Open Heavens ... praying for others

by Dale Shumaker

4spirit@gmail.com

In Open Heavens, Augusto Perez leads us into how the Lord trains us to pray for family, friends, others. 

The following is an excerpt from his book.

In the beginning level of intercession, prayer is a friend praying to a friend for a friend. This is how God begins to train us in the art of intercessory prayer. The Lord teaches us to be persistent and persevere in prayer until we pray through and receive an answer.  We learn how to ask, seek and knock.

If the Lord is showing you something, do not start just to pray for it, but wait until the Lord shows you how to pray. Maybe you will only speak protection and blessing on someone. Perhaps you will stand in the gap and repent for someone, or you may release the will of the Lord on them through a decree or you will go into warfare on behalf of them.

Wait to see what the Lord really wants to do. Do not push through it impatiently, but pray and stay with it until you are through and feel a peace in your spirit about it. Do not give up before it’s time. You will feel it, and know when it is time to stop. You need to let the Holy Spirit lead you.

Intercessory prayer is exciting and awesome, but it is hard work. It is more than just praying for another person’s needs. It sometimes may mean not only praying for another person, but praying as another person. How can you fully pray on behalf of another without fully understanding their given situation and what is on their heart?

The Lord sometimes gives the intercessor the ability to enter into the Spirit and feel, know and experience the very conflict and agony that person is going through. The intercessor will sometimes experience the same pain and anguish in the body of that other person. The intercessor will begin to groan, wail, travail and feel despair.

This can be very confusing if you don’t know what is taking place. What is happening to you as an intercessor is that you have literally become that person in the spirit, and are praying as that person in the Spirit, petitioning God on behalf of that person. Jesus is the greatest intercessor ever. He is praying for you. Every time you sin, He intercedes for you.

Travail
Travail is “to writhe in pain”. The process of child birth again illustrates this very well. Just like a mother experiences labor pains in giving physical birth to her baby, the same is true in the spiritual realm. For every person that is born again, someone has interceded and travailed for them (Isaiah 66:8; Romans 8:26-27; Galatians 4:19). Most Christians today do not even pray for the lost, let alone travail. No wonder so few people are being won to the Lord in this nation.

Intercession and travail is very different from normal devotional prayer. You can pray that kind of prayer at any moment, but not travailing prayer. Intercessory prayer is imparted by the Lord and is the kind of prayer that comes with a burden. This is a feeling of sadness, concern, even anxiety. You may or may not know for who the burden is.

Sometimes the Lord may bring the face of the person or name to mind. Immediately you may feel unusual sympathy or concern for the individual. This is how God calls us to pray. But unless you take time to give yourself to intercession, you will not experience “parturition”, the actual joy and relief that comes with having given birth to the will of God and having “prayed through” (Isaiah 66:8).

When you intercede for people like this, you may experience excruciating agony and pain like in childbirth, actually feeling a person’s grief, pain and loneliness. When the Lord places a burden on you to pray it is called: “The burden of the Lord”. This is a supernatural experience where God is allowing us to feel His burden, sadness, love and grief. You become pregnant with a burden that is given by the Lord and you travail or groan in delivery until it is accomplished.

Remember that the Holy Spirit will only intercede through those who are both willing and obedient. If you are, simply tell the Lord you are both available and willing. Then as you start to feel deep within an intercessory burden begin to stir, come apart and allow the Holy Spirit to move upon you until that for which you are burdened is birthed. Lack of travail is the reason why we do not see results in winning the lost to Christ.

More from Augusto Perez at:
http://theappearance.com/
The Appearance Ministries website