We spent the first nine lessons looking at God's order and how to line up with it. Lesson 10 looked at why it is so important for prayer warriors and intercessors to be in the center of God's order. And lesson 11 demonstrated how we leave ourselves open to enemy counterattacks when we wander outside of His order.
Now it's time to change gears and look at these topics from another perspective. Let's look at how to pray and intercede into these important areas. This is not to say that you have to pray all of these things in all of these areas. And it is not to say that this is an exhaustive list of how to pray when covering these areas. Instead, think of this lesson as some ideas and suggestions for how to pray and intercede on these subjects.
This lesson will make some suggestions on how to pray regarding the five purposes God has for the church. The next lesson will look at "praying into" the other areas covered by this series.
Worship
Pray for believers to come to a deep and personal relationship with God, to be filled with His Spirit, to know Him mentally (head knowledge) and experientially (heart knowledge). Don't just pray this in the abstract, make it personal. Pray specifically for your family, your pastor, your friends and acquaintances at church. Ask God to manifest Himself to them and reveal His presence to them. Invite Him to do the same thing in your life. Don't just pray for believers to experience deep worship, practice it in your day-to-day life. Ask God to teach you how to worship Him in a way that blesses and pleases Him. If you ask Him this, He will be faithful to teach you.
Also, pray that God would increase His presence on His people. Pray that we, as a church, would corporately learn to worship Him.
Evangelism
Pray that God remove the enemy's ability to blind people to the good news, so that they can see and understand just how good that news is; and so that they will receive Jesus and enter into personal relationship with Him. Pray that for your city or for the people group that God has put on your heart. But also "bring it down" and make it personal. Pray for household salvation if you have any unsaved relatives. Pray for each person by name. Ask God to make them understand the good news and to touch and melt their hearts. Pray for your friends by name. Pray for your coworkers and for your neighbors. Get personal and specific with God. Ask Him to let you see the fruit from you prayers; that people who you know personally and have prayed for would not only accept Jesus, but that they would tell you about their decision.
Pray that God would transform each of us to be a good witness, to reflect His life and His character, and to put His power and His words of testimony in our mouths. Pray this for yourself personally. Jesus instructed us to ask the Lord of the harvest for more laborers. So, pray for more laborers and volunteer to be one yourself. Tell Him you are available, invite Him to use you in this capacity and expect Him to give you opportunities to win the lost.
Also that God will transform the members of His church -- the entire body of Christ -- to be an effective witness. Pray for those on the mission field and those in evangelism roles, that God would grant them grace and wisdom to represent Him, that He would empower them to win the lost. Pray for a release of God's healing anointing on the church so that the unsaved will see God's love and power and turn to Him. Pray that those you work or go to school with, those you shop at the same supermarket or who sit next to you on the bus, and those you pass on the street -- that they would come to know Jesus. Pray for revival to come to your city and to your state or providence. And don't forget those in the war zone. Pray that God would reach the Muslims with His love and with the truth of the good news, so that they will be saved and that they will begin to bring God's influence into world events.
Relationship and Accountability
Pray for unity in the Body of Christ. Again, look for ways to make it personal. If there is someone who drives you nuts, whom you can't stand, pray for God to give you His supernatural love for that person. If there is someone who has deeply wounded or offended you, choose to speak and release forgiveness regarding that person. Tell the Father that you choose to forgive and release that person because you know that pleases your Heavenly Father, and that He is much much more important to you than the person who hurt or offended you. Ask Him to empower you to walk out your decision to forgive with His supernatural anointing.
Pray that God will knit you in tightly with those in your church or local fellowship group. Don't just pray in the abstract, back it up with intercessory actions and prophetic acting-out. Make an effort to touch bases and get to know those in your fellowship. Reach out to them in love and support and encourage them. Get together for lunch or for a cappuccino. (Or if you are in the UK, invite them over for tea.) Back up your prayers for relationship by doing behaviors that promote relationship. Don't wait for someone else to reach out to you; reach out to them. This type of prophetic acting-out of our prayers is very much a form of intercession.
Also, ask the Lord to give you a teachable heart. Ask Him to help you not be offended when those who you are in relationship with speak into your life. Remind yourself that their motive is not to tear you down, but to make you aware of a deficiency and to help you overcome it. Ask God to give you His heart in this area. Ask Him to knit you together with like-minded believers and to put quality relationships into your life. Ask Him to do the same for your acquaintances and others in your local church body.
Maturity
The Bible is rich in prayers for maturity and rich in prayers that believers enter into everything that God has for them. The epistles of Paul are laced with many excellent prayers along these lines. Look these prayers up and pray them over your friends, loved ones and members of your church. Let me just share one of them with you. This is from Phil 1:4-6, 9-11.
"I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ -- to the glory and praise of God."
