Intercessory Prayer – What is it?
I have been re-learning what it means to be an intercessor. Here are some resources I have found so far.
Intercessory prayer is prayer for others. An intercessor is one who takes the place of another or pleads another’s case. One study Bible defines intercession as “holy, believing, persevering prayer whereby someone pleads with God on behalf of another or others who desperately need God’s intervention.”
Intercessory Prayer – The Biblical Foundation
The Biblical basis for the New Testament believer’s ministry of intercessory prayer is our calling as priests unto God. The Word of God declares that we are a holy priesthood (1 Peter 2:5), a royal priesthood (1 Peter 2:9), and a kingdom of priests (Revelation 1:5).
The background for understanding this calling to priestly intercession is found in the Old Testament example of the Levitical priesthood. The priest’s responsibility was to stand before and between. He stood before God to minister to Him with sacrifices and offerings. The priests also stood between a righteous God and sinful man bringing them together at the place of the blood sacrifice.
Hebrews 7:11-19 explains the difference between the Old and New Testament ministries of the priest. The Old Testament Levitical priesthood was passed on from generation to generation through the descendants of the tribe of Levi. “The Melchizedek priesthood” spoken of in this passage, is the “new order” of spiritual priests of whom the Lord Jesus is the High Priest. It is passed on to us through His blood and our spiritual birth as new creatures in Christ.
Intercessory Prayer – Our Model Intercessor
Jesus Christ is our model for intercessory prayer. Jesus stands before God and between Him and sinful man, just as the Old Testament priests did: For there is one God, and one mediator (intercessor) between God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5). It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us (Romans 8:34). Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them (Hebrews 7:25).
Jesus brings sinful man and a righteous God together at the place of the blood sacrifice for sin. No longer is the blood of animals necessary as it was in the Old Testament. We can now approach God on the basis of the blood of Jesus that was shed on the cross of Calvary for the remission of sins. Because of the blood of Jesus, we can approach God boldly without timidity (Hebrews 4:14-16).
Jesus was an intercessor while He was here on earth. He prayed for those who were sick and possessed by demons. He prayed for His disciples. He even prayed for you and me when He interceded for all those who would believe on Him. Jesus continued His ministry of intercession after His death and resurrection when He returned to Heaven. He now serves as our intercessor in Heaven.
Intercessory Prayer – Effective Intercession
In intercessory prayer, we follow the Old Testament priestly function and the New Testament pattern of Jesus – standing before God and between a righteous God and sinful man. In order to be effective standing “between” we must first stand “before” God to develop the intimacy necessary to fulfill this role. Numbers 14 is one of the greatest accounts of intercessory prayer recorded in the Bible. Moses was able to stand between God and sinful man because he had stood “before” Him and had developed intimacy of communication. Numbers 12:8 records that God spoke with Moses as friend to friend and not through visions and dreams as He did with other prophets.
As New Testament believers, we no longer sacrifice animals as in Old Testament times. We stand before the Lord to offer up spiritual sacrifices of praise (Hebrews 13:15) and the sacrifice of our own lives (Romans 12:1). It is on the basis of this intimate relationship with God that we can then stand “between” Him and others, serving as an advocate and intercessor in their behalf.
Peter uses two words to describe this priestly ministry: “Holy” and “royal.” Holiness is required to stand before the Lord (Hebrews 12:14). We are able to do this only on the basis of the righteousness of Christ, not our own righteousness. Royalty is descriptive of the kingly authority that is delegated to us as members of the “royal family,” so to speak, with legitimate access to the throne room of God.
Keys to Powerful Living: Intercession
By CBN.com — A family member faces a deadly disease. Your neighbor desperately needs Jesus, but turns away every time you try to share Christ. A nation begins to crumble because its people follow their own evil ways. But what can you do?
Often, the problems we face seem too big for us. No matter how much we try, we cannot solve them on our own. It’s times like these when we need to turn to the Lord in intercessory prayer.
WHAT IS INTERCESSION?
Intercession is prayer that pleads with God for your needs and the needs of others. But it is also much more than that. Intercession involves taking hold of God’s will and refusing to let go until His will comes to pass.
Intercession is warfare — the key to God’s battle plan for our lives. But the battleground is not of this earth. The Bible says, “We are not fighting against humans. We are fighting against forces and authorities and against rulers of darkness and spiritual powers in the heavens above” (Eph. 6:12).
