THE BATTLE IS THE LORD

Matthew 6:9: In this manner, therefore pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts and we forgive our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

What is Intercession?

here's a lot of talk today about the ministry of intercession, and intercessors, and people who intercede. This word is thrown around quite loosely especially in Charismatic circles today and you often hear people saying, "Well, I'm an intercessor." Well, what is an intercessor and what is intercession? Is it just praying? Is it a prayer? Can anyone do it? Is intercession something that any believer can do? And does it have any special relationship as regards the ministry of a prophet?

We’re dealing with the prophetic ministry and this message is part of the same series that relates to the ministry of a prophet so I especially want us to consider how intercession and the intercessory ministry relates to the prophet. But in order to understand the subject better I'm going to look at whole subject of intercession. It's a very big subject. We could probably preach a whole series just on this subject. Whole books have been written on it, so don't expect me to go into too much detail here otherwise it's going to take too long.

I want us to look at and understand clearly what the ministry of intercession is and how it relates specifically to the office of the prophet because there seems to be a lot of confusion in prophetic circles regarding this ministry of intercession. I hear people say, "Well, I am an intercessor, but I'm not sure if God's called me to the prophetic ministry." And I hear people saying, "Well I know God's called me to be a prophet, but I'm not sure if I should also intercede." These are some of the issues that I want to address here.

I want to look at the subject of prayer generally, and I'm going to see how prophets get involved in and approach the subject of prayer generally. The Lord gave us a pattern for prayer in the passage we just read, and He gave a pattern to His disciples of how they should pray. Most people in Christendom today who have been exposed to Christianity in some way have learnt the Lord's prayer by rote and can say it, but haven't a clue what it means. Ninety percent or more are like this, and the ten percent who have a clue what it means, still don't know what it means. You'll understand what I'm talking about when I'm finished this message because I'm going to explain to you what it means. I'm going to show you what the Lord was talking about. I'm going to show you what He was getting at when He gave them that pattern of prayer. And you'll begin to understand how to use that pattern, and how to get involved in true intercession.

The Four P's of Prayer
I always like to create a little skeleton on which to hang principles when we study a subject like this, so I'd like to give you a skeleton on the subject of prayer. I like to call them the 4 P's. I actually used to originally preach this as the 3 P's, but when I came to look at it from the point of view of the prophetic ministry I discovered that there was a fourth P. So I'm going to share all the 4 P's with you now.

The 4 P's are easy to remember - P for Prayer, and four different words that begin with P that are all related to prayer and describe a different type of prayer. I'm going to give you the 4 P's and then we're going to look at each one of them in detail.


The first P of prayer is praise, and worship associated with it.

The second P is petition.

The third P is penitence.

The fourth P strangely enough is prophetic proclamation.

Praise, petition, penitence and prophetic - you'll see all four of those in the Lord's prayer, and I'm going to show you that. Let's start with praise and worship. Jesus said you must pray this way, "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name." This is praise and worship. You start with praise. In Psalm 22:3 David said, "But You are holy, O You that inhabits the praises of Israel." David knew all about praise. God inhabits the praises of His people.

Praise
What does praise do? Praise turns our attention from our problem to God. Romans 8:28 says, "And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God and are the called according to His purpose." In recent decades there's been a resurgence and a revelation of fresh revival and restoration of praise in the church of the living God. At one time there was a whole release of books on the subject, and a man by the name of Merlin Corruthers spearheaded a lot of this with a very famous book. Some of you may have read it if you're old enough. It is still around, but it was released a long time ago, and it was called "Prison to Praise" and it sparked off something.

He wrote a whole lot more books on the subject, and the gist of the teaching was this: To learn to praise God for everything. For everything? Yes, praise God for everything. Many people thought that Merlin Corruthers was an absolute heretic because if you came to him and said, "My husband just left me," he would say, "Praise the Lord for it, sister. Start saying, 'Lord, I praise you that my husband left me.' " Are you mad?

You know what it did? It took your eyes off the problem and started to see that God was in control. It got you saying, "Lord I thank You and I praise You that no matter what has happened, You are in control." It took your attention of yourself. It took your attention off what the devil was doing. It put your attention on what God is doing. Today the church is so concerned about what the devil's doing. I get newsletters and publications in my email box all the time telling me about what the devil's doing all over the world. And everybody's getting ready for the mark of the beast and the antichrist and all the things that are going wrong, and all over the world Satan is moving. It's given to you under the guise of 'pray'.

All the time we're hearing what Satan is doing. We're not seeing what God is doing, and we become so focused on what Satan is doing, we become so focused on the evil that's in the world that our hearts become filled with fear and we wonder if God is there, and we tremble. Praise lifts your eyes off what is going on about you and in the world and puts your attention on the One who is on the throne.

Jehoshaphat
Jehoshaphat knew about praise. When he sent his army out to battle he put the singers right in the front lines. What a stupid thing to do. Here they were going into battle against the enemy, and instead of putting the best soldiers that he had at the front to face the onslaught of the enemy, he puts a bunch of stupid namby-pamby singers, a bunch of arty types you know. These musical types are usually effeminate aren't they? There's no masculinity in them. They're all softies. (;-) But Jehoshaphat knew the power that there was in praise. He knew the power that was released when the very first people who went out praised the beauty of holiness. They glorified the Lord and they sang praises to God, and when they did that, you know the story, the enemy just turned on themselves and killed each other. By the time the army got there it was all over.

