Table of contents
Do You Know What it Means to be a Christian?
The Bible says:
1. God created you to have a relationship with Him. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him. (Genesis 1:27)
2. But because of sin, you have infinitely offended God. For all have sinned and fall short of God’s glorious standard. (Romans 3:23)
3. This offense of sin carries with it a present separation and, if not dealt with, the ultimate separation of death. But your iniquities have separated you from your God. (Isaiah 59:2) For the wages of sin is death. (Romans 6:23)
4. But God, in His great love for you, took the initiative to restore your relationship with him. But God demonstrated His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)
5. Jesus, God’s Son, removed the offense of your sin and made reconciliation possible. For He (God) made Him (Jesus) who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21)
6. OUR PART is to accept God’s gracious gift of forgiveness by embracing His Son Jesus Christ, by faith. God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. (1 John 5:11-12)
One way to express your faith and your trust in Jesus is with a prayer like this:
Dear God, I want to be in a right relationship with You. I understand that I have offended You by my sin. God, please forgive me. Forgive me through Your Son, Jesus. I accept His sacrifice for me. I trust Him right now as my personal Savior from sin. God, thank you for taking the initiative to save me. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
If you have come to God through Jesus Christ, your spiritual journey has begun! We would like to put materials in your hand to help you understand this step and to begin to grow in your Christian faith. Call or e-mail us to get started. God bless you!
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A Breakthrough Prayer for Power in Prayer
Lord, teach me the power of intercession. Help me to devote myself to prayer and prioritize it in my life (Colossians 4:2). Help me to cultivate praise and thanksgiving on a daily basis. I want to raise my expectation of what You can do in and through my life. Raise my view of You. I want to discover Your supremacy and majesty in a greater way. I want to believe You for something bigger than myself. I choose to step out of my comfort zone. Increase my faith. Your Word says in Hebrews 11:6, “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” I earnestly seek You Lord.
Teach me to focus on Your plans rather than my own needs when I pray. I want my prayers to be purpose-centered and focused on Your big plan. I choose to practice Your presence every day. Teach me to pray Your Word and wait upon You. I submit myself to Your authority in every area of my life. Teach me to be like Elijah who was a man of the Spirit and sought after You with his whole heart.
Lord, teach me to prayer journal on a regular basis so that I remember Your works and the things You have done in my life. Help me to process my thoughts and hear what You are saying to me. I want to meditate on Your faithfulness. Help me to give You extended periods of time. I want to see life from Your perspective. I want to ascend the heights in prayer. Help me to hear from You. I desperately want revival in my life. Do a deep work in my heart.
“Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24). Forgive me for my sins. Remove any hindrances in me that would prevent personal revival.
I long for revival in the land but let it start with me. Change me and make me like You. Like John the Baptist I want to prepare the way for the Lord. I want to make straight paths for You (Mark 1:3). In Jesus’ name, amen.
Help me to ascend the heights in prayer. I want to touch heaven and change earth with my prayers. David said in Psalm 34:1-3, “I will extol the LORD at all times; his praise will always be on my lips. My soul will boast in the LORD; let us exalt his name together.” “Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him” (Psalm 34:8). In Jesus’ name, amen.
By Debbie Przybylski
Intercessors Arise International
www.intercessorsarise.org
If you would like to get all my videos and written prayers, get my soon-coming course called: The Intercessors Arise Life-Changing Prayers Course. I will let you know when you can pre-register.
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This next prayer secret is another powerful prayer strategy that has to be added to your arsenal. The first six prayer secrets all basically had to do with you learning how to properly approach God the Father for whatever your own personal prayer requests may be with Him.
This next prayer secret is now going to take things one step further. This prayer secret will be learning how to step into the gap and pray for someone else’s prayer need before God the Father. This is what is called intercessory prayer.
Though most Christians know what this kind of prayer is with the Lord, God the Father makes two very interesting statements in two of the three verses I will give you below.
In both of these verses, God makes the statement that He was looking for intercessors, for those who would be willing to step into the gap for another person to pray directly for them. And in both of these verses, it says that He was not able to find one person to do this with Him at the time that He was looking for one.
I repeat, He could not find one person to go into the gap at the time that He was looking for one!
Both of these verses are back in the Old Testament, so He was talking to His own Jewish people when He was making these two very intense statements.
Think of the ramifications of what was occurring when He was making these two statements. We are talking about an entire Jewish people and an entire Jewish nation – and God could not find one person who was willing to go into the gap to pray for the land to get Him to move with His deliverance power on the particular situation He was dealing with at the time.
