The depth of understanding intercession and the joy that comes with it is experienced not taught. But the mechanics and discipline can be learned when taught. Before I go to that, I would like to encourage aspiring intercessors by describing the awesome things I discovered and experienced in intercession.

Intercession is first of all to be recognized as a relationship with God before being treated as a job that must be done. When love and compassion or grace and mercy is manifested by God upon me, my spirit breaks into tears of intense repentance and intimacy with God while praying for others. This intense experience of a contrite and repentant heart makes me groan and travail where words fall short of the depth and vastness of God’s heart. The contrite feelings and emotions are so real and strong that as an intercessor, I take the sin of others upon myself before God.

However, this experience is not man’s will but God’s. I learned this when God would not let me go into deep groans and travail anytime I want. Indeed I enjoyed interceding with intensity and would look forward to experiencing God’s awesome love and grace translated to expressions of tears and intimacy. I enjoyed the spiritual journey of being transported to different places while interceding in the heavenly places above towns, cities and nations. I would see myself soaring high in the sky looking down on mountains, seas, towns and cities, praying and interceding for the people there that I have never met before. I see many faces of people and pictures of accidents and calamities flashing in my mind. But this exciting experience was only one aspect of the rich treasure of God’s knowledge and wisdom in intercession. God showed me other truths, principles and experience. He wants intercessors to know him better.

God brought me to the next level of intercession. It is where the atmosphere is infested with evil and wickedness, a situation where heaven is not open. After familiarizing me enough with the Throne Room experience and angelic visitations, God had to teach me to discern the unseen evil spirits and the spirit of man. The awesome and beautiful visions and dreams were no more. His manifested presence was not as frequent and strong as before. The feeling was like being thrown out of his palace. It was like God shutting off my ability to see the Throne of God and his wonderful works and the spectacular visions of things to come. Hearing his voice became seldom. At first, I did not understand. I struggled. Have I displeased God that is why I’m being detached from his presence like one   who is in sin? The atmosphere was dense with oppression and pain. There were agitation, anger, rage, lust and other filthy feelings and thoughts gripping my spirit and body. Then he made me realize that I am sent out of his presence with a mission. There in the wilderness is the battleground between good and evil. God wanted me to see and feel the dark places infested with evil and demons; to listen to their voices, see their ugliness and feel their filth and wickedness to sharpen my discernment. I then understood the pain of Elisha, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Paul -- their “ thorn in the flesh” ( 2 Cor.12:7-9 ). These great men experienced the pains and sensations in the spirit realms infested with evil. This was most uncomfortable and filthy, an experience where no Christian would desire to be. When God brought me to demon infested realms, it was the perfect season and place to familiarize my senses, particularly, my feelings, with wicked spirits and learn discernment and marksmanship in spiritual combat.    [TOP]    

The Qualified Intercessor 

Intercession flows naturally on a Christian filled with God’s love and compassion for sinners. Amazingly, a new convert is qualified. 

Any new convert has the authority to intercede and wage warfare for the conversion of any unbeliever. Intercession for conversion to Christ  doesn’t require the level of a mature Christian to be powerful and effective in praying for others to be saved. I have seen this happen to me. After my conversion, my wife and I would intercede and lead others to Christ and witness the fruit of their conversion in spite of my lack of any formal or informal training on evangelism. Certainly, it was the intercession where God’s anointing fell on me to evangelize that brought conversion to souls. Every night, my wife and I interceded for the unbelievers in the company I was working with. In principle, it was the Lord who led my wife and me to such task though I did not know it at that time. What I knew then was that I was burning intensely with God’s grace and compassion for the lost.

The first night my wife and I prayed for the salvation and transformation of my office mates was unforgettable: I was baptized by fire and was filled with the Holy Spirit that I started speaking in tongues by myself. There was so much power flowing on me which charged my spirit with a tremendous faith in Christ and with a pure and selfless love of God that made me share the gospel with boldness. The anointing was so strong that those who listened to the gospel were set free from their afflictions and got saved. And now I know that God visited that place, not because I was good in the methods of evangelism. Many came to receive Christ, even the most wicked of them all. No one taught me the principles of evangelism but I  was moving in the anointing-- being filled with the peace. love and joy of being in love with Jesus. That love flooded the office composed of 50 architects, engineers, draftsmen and other staff.

One time a group of employees were having fun sharing green jokes among themselves when they saw me approaching them. One guy quickly told them to stop their dirty jokes. The Spirit of God in me was so strong that these guys stopped sinning. There was also this guy who saw me reading the Bible at lunch break. The power of God melted his heart to confess that he is a backslidden Christian. He was completely revived. The strong anointing also flowed to other Christians and new converts who became the core of intercessors and evangelists in the office. The Holy Spirit gave us simple strategies to break open the blinded spirits of even our arrogant employers. They also became Christians. Not by my might, nor by any power, but by His Spirit.    [TOP]

Intercession is a form of prayer that seeks favor from God for others. It is commonly called as a prayer of one who stands in the gap. One who gets into this dimension connects with God in intimacy. Without it, intercession is boring and dead.

