be looking for intercessors to step into
the gap to stop an impending tragedy, but at times He may not
be able to find any.
So not only can the Holy Spirit give you prayer assignments
that will help save other people, but He may also give you a
prayer assignment that will be on someone that may be very
close to you - like a spouse, one of your children, one of your
parents or other siblings, or possibly one of your own close
personal friends.
Conclusion
I know in the fast paced, hectic type of lifestyle many
people are now living in, many of God's people are not open to
being able to be used like this - where in a moment's notice
the Holy Spirit can prompt a person to go into the gap to save
someone from a dire circumstance that is either getting ready
to hit them full force, or go into the gap for something that
they may have already fallen into, like a sudden drug addiction
or just getting diagnosed with a terminal illness.
When God tells us in the first two verses mentioned above
that He is actually looking for people who are willing to
intercede for others, you know we are talking about a major and
powerful prayer secret.
I believe one of the reasons that this particular
prayer secret is so powerful with the Lord is because it is
such an unselfish act. You are not praying for any of your
wants or any of your needs. You are completely praying for
someone else's need. You are totally concentrating on this
other person's need with the Lord, and you are doing
everything you can to try and get God to want to move on
this other person's behalf.
When you are willing to sacrifice a part of
yourself and a part of your time - when you are willing to
put forth some quality time, energy, blood, sweat and tears
on behalf of another in your prayer closet with the Lord
for something that they may need with Him - I believe God
really gets moved when He sees this kind of an unselfish
act. And being able to touch and move God in this way may
be just the thing that will get Him to want to answer the
intercessory prayer!
For those of you who are really looking to advance in your
spiritual walk with the Lord, open yourself up to Him and let
Him know that you will be willing to step into the gap for
another person - no matter who that person may be, no matter
where that person may live, and no matter what kind of danger
is getting ready to hit that person. If you let God know that
you really want to tread into these kinds of deeper waters with
Him, He will take you very seriously and He will start to guide
you further into this realm through the Holy Spirit.
If you will allow God to use you in this way from
time to time as different needs arise, you have absolutely
no idea how many other people you may be able to save,
touch, help, heal or deliver in this life. And this is the
kind of activity that will be highly rewarded by God once
you enter into heaven and He rewards you for the different
kinds of works and labors that you did for Him in this
life.
 Click here for reprint information
Prayer
Intercessory Ministries Of Jesus
and Holy Spirit
Ask - Seek -
Knock - Prayer Secret #5
Michael Bradley
Bible Teaching and
Bible Commentary,
Over 150 Free Bible
Lessons
Scripture taken from New King James
Version.
Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2005-2008 by Michael Bradley.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5
License.
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