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 Israel and he turns to God and he prayed. He saw the Baal worship brought in by Ahab and Jezebel and he continued praying. He saw the backsliding in society. There was a kind of counter revival. Baal worship was at its peak. And Elijah seeing all these things must have grieved him. He must have been crying out to God and say Lord stop the rain that they may know that they are in sin or whatever way he was praying. But one thing we know the bible said he asked for the rain to stop. One day in his prayer closet the Lord said I have heard your prayer. Then he went to king Ahab and said there will be no rain until I say so. See it was an answer to prayer. Now for the rain to start again Elijah needs to ask. And he went to God and he prayed. We do not exactly know how long. I personally assume that it could have taken many years. But one day in the midst of his prayer, he had this revelation from God to ask God to stop the rain so that he could go with a message. See the Bible says in James 5: 17, `it was Elijah also personally came and said, `God stop the rain and then I will go. 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.