18 January 2012
“Prayer is essentially a partnership of a redeemed child of God working hand-in-hand with God toward the realization of His redemptive purposes on Earth.”
-Jack Hayfard
I guess it’s past time for me to talk about Intercession. I should apologize for the delay, I guess, but it really has taken the entire last month to really start to get a feel for what it means to be an Intercessor. It still seems like such an incredibly big title for something that just feels like a compulsion for me.
But let me back up.
Back in Nicaragua, Team Kaleo and the Team we worked with faced a lot of spiritual warfare. It seemed that the Enemy was terrifyingly present, fighting one person in particular for control over their mind and emotions. We spent several days speaking truth and praying for this person, even to the point that we woke up in the middle of the night needing to pray.
One night, after our teams had prayed over this person, Vivian and Erica came to me and asked if anyone had ever told me that I was an Intercessor. It had been a particularly brutal prayer session, where Vivian and I had realized that we’d been experiencing the same attacks of the Enemy: feeling a physical presence in our rooms late at night. I’m sure the look I gave them was one of absolute confusion and exhaustion. Although I’d been praying for the LORD to reveal my spiritual gift, I’d never even heard of intercession. In fact, I’d been praying more along the lines of prophecy—which could be as simple as encouraging words—because I thought it would be a practical, useful sort of gift to have. I said I didn’t know what an Intercessor even was, so no.
The girls asked me if I’d always been “spiritually sensitive”; that is, had I always been given strong insights into things that were happening in people’s lives, even when I had no human knowledge about the situation. I said yes hesitatingly, thinking of my Colorado friends’ jokes about my “famous feelings.” They asked if I’d ever been burdened in prayer for a specific person or situation for a long period of time. I said yes again, thinking of a man I knew who went to Afghanistan my senior year of college, and how the LORD asked me to pray for him every day for a year. They asked if I’d ever been suddenly struck with the need to pray for someone, a need that was so powerful that it literally made me drop to my knees. And I said yes, thinking of how the LORD had confirmed that those prayers had been needed at that specific time.
Erica laughed and in her characteristic Southern way said, “Homegirl, you absolutely are an Intercessor.”
And although I denied it at the time, feeling that it was too big of a role for a little girl like me to fill, the LORD’s revealed that this role of Intercession is exactly what He has for me. He reminded me of situations and circumstances where I prayed prayers that could only have been of the Spirit, since I had no knowledge of my own of them. So much of what I’ve considered “weird” about myself my whole life is starting to make sense in the context of Intercession.
More than that, I know now that the urgings I get are Spirit-given and that they are a call to pray.
