Intercession can also be described as a form of spiritual pregnancy. In this view, the intercessor is pregnant with a spiritual truth that shall be born to physical reality. By prayer, the intercessor activates that truth existing in the spirit realm. When the fullness of  prayer has come, that spiritual truth will manifest and become a physical substance of faith and obedience.  

I have seen that when there is an outpouring of God's love and mercy while interceding, the intercessor  experiences a broken spirit and a contrite heart. In this condition, the natural flow of intercession is travailing and groaning in tears. 

In prayer when overcome with grace, conviction, repentance, and revelations, this intense experience of a contrite and repentant heart can make an intercessor speechless. Man's words fall short of the depth and vastness of God’s loving heart.  

Intercessors symbolically take the sin of others upon themselves before God. They carry the painful burden and deal with it according to God's justice. So intercessors implore mercy not God's wrath.

However, intercession must not be perceived as a form of prayer that works according to our emotions or will.

Later on I have also learned that God would not want me to  intercede in deep groans and travail when I wanted to. I found fulfillment in interceding intensely so that I would look forward to experiencing God’s awesome love and grace in tears. But God does not want me to be stuck there. So He led me to experience more. 

His Spirit took me in visions to several places. While in prayer, I saw myself soaring high in the sky. I saw towns, cities, nations, mountains, seas, and several places I have never seen before. I saw faces of people,  events, accidents and calamities. Then I realized that this experience was only one aspect of the rich treasure of God’s knowledge and wisdom in intercession. God showed me other truths, principles and experiences. But among other things and more than the experience, He wants intercessors to know Him better.

Then God led me to the next level of intercession. He brought me to several places infested with evil and wickedness--- where heaven is not open. This is for me to learn how to discern.

Prior to this, I have been experiencing the Presence of God and angelic visitations most of the time; but in this level, I was literally in the dark. 

The feeling was like being thrown out of His palace. It was like God shutting off my ability to see His presence and spectacular visions of things to come. Hearing His voice became seldom. 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 all sorts of nasty feelings such as agitation, anger, rage, lust and other filthy feelings and thoughts gripping my spirit and body. 

Then after many weeks, God 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 and distinguish 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 believer would desire to be. But I came to accept that when God brought me to demon infested realms, it was the perfect season and place for me to train for war---to sharpen my senses, particularly, myfeelings. God wanted me to learn how to distinguish different spirits. God wanted me to excel in discernment and marksmanship in spiritual combat.    [TOP]    

The Qualified Intercessor 

Intercession flows naturally on a believer filled with God’s love and compassion for others, sinners or saints. Amazingly, a new believer is qualified. 

All believers are called to pray and intercede or wage spiritual warfare at certain levels and intensity but it is God who modulates them into their distinct levels and trains them for war in various battles. 

A personal intercession does not require the level of a mature believer to be powerful and effective in praying for others. I have seen this happen to me. After a dramatic encounter with God where He revealed His love, forgiveness, calling and task to me in dreams and visions, my wife and I would intercede for others. And we have seen miracles, signs and wonders. We have seen others committing their lives to God and we have witnessed the fruit of their faith and obedience to the word of the Lord. These took place in spite of my lack of any formal or informal training in the ministry. Certainly, it was the intercession where God’s anointing fell on me and on my wife.

Every night, my wife and I interceded for the unbelievers in the company where I was working. In principle, it was the Lord who led me and my wife to such task though I was still learning how to pray  at that time. What I knew then was that my wife and I were 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 so that I started speaking in tongues by myself. There was so much power flowing in me which charged my spirit with a tremendous faith and with a pure and selfless love of God. By faith and God's anointing I shared His kingdom with passion and boldness. God's Spirit was there before me. Before my eyes, I saw people set free from their sins and afflictions when they received the Kingdom of the God upon their lives. And now I know that God is doing all these wondrous works through me, not because I was good in the methods. No. People came to know God, even wicked ones. No one taught me how to share my faith. It  was the anointing. With the joy of sharing God, His kingdom and truths naturally flowed. I was exuberating with God's love, the love of my Father in heaven, Hashem Elohim. That love powerfully flooded the office where 50 architects, engineers, draftsmen and other staff are working there.

One time a group of co-employees were having fun sharing filthy jokes among themselves. When they saw me approaching, one of them quickly alerted the group to stop their dirty jokes. Then I realized that it must be the Spirit of God going before me that sanctified these guys from their filthy mouths. 