To experience intimacy, we try worship. If it doesn’t work, we go into combat. We command the hindering spirits to move out of our way to the Throne Room. If we are doing these things without understanding the principles, we get lost in situations that are new to us because we do not know what to do.

We might be doing the right things but we do not know why we are doing them. At the primary stage of learning, this is fine. But we need to grow by learning why, then, what’s next. Intercession without understanding the groans and travails will not make us last long in this task. It is not because this is wrong. Indeed, this is the result of a powerful anointing in prayer but this is a prayer language for Christians who need to develop the language of the Son. The Father is raising us to become mature in truths and principles which will develop into a perfect language in prayer and intercession. We know that from studying the Scripture, we receive knowledge of God and his will. This is where teachers and theologians excel. But the depths and meaning of the Scripture is received through an intimate relationship with God through prayer and intercession. The increase of knowledge develops our skill to communicate. So our intercession develops into intimate talks with God discussing truths and principles outgrowing the plain requests in moans and cries.

When God is about to visit his people at a certain time, season and place, he deploys intercessors to pray and prepare the place, the backslidden and the lost destined for salvation, for his coming.  His appointed intercessors receive the prodding of the Holy Spirit until they submit and obey. They may experience  tremendous  compassion for the backslidden and the lost which is not a result of their sympathy nor of human compassion but of God visiting the intercessors. The load of sin can be so heavy or even painful. This is felt by the intercessors.

Through the years of praying, the Lord led me to discover that when I feel heaviness and pain in my heart, this is an indication that the person/s being prayed for are likely afflicted with hurt and bitterness. If I feel pain on my belly, this indicates lust and sexual sins committed. They are desperately in need of healing and deliverance and God sees their bondage and their need.  He also sees their future as faithful sons and daughters in Christ, obeying him for the tasks he set in motion. In His ominsicence, these sons and daughters He had appointed them to fulfill his plan for the Eternal Church. Because of the set times, God channels his love, grace and mercy to set the lost son or daughter free from bondage through the intercessors.

The intercessors respond in groans and travails for mercy and grace from God in behalf of the backlidden and lost. Just like Jesus on the cross, the intercessors take the sins upon themselves. But the intercessors do not need to die on the cross again because Jesus did this once and for all ( Rom.6:10).  The intercessors also travail like pregnant woman about to give birth. Yes, they give birth to these sons and daughters in their spiritual womb. They groan in pain and burst into tears with great sorrow, representing the backslidden and the lost. While the intercessors are groaning and travailing, God is pouring out his great compassion breaking the heaviness and pain, a symbolic expression felt in the heart or belly declaring that the yoke of sin is broken. When all sin is broken and gone, the intercessors may burst into tears of peace and joy. They give praise, thanksgiving and glory to God.

The groaning of intercession then stops. For the sons and daughters now serving God, intercessors pray for them for their growth and perfection in the image and likeness of the Son, Jesus Christ. So I call this kind of intercession as the sonship intercession.     [TOP]

But there are some prayer needs that require sufficient amount of Biblical knowledge and application. It is a combination of prayer and action. I call this as the ‘ Fruit-bearing Intercession’.

Let us take a look at couples. We hear of Christian wives interceding for their husbands to be saved for many years and nothing happened. Why?  Certainly, their prayers and actions are not making a powerful impact of the gospel to their husband. There is also that factor of having wrong motives for praying. The desire to convert the husband is more of a need to gain relief from the oppressive husband than a pure love and compassion for the lost. I thank God for Zeny who willingly went through God’s love and grace to handle my fits of rage and wickedness. Her prayers and demonstration of love, peacefully taking the punches and hurts gave her a strong authority to speak into my life. Her grace, patience and humility to demonstrate the true meaning of the gospel shattered my unbelief, pride, violence and all forms of evil.

Intercession is effective when the saved spouse or any person in the home or community demonstrates a transformed character in Christ. The unbelieving spouse or the person being evangelized may be blind to spiritual truths but his/her physical senses would see, feel, taste and experience the truths through the character and action of the believer. This principle makes it seem hard to win our family for Christ. No. It is simply a full expression of a deep love going on with Jesus, the reason for loving the lost to be saved.

We have seen battered Christian wives win their husbands. But there were also those who quit. The good thing about having no divorce in the Philippines makes it hard for a Christian spouse to separate. But even if divorce were allowed, a Christian must fight in the heavenly places subduing the rulers and principalities in the air from destroying relationships instead of choosing an easy way out.    [TOP]

As we grow in the knowledge of God, our character and language also grow. This makes intercession develop into new expressions of intimacy and prayer declarations of God’s truths and principles in the heavenly places. We become one in language and outlook with the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Yes, our language is also a picture of our growth or level of knowing and loving God. We present our situation to God in a language we have developed or are still developing. One can pray in a language coming from an intellectual spirit rather than from the anointing of a maturing son or daughter of the Living God. And this can be discerned easily by experiencing its dryness and perhaps even pain that sometimes goes with it.

The prayer of Jesus for his disciples and believers is an excellent example of Sonship Intercession. This is his prayer in John 17:6-19:

I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name--the name you gave me--so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled. I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.  As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified. My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.

