Seeing God save 95 lives during COVID? Seeing God bring people into salvation? Saving my loved one from alcoholism? Seeing the Lord provide emergency money needed – every time? Being saved from demonic attacks in my sleep? Bringing revival to college campuses across the United States?

Intercession can be a pivotal practice as a believer, both to offer to others and to receive from others.

So what is Intercession? How is it different from other forms of prayer? What does it look like to practice intercession?

My Journey into Intercession

When I was in middle school, whenever I was in a car with my family, we would pass this one house and I don’t know why, but I seemed to always look up and see this house specifically whenever we would pass. It stuck out to me. I mentioned this out loud and my mother wisely suggested, “maybe you should pray for that house.” And so I did. This was a formational moment in my prayer life.

When I was a freshman in college, I joined a campus ministry and attended their fall conference. I learned there that it was important to pray regularly for my friends, asking the Lord to move in their lives or to bring them to Himself if they didn’t yet follow Jesus. I have since seen most of those friends come to faith, including the man who is now my husband – but that’s a story for another day.

Later that same year, I was praying as I was driving back to college for the spring semester, and the Lord invited me to start spaces for prayer in the campus ministry I had joined. So that semester we began a weekly prayer meeting.

A year later, as I joined the campus ministry leadership team, we decided to start daily prayer meetings at 8:13am in the morning. It was after this point when the ministry exploded in many the good ways – deeper devotion, greater obedience, more closeness to the Lord, and, yes, more students getting involved. That year we quadrupled in size, but more importantly, we grew in trust and dependency in the Lord. It was the dedication to time in prayer that transformed it all because we were being transformed by God.

After I graduated from college, my church read through the journals of George Muller, an intercessor who, as I like to say, “prayed some orphanages into existence” (which is a gross paraphrase). I was in awe of the idea of living a life totally dependent on the Lord to provide, and was inspired to increase my prayer life to trust the Lord to provide for the things He had promised. I remember telling my pastor, “I know that prayer makes a difference, and I believe God can do it. But there are so many things to pray for, and it’s so overwhelming, that I often don’t pray at all! What should I do?” I’m sure my pastor had a great response. Regardless, I sat on this question for 5 years and my prayer life didn’t change.

In 2018, some things happened in the ministry that I worked with that challenged me to want to pray for college campuses in the United Staues that have no ministry on them (which at the time was about half of them). At the same time, God was reminding me of the story of George Muller in my quiet times with Him, and He began clearly telling me, “it’s time to take the next step into more prayer.” The main thing that was stopping me was making daily intercession doable, so I devised a system to assign myself various things to pray for on different days (a different unreached campus a day, for example). This was another watershed moment- not because I suddenly became amazing at praying daily, because it’s been 5 years and I’m still not perfect at doing this daily – but because I said yes to the Lord in obedience, and then followed through on that yes.

Shortly after this, the college students I served also decided to pray before everything, and out of this we saw our ministry thrive – we met new interested students much more easily, we no longer got rained out of 70% of our events, and the drama in the fellowship toned down significantly.

Around this time I also began to do ministry with and to the LGBTQ+ community with a cohort of colleagues all across the United States. After about 6 months, we realized that whenever we had someone ready to partner with us in reaching this community on our college campuses, that same someone would inevitably have to drop out of college for a family reason, or had a financial crisis, or a physical health crisis, or a mental health crisis. More than that, we were all having a hard time sleeping, things at home were a struggle – like trees falling on our houses, cars and appliances breaking, and so on. After all of us across the cohort experienced this constantly, we realized something needed to change because the Enemy was too successful in attacking us and effectively distracting us from this good work. It wasn’t that we weren’t praying; we were. We just needed backup. It was at this point that we learned about Intercession Teams. Within two months of having a team of intercessors, everything got better; I could sleep peacefully without waking to feeling gross every morning, our appliances and vehicles stopped breaking, and people willing to do this ministry remained healthy, happy, and available.

So what is Intercession?