When you read these first two verses and how God is intensely expressing Himself, you will wonder, is He still having the same kind of problem with His people today, which are all born-again Christians?
There is obviously no way that we can know the answer to this question, but what we can learn from these two verses is that God the Father is always looking for intercessory prayer warriors who are willing to go into the gap for another person at a moment’s notice.
The Scripture Verses
All three of these verses are from the Old Testament, but each one of these verses will still apply to every single, New Testament, born-again believer.
In these three verses, God the Father is giving all of us an incredible and powerful prayer secret – and that secret is the power of intercessory prayer and how He can be dramatically moved to answer prayer if someone is willing to go into the gap for another person to pray for whatever their personal need or needs may be at the time.
Here are three extremely powerful verses on this prayer secret:
- “So I sought for a man among them who would make a wall, and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found no one.” (Ezekiel 22:30)
- “He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor; therefore His own arm brought salvation for him … (Isaiah 59:16)
- “Therefore He said that He would destroy them, had not Moses His chosen one stood before Him in the breach, to turn away His wrath, lest He destroy them.” (Psalm 106:23)
Notice in the first verse that God was actually looking for an intercessor to “stand in the gap“ on behalf of the land so that He would not destroy it.
This verse says that God had “sought for a man,” but literally could not find one man who was willing to do this with Him.
The fact that God was actually looking for a man to stand in the gap is shouting out a major prayer secret – and that secret is: God is looking for intercessory prayer warriors who will be willing to go into the gap from time to time to pray for someone else’s need, or possibly for an adverse situation that may be developing.
When God the Father is telling us that He is actually looking for intercessory prayer warriors, then you know He is shouting out a major prayer secret loud and clear.
If God is looking for intercessors to go into the gap with Him from time to time – then this means He will answer many of these intercessory prayers if He is properly approached.
Think of the ramifications and possibilities with this secret – that we can go into the gap and pray for someone else and have a good chance on getting God to want to move to answer the prayer.
If God is telling us that He is actually looking for intercessors, then that tells us that He will be answering many of their prayers, otherwise He would have never bothered making this kind of statement in these first two verses in the first place!
Notice in the second verse that He is once more making the statement that He was looking for an intercessor and once again could not find anyone. Notice the additional statement He then makes in this second verse where He says that He then “wondered that there was no intercessor.”
The key word here is the word “wondered.”
This key word is telling us that God the Father was wondering why no one was willing to come forth to intercede for what was being needed at the time. The way He is wording all of this, He is basically implying that He cannot believe that not even one person was willing to step forward to intercede before Him.
When you put these first two verses together side by side, God the Father is really shouting out a major prayer secret.
He is not only telling us that He is wanting people to approach Him for intercessory prayer when it is needed, but He will be wondering why no one will be willing to step into the gap for another person to take up a specific prayer assignment – especially if the prayer assignment is being given direct to that person by the Holy Spirit Himself.
The last verse then adds the final piece to all of this when it finally tells us of someone who did approach God the Father in the right way for intercessory prayer – and that was when Moses stepped into the gap between God the Father and the children of Israel in their wilderness setting.
This was when Moses was receiving the 10 commandments from God the Father and the rest of the Israelites were down at the bottom of the mountain already starting to turn away from God by making false idols to worship and adore.
When God sees this, He becomes furious and literally wants to consume all of them right there on the spot.
But Moses, seeing how mad God is getting and what He is wanting to do to His own people, steps into the gap with God and pleads his case before Him as to why He should not kill them.
In my other article, “Prayer Secret #”4 – Stating Your Case Before God,” I give you the full verse on exactly what Moses said to God the Father to get Him to change His mind.
As the last verse above tells us, Moses literally got God to change His mind from what His original intentions were going to be. This is how powerful intercessory prayer can really be with the Lord!
Remarks
When you really study the wording in the above three verses and put all of this revelation together, we are receiving a major and powerful prayer secret from God the Father.
God is literally giving every single one of us an open invitation to step into the gap from time to time for either another person or persons, or for any type of adverse situation that will need God’s help to properly handle.
When God the Father is telling us that He is actually looking for intercessors – then you know that this is something that He wants all of us to learn how to do with Him.
For those of you who may be new to all of this, here are a few things you will need to know about this kind of powerful prayer.
1. Notice in the first verse that God is looking for those who are willing to “stand in the gap.” Here is what God is meaning when He is using the words to “stand in the gap.”
Imagine you have a friend who is dying of cancer. He is lying on his deathbed and he is simply too sick to be able to pray for himself anymore.