Intercessory prayer takes place in this spiritual world where the battles for our own lives, our families, our friends and our nation are won or lost.
A PLAN FOR BATTLE
If you are born again, you are God’s son or daughter (John 1:12). As His child, you have a direct “hotline” to God. At any time, you can boldly come into His presence (Heb. 4:16; see also
This incredible access to God is the basis for intercession. Once you are in God’s presence, you can now discover His battle plan for the situation you are facing. Because prayer alone is not enough — you need a target for your prayers!
To discover God’s plan, all you have to do is ask. The Bible says that “if any of you need wisdom, you should ask God, and it will be given to you” (James 1:5). When we ask God for wisdom, His desires will become the focus of our prayers. “Let God change the way you think. Then you will know how to do everything that is good and pleasing to Him” (Romans 12:2).
ARMED FOR BATTLE
Intercessory prayer is a serious matter. And just like soldiers who are preparing for battle, we cannot take on the enemy if we leave our weapons behind. That’s why we must go into “battle” armed for spiritual conflict (see 2 Cor. 10:3,4).
First, recognize that Jesus is in control of the situation. Jesus “rules over forces, authorities, powers, and rulers … over all beings in this world and will rule in the future world as well” (Eph. 1:21). He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Then, put on “all the armor God gives” (see Eph. 6) so that you will be ready to fight with God’s weapons. These are the “weapons of our warfare” that can pull down strongholds in the spirit world (see 2 Cor. 10:3,4). They will also protect you from the attacks that are sure to come once you begin the spiritual battle.
Next, bind the work of Satan, knowing that Jesus has given you authority “to defeat the power of your enemy” (Luke 10:19). If God shows you the identity of specific spiritual strongholds that are at work, take authority over these strongholds in the name of Jesus. And always remember that “God’s Spirit is in you and is more powerful that the one that is in the world” (1 John 4:4).
Finally, as you begin the spiritual battle, take comfort knowing that you are not alone: Jesus also is interceding on your behalf! The Bible says that Jesus “is able to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:25, NASB; see also Romans 8:26,27,34).
PERSISTING IN BATTLE
Intercessory prayer is also prayer that doesn’t give up. It’s the kind of prayer that endures all setbacks and overcomes every obstacle. It’s prayer that “presses on” until we “apprehend” God’s will in whatever situation we are facing (see Phil. 3:12, KJV).
This kind of prayer is the key to seeing breakthroughs in your life and in the lives of those around you. Jesus gave a great model for intercession in the story of the persistent friend. Here we see a friend who knocks on his neighbor’s door at midnight to ask for three loaves of bread. The neighbor does not want to get up, but Jesus said, “because of his friend’s persistence he will get up and give him as much as he needs” (Luke 11:8, NASB).
Then Jesus said, “Everyone who asks will receive, everyone who searches will find, and the door will be opened for everyone who knocks” (Luke 11:10). Those words mean keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking. In God’s time, your persistence in intercessory prayer will reap a spiritual harvest in your life and the lives of those around you!
BATTLING FOR YOUR NATION
Throughout the Bible, God searched for those willing to fight the spiritual battle for their land. In Ezekiel, God says, “And I searched for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the gap before Me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found no one” (Ezek. 22:30, NASB).
Through intercession, you can take the offensive in the spiritual battle, building up your community, your nation and your world. As you follow God’s call to rise up and take your place in the spiritual battle, God promises to “heal their land” (2 Chron. 7:14, NASB).
JOINING THE BATTLE
God is calling Christians to join His battle plan for this world — to join in intercessory prayer. He is not looking for perfect prayer warriors, just willing hearts who want to see His will come to pass on the earth. All you have to do is turn to the Lord in prayer:
“Father, I come into Your presence and ask You to give me the heart of the intercessor. Help me to be persistent in prayer until the breakthrough comes. Thank You for this powerful weapon of spiritual warfare — and for Your faithfulness in my life. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”
GOD’S WORD ON INTERCESSION
“We live in this world, but we don’t act like its people or fight our battles with the weapons of this world. Instead, we use God’s power that can destroy fortresses. We destroy arguments and every bit of pride that keeps anyone from knowing God. We capture people’s thoughts and make them obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:3-5).