Intercession can be described in 3 different ways:

• Standing in the gap, trusting God until God’s promises come to pass
• Making ready for the Lord to come more freely, like building a road in the wilderness
• Bringing heaven to earth, or bringing us into alignment with God and His Kingdom

Intercession is Mysterious:

We go to God trusting that He is going to say and do whatever He likes. We may go in to intercession expecting one thing, and when we encounter God there, we may find He has something totally different and totally better that He wants to do.

Often, when I would intercede, I used to start with my idea of what I wanted God to do. “God, my friend has cancer; I want you to heal them.” Over time, I found that sometimes He was fine with this approach, and sometimes He was not. It all depended on what He could see and what He wanted to do. If He also wanted to heal them – be it through a miraculous healing or through a physician – then all was well with my prayer. But if He had another good thing in mind, or if there was something else He wanted to do first before getting to the topic of healing like dealing with my friends’ bitterness or unforgiveness, then me coming in with my plan led to me hitting a wall. I have since learned instead to come in as such instead, to make space for the mystery of how God may work: “God, my friend has cancer. What are you going to do about this? Help me to hear what You want me to hear about this.” This has allowed me to be much more open to the ways He might be at work that are as yet mysterious to me.

Intercession is Strategic:

In the last two years, I have been a part of a team that is trying to create a culture change in our campus minsitry movement around truly depending on the Lord first, above anything else. We have become aware of how much we love knowledge and strategy in our movement, to the point of idolatry at times. In our research, we have found that the single most telling factor around the longevity and sustainability of a ministry is how often they pray. If they practice daily prayer, the ministry will continue. We have been looking for a story that disproves this point, and we have yet to have found one.

This means that more than a famous speaker, or lots of money, or free giveaways, or big deal conferences, or the best Bible study training, or the best evangelism methods, or even large numbers of attendance, is prayer. Why? Because when we pray, we remember it’s not about us; we remember we need God. And more than that, we go to the One who knows it all and has it all under His control. There is no greater strategist than God. Look at the Old Testament – He always has the best battle plan, even if it’s atypical.

Intercession is Necessary:

“Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands far away; for truth has stumbled in the public squares, and uprightness cannot enter. Truth is lacking, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. The Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice. He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no one to intercede; then his own arm brought him salvation, and his righteousness upheld him.” (Isaiah 59:14-16 ESV)

This shoud be a warning to us; when God’s people have gone astray, God rightfully judges them – but they would be spared the pain of exile if only there was at least one person who would have been willing to intercede on behalf of Israel, to ask Him for mercy. Since there was no one to intercede, Israel was conquered and led into captivity.
Which makes me wonder – what are we missing, or having to deal with, because we aren’t interceding or asking others to intercede for us?

Why should you Intercede?

I often hear this question: “why doesn’t the Lord just make His way happen if He’s omnipotent or all powerful?” It’s because the Lord loves our participation in His plans; He wants us to want Him & His Kingdom! Think about it – if a family member has a secret recipe that they are perfectly capable of doing on their own to perfection, why would they take the time to teach it to others and to pass it down to later generations, even if the process of passing it along may be slow and full of mistakes? The answer is obvious: because they want others to enjoy the goodness of the secret family recipe, and to have the joy of owning it for themselves! So too it is with God and His ways.

So because the Lord loves sharing the joy of His ways with us, we pray for heaven to come down.

Scripture consistently tells us that we are more than flesh; when we are in Christ, we are born of the Spirit and flesh (John 3).

When God spoke Creation into being, He is spirit and he made the physical into being. As people made in God’s image, therefore, the spirit is more real than the physical (Genesis 1). 

Our battle in this world is more spiritual than it is physical (Ephesians 6). 

So as we fight for the Kingdom to move forward, yes, we encourage, we teach, we study the Bible, and we share the gospel. But first, we align ourselves and the physical realm to the spiritual realities and we pray and intercede until the spiritual battle is won, so that the physical battle will naturally follow. 
Intercession brings us into alignment with God, and then our communities and our places, into alignment with God and with His Kingdom.

Reflection Questions:

What do you long to see God shift and change where you are? In your commuities? In yourself? In others around you?

What spiritual realities need to change to align with God first? 

How do you Intercede?

There are many ways to intercede. I do not corner the market on intercession, but I have been interceding most days of my life for the past 5 years, and I have learned a few things. The following are 4 suggestions.