Service
Pray that those who are called and gifted in service will not grow weary in well doing. Pray that they will not be taken for granted or made to feel unappreciated. Pray that they do not get frustrated where others are not rising up to help carry the load. Pray that they won't feel overwhelmed by the needs, but that they will be lead of the Spirit in how they serve. Pray that God will make them realize that what He has given them to do is important Kingdom work. As the same time, pray that they will always stay focused on Him, that they serve out of their intimate relationship with Him rather than instead of a substitute for intimacy time with God.
Pray that the Lord will raise up those who have gifts of service and who aren't using them -- that they will rise up where the needs are: the nursery, Sunday school, visitation, helping the elderly and sick, etc.
We spent the first nine lessons looking at God's order and how to line up with it. Lessons 10 and 11 explained why this applies to us as intercessors. We changed gears in lesson 12 and began looking at how to pray and intercede regarding God's order in the areas of worship, evangelism, relationship and accountability, maturity and service. Now we will close off this series by looking at some ways to pray effectively for:
- Revival and Restoration Of The Church
- Godly Authority
- Finances
- Understanding and Fulfilling God's Call On Our Lives
Revival and Restoration Of The Church
In lessons 3 and 4 we saw how the church got corrupted over time, and that God is in the process of restoring His church to what He intends it to be. We saw that He began slowly, but that He has been accelerating the pace of restoration. It is clear that this restoration is a high priority to God.
A good place to start praying into this is to invite Him to have His complete restoration work in your own life. Tell Him that you will cooperate with Him as He does this, that you desire to be transformed to line up with His plans and purposes for you. Invite Him to examine your own heart, as per Psalm 139:23-24. Invite Him to transform your heart and make it pure before Him, as per Psalm 51:10-13. One of my favorite prayers along these lines is, "Lord, please change my heart to line up with Your heart. Change my thinking to line up with Your thinking. Change my desires so that I begin to like what you like and to distain what you distain. Change my motives to line up with your motives."
You need to understand that if you pray along this line, God is going to answer your prayer, and a part of that answer will probably involve His refiner's fire. He will sometimes throw us into the "fire" of difficult circumstances so that our impurities and our fears and doubts rise up to the surface that He might get rid of them. God will usually transform us through a process rather than instantly. But we each need to be personally transformed if the church is to be transformed, because we (collectively) make up the Body of Christ; we are the church! So our prayer strategy goes something like this: Change, restore and renew Your church; I am a part of it, so start with me. I am willing to submit to You as You work in me. I pray that You will do a similar work in each of us, and that we will each have a heart to submit to You as You do it.
Then ask the Lord to give you His vision, to show you what He has for you to do and how you can most effectively cooperate with Him in this. The caveat is that you have to obey Him when He starts showing you things. If He shows you that watching R-rated movies is affecting your prayer life and filling your mind with violent and unclean thoughts, then you have to stop watching R-rated movies. In other words, you have to commit to His Lordship if you want to walk out His plan for you in His power and authority. This will involve some dying to self and a commitment to obey Him. And it will be a process, it will take time.
You can pray for God's restoration in His church. Pray for the pastors that they clearly hear from God to get God's strategic plans for their church. Pray for the worship leaders and worship team to have a greater revelation of worship, and to be able to bring the church with them in entering into God's presence. Pray for the members of your church, that their hunger for God and for His presence would increase. Pray for the Lord to give real kingdom work to His people and to empower them to do it. Pray that the people of God would grow and mature in God and begin to move forward in His power and anointing. Pray for a release of God's power back into the church, that the sick would be healed and that those in bondage would be set free.
Godly Authority
Start by praying the Lord's blessings and wisdom on those whom God has placed in positions of authority over you. This would include husbands, pastors, teachers, supervisors and bosses. Pray that God would give them wisdom and grace to make right decisions and be godly leaders. Also, if you are in a position of authority over someone else (a parent, a head of household, a pastor or ministry leader, a civic leader or a supervisor), pray for Godly wisdom. Also pray for those under your care, that they would grow and mature and excel in all they do.
Pray for your nation's leaders, the politicians and elected officials and their appointed teams. Pray that God would help them to make the right decisions to lead your nation. Pray that God would break down ungodly leadership structures that oppress and harm their own people and that He would replace it with good and godly government.
If you want an increase of God's authority in your own life, then invite God to point out to you any areas where you are not in right relationship with God-appointed authorities in your own life. Ask God to help you learn how to get and stay in right relationship with the leadership that He has put over you.
Finally, in the spirit of James 4:2 ("You have not because you ask not"), ask the Lord to give you His power and authority. Commit to Him that you will use it only to do His work His way. Ask Him to give you real Kingdom work to do and that He give you His power and authority to do it with Him.
Finances
The main reason people pray in the area of personal finances is when there is a problem in that area. But don't wait until there is a problem to pray in this area. If you are doing well, thank the Lord for His provision and blessings over your finances. Ask Him to continue to give you favor in your finances and to bless you and your household.