SCRIPTURES FOR STUDY
Isaiah 59:16; Galatians 6:2; 1 Timothy 2:1 — Our responsibility to intercede
Genesis 18 — The importance of righteous believers
Isaiah 58:6-7 — The need for intercession
Romans 8:26-34 — Help to intercede
Ephesians 6 — The “armor” for spiritual battle
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture references are from the Contemporary English Version of the Bible.
The Mystery of Intercession
CBN.com — At some point in our lives, we all face situations where we don’t know how to pray. Recently, Gordon Robertson sat down and had a chance to interview Pastor Jack Hayford, founder of The King’s College and Seminary, about the mystery of intercession. And he offers helpful insights that will empower your prayer life.
GORDON ROBERTSON: I want to relate a brief personal story. I was reading the New Testament one day, and the Holy Spirit just sort of whispered to me, `If you were with Jesus, if you were one of his disciples when he was on Earth, what would you ask him?’ And, you know, I started to think, how do you do miracles and how did you walk on water and all those things. And then I was very gently reminded that his disciples, the one question they wanted was, `Teach us to pray. How do we pray?’ I think that needs to be a question that every disciple of Christ asks. From your point of view, what is the best way to pray? What should we do?
JACK HAYFORD: I think there’s two parts to it, Gordon. First, I think the Bible says that he that comes to God, believe that he is and that he’s a rewarder of those that seek him. To believe the Lord wants to answer prayer. There is so much of a mind-set everywhere you go — and amazingly, among hosts of believers — that prayer is kind of like, `Well, God’s going to do it anyway, but I’ll kind of ask him to either hurry it up or maybe, you know, what difference do my prayers make?’ I think a starting place is to recognize that if we don’t pray, it’s not going to happen. And it has nothing to do with God’s heart or desire to act in our world. It’s that he has made the terms. He said, `I’ll act when you ask.’ And it’s not that he couldn’t get along without us, but he’s chosen to say, `You don’t have the power. I’ve got the power, but you have the right to ask, so I’m telling you, ask.’
So the starting place is ask. And then in doing that, to draw on the energy and power of the Holy Spirit to do that asking because we need help to go beyond anything we can pray on our own.
GORDON ROBERTSON: It seems a great mystery to me that God seems to almost hold back until his children come to him and ask. It’s sort of, you know, ask and you shall receive…
JACK HAYFORD: Right.
GORDON ROBERTSON: …seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be opened. And it’s not until we initiate the relationship that he comes through and responds.
JACK HAYFORD: Well, you know, he has taken the boldest and most grand initiative in sending Jesus, in providing salvation and saying, `Now that’s there for you.’ And once we enter a new life, he says, `I’d like to grow you up now. I want you to learn this is the way this works. You’re the kid, I’m the dad, and you ask and we’ll start to grow into partnership.’ God and sons and daughters is the name of the company — and he’s wanting to grow us up in him.
GORDON ROBERTSON: You’ve gotten a revelation about Romans 8:28. I know that’s been oft quoted and oft repeated. Tell us about that.
JACK HAYFORD: Well, it’s one of the most beautiful verses in the Bible. The Scripture saying, `All things work together for good for them that love the Lord are called according to his purpose.’ (And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28, NIV)
The tragedy with Romans 8:28 is the number of people that take it as a philosophical statement and say, `Well, you know, all things work together for good.’ And it was never meant as a stand-alone verse. I’ve said — and people look at you like you denied the virgin birth or something — that Romans 8:28 isn’t true, unless you link it with the preceding two verses. And it’s true of other portions of the Bible if you isolate it from its context.
Romans 8:26 and 27 says, `We don’t know how to pray in circumstances that transcend us. But the Holy Spirit will help us with prayers, with groanings that transcend our capacity.’ (In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. Romans 8:26, NIV)
He’ll come alongside. He will take hold together with, literally, the Greek verb says that full partnership where he bears the burden and energizes the prayer. (And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for these saints in accordance with God’s will. Romans 8:27, NIV)
Oftentimes He gives direction and discernment as to how we ought to pray. And then, when we let the Holy Spirit help us in prayer, sometimes with the understanding, sometimes praying in the Spirit, that then, the Bible says, all things will work together for good. But they do not automatically just work out. That’s another part of that thing. We want to escape responsibility. Say, `Well, you know, God will take care of it. I’ll do my best and, you know, just cross my heart and hope to live.’