Praise has a greater power than any physical force in this world. King David praised before the Lord. He knew the power of it. He set up singers and worshippers and musicians who would praise God and worship Him around the clock all the time. They were employed full-time to do that. The power in praise and worship, expressing love to the Lord, coming into His presence in loving communion and face to face relationship, even as Moses came into the presence of God and spoke to Him mouth to mouth and face to face. Even as Joshua went into the tent of meeting and after Moses left he stayed even longer to be in the presence of God.

Coming Into the Throne Room
If you are going to do anything by prayer, you're going to have to start by coming into the throne room of Almighty God. You know who has the special ability to do that? That's right, the prophet. The prophet has a very special ability to come into the presence of God because his spirit is in tune with God and he can see and he can hear in the Spirit, and he can sense in the Spirit. You start with praise and worship, and you begin to get lifted up from this world. And as you praise and as you worship it's as though you're ascending in the air like a hot air balloon going up, up, up. And you begin to look down at the ground below you there. And that problem that seemed so big and you couldn't see over it, you start to lift above it until you're looking down on top of it; until you begin to realize as the Scripture says, that when Jesus was raised from the dead and He was lifted up and raised up to be seated in heavenly places, we have been raised up together with Him and we're seated in heavenly places. We're seated in heavenly places with Him right now.

Do you know where you should be praying from? Not from down here. "Oh Lord, we're in trouble. Please help us!" No, you need to get up there to the throne. And you need to get onto the throne with the Lord, because you're in Him and He's in you. And if we're seated with Christ in heavenly places, spiritually we're seated on the throne. You need to get your eyes off this physical plane and be lifted up so that you may now look down. That's where you're praying from. That's the first step of intercession.

Prophetic Intercessors
If you're a prophetic intercessor, prophetic and intercessor are synonymous, because intercession is the main function of a prophet is not to predict and speak nice words of personal prophesy over people and tell them what their life purpose is going to be and who they're going to get married to, and whether they're going to be rich. People read horoscopes for that. Satan does that. That is not the work of the prophetic ministry.

The work of the prophetic ministry is to release the will of God into the earth. That's what we're supposed to be doing as prophets, and if we're going to do that we're going to have to start by coming into the throne room. You start your intercession with praise and worship until you become lifted up, and you come into the presence of Almighty God and you find yourself seated in the throne room in heavenly places. And from there you do your warfare. And from there you do your intercession. And from there you do your prayer and you cause change to take place in the earth. But you're not going to get there except you start in praise and worship. That's why the Lord gave that as the very first instruction for prayer.

A prophet has the ability to bring the anointing presence of God into a meeting. You know why? Because a prophet has the ability to move into the throne room very quickly. And when you move into the throne room you begin to communicate down where your body is, while your spirit is there, and you begin to communicate outwards into the very place that you are. You begin to communicate outwards the very presence of God.

Using Music
Prophets can use music and singing to release the power of God, and I have yet to meet a prophet who doesn't have some ability in this area. I don't care if you can't sing well. I don't care if you're not much of a musician. There is just something about the prophetic ministry that leads you into expressing and releasing the anointing of God through music and singing and worship. You might start just by walking around and singing in tongues. You'll be amazed how you can sing in key just by singing in tongues. It doesn't really matter. You don't even know what you're singing. You don't understand the words you're singing and you can go up and down the scales and change the notes as much as you like. It doesn't matter. You are creating a harmony in spirit, soul and body which releases the anointing power of God.

That's a subject all on it's own and we're going to cover it some time, but music has the ability to bring resonance in the soul. Music is the only thing that has the ability to take your mind and your emotions and your will, and bring them to flow all together in harmony at the same time, in tune with your spirit. And your whole spirit, soul and body begin to vibrate with the very power of God. And His glory begins to come upon you and begins to radiate forth from you as you begin to move into that. It's a powerful subject.

So the prophet enters into the presence of God through praise and worship, and having come into the throne room, then begins to wage warfare in the Spirit. I'm not going to go into detail in warfare now because that is also a subject on it's own and we're just talking about prayer and intercession and I'm only touching on the main points.

Petition
The second 'P' is petition. Actually in the Lord's prayer the second 'P' was prophetic, but I'm leaving that for last seeing as we're speaking about prophetic intercession. Petition - Give us this day our daily bread. This is about the only prayer that most people know.

"Well did you pray today?"

"Yes, I got down on my knees and I prayed for auntie and uncle, and mommy and daddy, and Aunt Suzie and everybody else in church … and pastor and everybody I know. I asked the Lord to provide my needs. I prayed the prayer of petition."

"So, did God answer your prayer?"

"Well, sometimes He does."

"Are you sure?"

"Well I prayed. Sometimes He answers, I really don't know. We're supposed to pray aren't we?"

1 John 5:14 says this:


Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him.