Hold God to His Promises:

Pray the promises and truths of God until you live and believe them, and can worship God for His faithfulness to His promises. For example, “God, you promise that if we abide in you then we can ask whatever we wish and you will give it to us (John 14), so before I ask for anything, first I ask that we would abide in you. That way, when we ask, we are asking for the things You want to give and will get to see You provide them!” 

I do ministry for a living, which means I fundraise for my expenses and my pay. I am also a supervisor of others who also fundraise. A few years back, when I prayed for funding for my team, and as I ‘abided’ in light of John 14, the Lord led me to passages on how God’s people shared their resources. So in obedience, I switched the way we fundraise to a team effort that involves sharing what we raise, and I got to see my entire team fully funded every year thereafter! I should probably explain that it’s rare for any individual staff to end a year fully funded, much less an entire team.

“Make level” or “Make Ready”:

Pray for the spiritual things that are off to be shifted by God to be made right; confess and repent for yourself or for your community as it comes up! For example, “Lord, we know that young people are experiencing mental health crises. We confess that we often worry and try to fix things ourselves instead of first turning to You. We ask that you turn our eyes and our attention to you, and that as we do this, you would remove the depression, the isolation, the loneliness, the apathy, and instead fill us and this community with peace, with genuine fellowship, with a desire to make connections, with professionals who can help young people find a way to health, and with an abundance of resources so that we can all be abundantly healthy.” 

I did this at my community college where there was practically no community, and we saw the campus culture shift dramatically after 2 years or prayer and following the Lord! Even the Dean of Students found us and thanked us for the difference we brought to the college campus.

Obey:

Ask the Lord how He might be asking you to live into His Kingdom. For example, as you pray for a mental health crisis, ask, “Lord, is there anything you are calling us to do to tangibly be an answer to this prayer?” Then take time to listen; He may call you do leave an encouraging note to counsellors you know, or actively invite people to spaces of community, or offer prayer, or something else entirely! And then, actually go and do what He calls you to do! 

As I have been teaching my colleagues to prioritize rest and dependency on God, I took my own sabbaths and retreat days, and I always had something to share with my team about what the Lord was doing in me during those times. Over time, we got so much better at resting as a team!

Identify With:

Jesus was only able to die for our sins and intercede on our behalf (John 17) because he lived his life on earth as a human, just like us; how can you identify more with what you’re interceding for? Is there something God is asking you to do or to fast from for a time? For example, if you’re praying for students on a college campus, go and be on that campus and feel what they feel as well. Do they complain about bad cafeteria food? Eat it with them! Do they struggle with their classes? Perhaps audit or enroll in a class or two on that same campus, or go back and remember your own time in your classes and meditate on what that had been like. Are you asking people to experience freedom from the need to compare themselves to others? Fast from something that tempts you to compare – like social media. Jordan Seng, in his book Miracle Work, shares a story of his friend shaving her head as she was interceding for friends with cancer (see book below). Rees Howells, an intercessor around the time of the Welsh Revival, interceded for healing for his friend with tuberculosis by becoming the personal caretaker of his friend – a dangerous choice as the chances of contracting it himself was high (see book below).

It was hard for me to identify with the culture and the people of the South when I lived in Tennessee for 6 years as I’m originally a Midwesterner, but because I listened, learned, and came to love them and learn from them, when COVID hit in March 2020, I not only knew how the people in my city would handle it, but I also knew how to pray for them. And because of that, I was able to intercede on their behalf in spite of their behavior; there’s a longer story for another time, but in short, the Lord saved 95 people from death to COVID in my city in those first months.

Try it!

I cannot explain to you how normal I am. I watch television. I burn my food sometimes. I forget my laundry in the washing machine. I forget to text people back. I am incredibly clumsy. And yet, the Lord has done some awesome things while I’ve gotten to partner with Him in what He wants to do. So, be normal like me and try it out! Let’s see what the Lord does!

If you’re looking to grow in Intercession, here are some recommended resources:

• Bakht Singh of India
• Rees Howells Intercessor
• The Autobiography of George Muller
• Miracle Work – Jordan Seng