He did not groan nor cry while interceding but he spoke truths and principles describing the Father’s will for his disciples and believers because he knew the will of the Father.

The Sonship Intercession may be mistaken as arrogant or presumptuous. I was shocked to hear from another intercessor that this form of intercession is unacceptable to him because it lacks the usual manner of pleading and imploring mercy and grace. This level does not in any way cancel the importance of mercy and grace but this is not what the Spirit is saying and doing. The theme of the Sonship Intercession is perfection and authority, not mercy and grace. The faith and authority on declaring truths and principles on prayer targets by the intercessor deaden and shatter the lies and deceptions of demons infesting the atmosphere. The declaration also reinforces the  truth stored in the intercessors’ spirit soul and body. Since this level contains strong rhema and logos words of truth and principles, it might alienate other Christians comfortable with conventional intercession.

It is always the maturer Christian who gives way for others to keep them from falling or sinning. For the sake of our weaker brethren, It is also loving and wise to restrain our applications of unacceptable language in corporate intercession. God has provided his intercessors an access to his Holy Chamber where they can be alone with God to express, without restraint, all words, emotions, and gestures of intercession that the Holy Spirit manifests.     [TOP]

Place, Manner & Behavior in Intercession   

Perhaps it is accurate to say that all of us prefer a place of solitude and quietness for prayer. Noise is generally treated as a hindrance in seeing, hearing and feeling God. So we get disturbed and even agitated when there is noise, angry when someone is noisy, and violent when the noisy person doesn’t stop making noise. We have 5 children. When they were small and active they made such noise I had to cope with. We had  no private room  to be alone with God in prayer, except the one bathroom in the house that was neither  sound proof nor childproof for longer time than usual. We live in the city where noise of vehicular traffic doesn’t stop until 2 A.M. and starts again at 4 A.M.

This longing in my heart to enjoy the convenience of a prayer mountain and enjoy praying in that quiet place seemed a godly desire to please God. But God sees differently. It was a selfish longing and a mindset God wants me to break. He did send me once to a prayer mountain in Antipolo but the prayer room near mine was very noisy. Somebody was praying very loud and the small prayer rooms were not sound proof. I wanted to run away from noise but it seems that everywhere I go, even in the mountains, noise is after me. God is showing me the truth--that truth that will set me free from my mindset that noise is a hindrance. This mindset is a deception of Satan and his kingdom. Destroy that mindset in declaring that noise cannot hinder me from hearing God. This I did. From that time on, I can pray wherever I am, hear and see God in the noisiest place. Since noise is not a hindrance anymore, my desire to spend time with God in the prayer mountains is gone. For the Lord had commanded me to master the art of praying, interceding, engaging wicked spirits quietly in public and in noisy places.

God is clearly purifying me and all intercessors from the mindsets and preferences of intercession. In fact, all things in life must be pure from all desires, longing, preferences, attitude and behavior that are not God’s will. We presume too much. When we don’t hear God speak, we go ahead with our plans. When it fails, we get devastated. In many cases,  the disobediences of Christians are mostly the product of presumption.    

One morning after breakfast, I wanted to be alone with God in fervent prayer. Zeny gladly excused me from washing the dishes. In the bedroom as I was about to pray, God spoke: “ Go and wash the dishes.”  I obeyed. While I was washing the dishes and meditating, the Lord spoke again and instructed me to hold a Parent Teacher Fellowship sponsored program in school where He will display his marvelous power to provide for the computer needs without the usual fund raising schemes of people..

Standing, kneeling, sitting, lying prostrate, lying on bed, walking, running and any position or physical activity is a possible behavior while interceding. Any position, behavior or activity going on while interceding must be under the command of our God. So it is not something we have thought of or have planned to do without the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Let us destroy the mindset limiting the unlimited ways of God on intercession.     [TOP]

After God graciously pulled me out from my ambition to be one of the greatest architects in the world, he spoke audibly on my task to serve him in spiritual architecture. It was not an easy death to my illusion of grandeur because of my love for the art and science of building beautiful structures and places. Zeny, my wife--a daring and obedient lover of Christ,  challenged me to love and serve God according to his terms, stripped of all crutches and also leaving no bridges behind. Her challenge was clearly from God but I did not understand why I need to let go of my love for architecture when I can use it to serve and glorify him. Is it not right for me to use my talent and treasure for his kingdom? I pondered on my wife’s challenge. She had taken the challenge herself much earlier concerning her medical profession and I could see no reason for regrets. Still I politely argued with God why I must use my talent in architecture for his purpose.

One day in 1990, the Holy Spirit led me to read Matthew 24. As I was reading between the lines, heaven was opened and I heard God’s voice: “ You may build beautiful buildings of this world and become great among men but the day will come when not one stone or steel will be left on another; every one will be thrown down “. . I replied, “ Lord, you are my first love. I lay down my love of architecture before your feet.”

At another time and place while I was queuing for a jeepney ride, I pondered on the future on how to respond when confronted by my friends in Architecture. I asked, “ Lord, what will I tell them when they ask me what I am doing now? I suppose they will not understand and will think that I am just wasting my talent.” Then God answered audibly: “ Tell them, you are in your Father’s business.” That hit me.