There was also this guy who saw me reading the Bible at lunch break. The Holy Spirit convicted his backslidden heart to return to God; he was completely restored. The strong anointing also flowed to other believers in the office who became the core of intercessors and witnesses there. The Holy Spirit gave us simple strategies to break open the blinded spirits of even our arrogant employers so that they, eventually,  became believers. 

All these amazing things happened because of the purity of intercession burning with intense love and compassion in the presence of God pleading for His mercy for people.     [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. If we are doing these things without understanding the principles, we get lost in methods and 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 understandable. 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 believers who need to develop the language of a 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 Scriptures, we receive knowledge of God and his will. This is where teachers and theologians excel. But the depths and meaning of the Scriptures is received through an intimate relationship with God through prayer and the study of Tanakh. 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 groans.

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 visitaion.  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 emotion but of God visiting the intercessors. The load of sin can be so heavy or even painful felt by the intercessors.

Through the years of praying and interceding, the Lord led me to discover and learn several indicators in discernment. When I feel heaviness and pain in my heart I am discerning hurt and bitterness somewhere. If I feel pain on my belly, I am discerning lust and sexual sins. The several indicators I have learned are discussed thoroughly in the article I wrote about feelings.

Intercessors are God's channels in opening prison doors, setting the captives free, and ushering His kingdom upon people to walk in His ways. God led me to discern and intercede people who need healing and deliverance. God sees their bondage and their need.  Amazingly, He chooses even wicked people and takes them out of their wickedness, transforms them to the opposite extreme. And God does this work of salvation, saving the sinners from damnation, through intercessors, who symbolically take the sins upon themselves pleading for God's mercy and forgiveness.

The intercessors are also like pregnant woman--- travailing, about to give birth to 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 His Kingdom and rightheousness. So I call this kind of intercession as the sonship intercession.     [TOP]

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

Let us take a look at couples. We hear of believing 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 their faith to their husband. There is also that factor of having wrong motives for praying. The desire to change the husband is more of a need to gain relief from oppression and burden 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 believing spouse or any person in the home or community demonstrates a transformed character in God. The unbelieving spouse or the person being drawn 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 God. No. It is simply a full expression of a deep love going on with Hashem Elohim, the reason for loving the lost to be delivered from evil.

We have seen battered 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 believing spouse to separate. But even if divorce were allowed, a believer must fight in the heavenly places subduing the rulers and principalities in the air from destroying relationships instead of choosing an easy way out like annulment or divorce.    [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 God, our Father. 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. He spoke truths and principles describing the Father’s will for his disciples and believers. This is because he knew the will of the Father.

The Sonship Intercession can be mistaken as arrogant or presumptuous. But it is not so. Appallingly, this is how a certain intercessor I know felt so that he cannot accept this kind of intercession. To him, it lacks the mode of pleading for mercy. To me, this level does not cancel the essence of mercy and grace. 

The theme of the Sonship Intercession is perfection and authority. This is like growing up to maturity so that one has to pass the age of innocence---one who does not know any better than to appropriate grace and mercy. 

Speak truth in the spirit realm to manifest in the physical realm. This form of prayer is powerful and effective. Lies and deceptions are shattered. The declaration also reinforces the  truth stored in the intercessors’ spirit and body. Since this level contains strong words of truth, laws and principles, it is prone to alienate other believers comfortable only with conventional-pleading form of intercession. But in the spirit realm, the intercessor is implementing God's law. The dark kingdom crumbles. Their lawlessness is nullified.

For the sake of the weak, it is always the maturer believer who gives way---to keep others from stumbling.  Besides, it is also loving and wise to restrain our applications of unacceptable language in corporate intercession so that the heavens will not be defiled by bad attitude and bad mouthing. 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 when we pray. Noise is commonly treated as a disturbance and, ultimately, a hindrance. So we get agitated when there is noise, angry when someone is noisy, and violent when the noisy person doesn’t stop making noise. 

I have 5 children. When they were small and active they made such noise I had to cope with. My wife and I 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 a quiet place seemed a godly desire to please God. But God sees differently. In fact 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 also 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 seemed that anywhere I went, even in the mountains, noise was also there. 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, and hearing His voice 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,  disobediences are 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 my children's 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 God,  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 colleagues 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.