But the Lord says, `I want to you pray, and when it’s beyond you, my Holy Spirit will help you.’
GORDON ROBERTSON: When I preach in front of audiences occasionally on intercessory prayer, I ask, `How many of you are intercessors?’ And generally, I get a smattering of people to raise their hand. And then I say, `Well, Jesus was an intercessor — is an intercessor, is our intercessor, and we’re supposed to be like him.’ So now how many of you want to be an intercessors? And then everybody says, `OK, now that I’m theologically educated, I can now properly respond.’ But I don’t think many people really understand those verses in Romans Chapter 8 from an experiential point of view, the groanings that cannot be uttered. How does one enter into that realm, where the Spirit comes alongside to help our inability to pray?
JACK HAYFORD: Gordon, it’s just really a matter of passion. There is not some magic from heaven that you have to know how to do this and thereby, you become this awesome intercessor. In fact, the Bible using the word `groans that cannot be uttered.’ Many of us believe, and I think it’s true from passages in the Scripture, `I will pray with the Spirit, and I will pray with the understanding.’ The Apostle Paul is inferring prayer in the Spirit there, but I believe it includes also just plain times that you are groaning out, and there’s a cry from the inner person. And even when people just say, `Oh, my God,’ and they’re not just saying, `Oh, my God,’ they’re crying out that the heart of God reaches directly there, and the spirit of man, activated by the spirit of faith, the holy spirit of faith, touches the heart of God.
Now again, God is touched anyway, but he’s confined himself to his own rules. And that’s his right. He’s said, `It’s when you ask there will come answers.’ And it is that responsibility to accept our place and to move in partnership. The Lord says, `Without me, you cannot. But without without you, I will not.’ So he invites us and summons us to partnership in prayer, and then gives us the power to fulfill that by the help of the Spirit.
GORDON ROBERTSON: Is there another part of that “all things working together for good” where you can actually look at the hard times in your life as times where God is calling you into that kind of deep intercessory prayer to teach you the lesson that when the pressure comes and you groan in response to it — that that is part of the working together for good?
JACK HAYFORD: It is. In fact, the ensuing verse, Romans 8:29, says, `It’s by this means that we become conformed to the image of Jesus, that there is a process in the trial.’ (For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. Romans 8:29, NIV)
God didn’t make the problem to say, `I’m going to beat up on you, so you have to pray and then I’ll do a good thing.’
GORDON ROBERTSON: Right.
JACK HAYFORD: The problems come in the world. `Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward,’ Job says. Jesus said, `In the world, you’ll have tribulation.’ Trouble comes. The Holy Spirit shows us how to pray. God calls us to pray. As we pray, the power of God enters the situation and begins to transform the situation. And in the middle of that, we are being transformed. So there’s no question. That’s why sometimes people say, `Well, God must have made the problem because I grew out of it.’ But God didn’t say, `I’ll make problems to make you grow.’ He says, `I’ll show you the way you grow through learning the passion and the power and pathway of prayer.’
GORDON ROBERTSON: Amen. He’s not the author of temptation, but he does see us through it and there’s nothing that he’s given us that we can’t escape. Well, in addition to being an intercessor, you’re also a tremendous worship leader. You write songs that really get you right into the presence of God. And you’ve come up with a new book, “Worship His Majesty.” And I think in addition to the intercessory prayer movement, we’re now going to see it linked up with a new movement in worship. Tell us about that. What do you see happening in that realm?
JACK HAYFORD: Gordon, the two are so immediately approximate, and as you mentioned at the onset of our talk, they said, `Lord, teach us to pray.’ And he said, `You pray this way.’ And what he says, `First, you worship God, our Father who art in heaven, holy be your name.’ Worship lays the foundation to then, `thy kingdom come, thy will be done.’ There’s the introduction and the welcome of the kingdom power and working of God in our world situation. So worship is intended by Jesus’ own directive to be linked to prayer. And my book “Worship His Majesty” is intended to focus on the tremendous joy of worship — it is so clearly apparent where worship renewal is taking place. I would like people to not just get excited about worship, but to see how pivotally fundamental and foundational it is to the staging of the Lord’s impacting every area of our life — our congregation’s life, our community life — because we see the relationship between invoking the kingdom power through welcoming the presence of the king.
johnny aho 