Imagine that this person is lying off to the left in your field of vision. Now imagine God the Father Himself off to the right in your field of vision. As you are looking at this scenario, your friend is too weak and too incapacitated to reach God anymore with his own prayer efforts.
What you will now have to do is step into the gap between your friend and God the Father. Imagine yourself jumping right in the middle of this vision in between your friend and God the Father.
Now you turn to the right facing direct to God the Father and you start praying on his behalf direct to God since he can longer do it for himself, asking God to heal him with the healing prayers that you will now present before Him.
What you are doing when you do this is stepping into the “gap.” A gap has now occurred because your friend can no longer pray for himself anymore.
As a result, he now needs someone else to pray for him, which means someone now has to step into the place where he was initially praying at and take over the prayers for him to God the Father.
When you really study what God is asking us to learn how to do – this is really “superman saves the day” kind of activity. This is green beret, special forces type of activity. This is the same thing that a heroic soldier would do when he would step onto a battle field to save someone else who may have fallen behind enemy lines.
The wounded soldier is incapable of fighting for himself and he is now going to need someone else to come in and rescue him.
When you step into the gap for another person with God the Father, you may sometimes be going on a major rescue and deliverance mission depending on exactly what you may be praying for.
2. I believe that many of the times God simply wants us to learn how to pray for our own needs all by ourselves direct to Him. We do not have to be bothering twenty other mighty prayer warriors for minor and trivial things that we may need from Him. However, there will be other times that we will either need other people to possibly step into the gap for us, or we may see someone else that we will have to step into the gap for.
If God is wanting to answer many of our prayer requests with us just going one-on-one with Him, why would He then want to set things up from time to time where we would have to step into the gap for someone else, especially if that person is a born-again believer and who already knows how to pray to Him?
Here are some scenarios that can occur where someone would have to step into the gap to pray for another person:
- Praying for someone who is not saved
- Praying for someone who is too sick or too incapacitated to pray for themselves anymore
- Praying for someone whose faith levels are too low with the Lord
- Praying for someone who is too weak in the Word
- Praying for someone who has very little, if any, personal relationship established with the Lord
- Praying for someone who has a sudden emergency getting ready to attack them
- Praying in agreement with others on an united prayer cause
If you have any loved ones who are not saved, you will definitely want to go into the gap and pray to God that He move to get them saved.
They obviously do not know how to pray for themselves, or have enough knowledge of the Word to be able to put it all together, so they will need others to pray for them to God the Father, along with the right laborers being sent their way to properly witness to them.
In reference to stepping into the gap to pray for someone else’s healing – there will be times that the person you will need to step into the gap for may be too sick, too weak, or too incapacitated to pray for themselves anymore.
Someone else may be too high or too strung out on drugs to be able to help themselves, and they thus will need someone to step into the gap for them to ask God to move in with His healing and deliverance power so as to set them free from the bondage of their drug addiction.
Someone else may get hit with some type of adversity, but they either have very low levels of faith built up in God as a result of no personal relationship ever being established with Him, or they may be too weak in their knowledge of the Word because they have not spent enough time trying to understand and assimilate it all.
As a result, God may ask you to stand in the gap and pray for them because you do have high enough levels of faith in Him and a good enough personal relationship established with Him, along with having enough knowledge of the Word and how to properly apply it for the emergency situation that may now be facing this person.
Other times, God may ask more than one prayer warrior to stand in the gap and pray for a particular person or situation. What you will be doing on this is coming into agreement with other prayer partners to all pray together for the exact same prayer request. This is called the prayer of agreement.
There are literally an infinite number of reasons and scenarios where you may have to step into the gap for another person to pray to God on their behalf – asking God to move in with either His help, guidance, knowledge, wisdom, or possibly His healing or deliverance power.
3. So how do you know when to go into the gap to pray for another person so you do not waste your time and God’s time?
As I have stated numerous other times before, for those of you who have established a good personal relationship and a good inside connection to the Holy Spirit, many of the times you can pick it up directly from Him as to whether or not you should be going into the gap to pray for another person.
The Holy Spirit can save you hours of wasted time in the prayer room if you can learn to pick it up from Him ahead of time whether or not you should be taking on a particular prayer assignment.
Some of the times, God may not want to move in with His help, guidance, healing, or deliverance power at the time you are looking to move in on the situation.
Many of these kinds of prayer assignments are really battle situations, and you will need to be guided by the Lord as to when to move in and how to move on the situation.
Maybe God does want to heal a person, but He may tell you to hold your position for awhile before stepping into the gap because He may want to try and reach that person with a lesson or some knowledge before He will want to move to heal him.