If you are under "financial attack," the first thing to do is to prayerfully examine with God whether you are giving the enemy a "legal right" to attack you in this area. Are you tithing and giving God Lordship in your finances? If not, you need to make a correction in this area. And you need to apologize to God for having been out of order and to tell Him of your new commitment to put Him first in your finances. What about unforgiveness? If there is long-term unforgiveness or bitterness in your heart, the Father may have delivered you to the tormentors. One of the things the tormentors do is to steal or to devour your finances. So deal with the unforgiveness if there is any and close that door to enemy attack. Also, sin in the area of finances -- cheating, stealing, etc., could open you to financial attack. If there is any (like my BART ticket experience from Lesson 11), then repent and put yourself back under God's order.
Once you are sure that these areas of your life are in God's order, you can remind God of Malachi 3:11: "And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, so that he will not destroy the fruit of your ground, nor shall the vine fail to bear fruit for you in the field," says the LORD of hosts." Ask God to rebuke the devourer for you. Stand on His promises of financial provision and blessing. He has long been faithful, as per Psalm 37:24, "I have been young, and now am old; yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his descendants begging bread."
You probably should not be praying/interceding for the finances of others until you have your own personal finances in order. This does not mean that you have to be rich or never come under financial attack. But you should be personally right with God in all of those financial areas we just discussed. Use similar principles to pray for others. Ask God to show them (and convict them) of any areas where they are out of God's order and open the door for the devourer. Ask God to bless them, to rebuke the devourer for their sake, to make their faith strong and to release His blessings over their finances. If you are praying for an organization, you may want to ask God to put it on people's hearts to give. You may want to call in the financial resources that God has released for the church (or organization) and bind the enemy from interfering with it.
I do have to warn you about something though. When you pray for finances for another, God may ask you to put your money where your mouth is (so to speak). He may ask you to be a part of their solution, to give seemingly large amounts of your own money to the person or organization that you are interceding for. If He does that, remember that you can't outgive God. Don't give unless He tells you to, but if He does, be prepared to obey Him.
With current events the way they are, some of you may feel led to pray about the economy. Overall worldwide economy has been seriously damaged by the terrorist attack on New York, Sept 11, and by the ensuing war on terrorism. This is a big (broad) subject to pray about since there are so many factors affecting it. Your personal end-time theology will affect how you pray for this. Personally I do not know whether or not we are in the last of the last days, but some people think we are. They feel that the economy can get only worse as per the book of Revelation. They feel that if they pray about this, they would be placing themselves in opposition to God's will, which He already expressed in the book of Revelation.
But others feel that current events are not necessarily the last of the last days and that we as intercessors should indeed pray and war on behalf of our own nation's economy. They see Satan as coming to kill, steal and destroy and the see the current economic situation as Satan's attempts to steal from the nations and destroy them on a massive scale. They see this as something that can be stopped through prayer, as per 2 Chron. 7:14.
Please be aware that there are two distinctly different viewpoints on this. I don't want to ask you to pray against your own personal theology. But personally I am under the assumption 2 Chron. 7:14 is still in effect and that prayer can heal my nation. I will hold that viewpoint until such a time as God personally instructs me to stop praying that way.
Regardless of your personal "end days" theology, there are still some economic situations that we can effectively cover in prayer. You may have Christian friends or acquaintances who lose their jobs and therefore are in danger of losing their homes, cars, etc. You can pray Psalm 91 over them. God has promised His protection for His people, no matter what the circumstances around them may be. Psalm 91:3 says, "Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler, and from the perilous pestilence." Verses 5-7 go on to say, "You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day, nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness, nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday. A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; but it shall not come near you." Verses 9-10 say, "Because you have made the Lord, who is my refuge, even the Most High, your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, nor shall any plague come near your dwelling." This is a promise of God's protection on His own in the time of economic uncertainty. This promise does not extend to our whole nation, but it does extend to the people who belong to Jesus. So you can use this as the basis to pray for economic covering and protection for fellow believers in the midst of a shaky economy. Some may lose their jobs as companies lay off workers. But God will provide for His own, we can count on that and we can pray that. And we can pray for God's provision for these people with confidence, knowing these prayers are in God's will.
Also, I like to pray that God will bless the company where I work for my sake and keep them from folding in this uncertain time. I believe that my prayers make a difference and I believe God hears and answers them. What if all believers were to pray blessings over their places of employment? I bet that would help the economy!
Understanding and Fulfilling God's Call On Our Lives
I hope this teaching series has helped you to get a better handle on your own personal calling. If you are uncertain as to what your calling is, talk to God about it. Use the areas covered in these lessons as a framework to talk with God. Ask Him to show you what His call is on your life and how you can better fulfill it. Ask Him to lead you. Commit to obey Him and commit to line up with His order. Ask Him to lead and direct your prayers and to make you more effective in praying according to what He wants to accomplish. Ask Him to give you greater vision, that you might see what the Father is doing. Then ask Him to increase His authority and anointing in your life, so that you might do what the Father is doing with Him in His power and anointing.
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