Maybe that person has brought on a lot of his own misfortune due to his own pride or stubbornness, and God may want him to experience the full consequences of his actions for engaging in something that was not right in His eyes to begin with.
On many of these types of deliverance situations, you are sometimes dealing with a timing factor with the Lord, and you simply have to learn how to wait for God’s timing on when to move and when not to move.
If you move ahead or out of God’s timing on a particular situation, you will end up wasting both your time and His time in the prayer room since He will not be ready to move in on the situation for whatever His personal reasons may be at the time.
For those of you who have established this kind of good, personal connection with the Holy Spirit, you really have to learn how to rely on His guidance and His leadings on these types of situations.
Just like no soldier will ever move into battle on his own without a green light from his superiors, in the same way we have to learn how to be led by the Holy Spirit as to when to move into a battle situation and when not too.
For those of you who have not developed this kind of connection and sensitivity to the Holy Spirit at your present level of spiritual development with the Lord, realize that this is something that can be given to you by the Lord.
If you really want to learn how to become a mighty and powerful prayer warrior in the Lord, you will need to learn how to develop this kind of connection and sensitivity with the Holy Spirit.
If you can, you will end up saving yourself hours and hours of wasted time, blood, sweat, and tears in the prayer room for praying amiss for things the Lord really may not want you praying for.
The Holy Spirit is God and Lord Himself, and He will always know when to move in on a certain situation as a result of His perfect union with God the Father.
For those of you who do not have this kind of connection and sensitivity opened up yet with the Holy Spirit, simply go to God the Father in sincere and heartfelt prayer and ask Him to open up this realm for you.
Over the course of time, the Holy Spirit will then start to move in your life in many different ways and in many different circumstances so you can learn how to pick Him up and read Him when He does start to try and communicate with you.
This is something you will have to learn by trial and error – but it can be learned! You can learn how to be led by the Holy Spirit.
Until that happens, just analyze each prayer situation that may come across your path and do the best you can to decide if you should step into the gap to pray for another person. If you see a situation that you would really like to give a try, do not be afraid to jump right in and go full force with God the Father.
This is the only way you will learn how to do all of this – by actually stepping into the arena and taking the prayer assignment head on with full force and full intensity in your prayers to God the Father on the other person’s behalf.
4. Another thing that will occur in this realm is that the Holy Spirit Himself will all of a sudden come up on you and prompt you to want to step into the gap for another person or possibly a particular situation. He may give you what is called a prayer burden.
A prayer burden is a manifestation that will come directly from Him. When it comes in on you, you will know it. Sometimes He will tell you who or what you are to pray for, other times He will not.
What you do in these types of situations is be guided by Him as to when to pray and how long to pray. You may end up praying just once or twice for a short period of time and that will be it. You will feel a “release” from the Holy Spirit that the prayer assignment has been completed and you will not need to go any additional rounds with it.
Other times He may have you stay with a particular prayer assignment for some length of time before He will officially release you from it. This length of time could be a matter of days, weeks, or possibly months depending on the severity of the situation you may be dealing with.
If someone is dying of cancer, and God is wanting to heal that person, but He is looking for a more prevailing type of prayer before He will release His healing power into the situation, you may have to stay with it until the healing is manifested by the Lord, no matter how long that may take.
I cannot stress enough how powerful this particular realm is where the Holy Spirit Himself will be the One to initiate you stepping into the gap for another person. With the Holy Spirit being God and Lord Himself, He can perfectly see into the future and whether or not someone has an unexpected tragedy about ready to hit them full force.
In the Testimonies section of our site, we have an article titled “TBN Testimony #1 – Standing in the Gap.”
In that testimony, a woman was prompted by the Holy Spirit right in the middle of Home Depot to go into the gap for her husband. Her husband was just about ready to have a man walk into his office and shoot him dead in cold blood.
Since this woman already knew how to do this with the Lord, she immediately went into the gap for her husband and properly prayed to God the Father to stop the impending tragedy. As a result, God moved in just in the nick of time and she ended up not only saving her husband’s life that day, but she also ended up getting the man who was going to kill her husband saved that very same day.
But had she not been open or willing to be used by the Lord for this kind of immediate emergency, she could have easily lost her husband that day, along with the man who was going to kill him. She later found out that this person was also going to kill himself after he had killed her husband.
I wonder how many Christians have gone home too early because God could not find anyone close to their situation and circumstance to stand in the gap for them as this woman did in the middle of Home Depot for her husband?
The first two verses mentioned at the top of this article are telling us that there are times that God may be looking for intercessors to step into the gap to stop an impending tragedy, but at times He may not be able to find any.
So not only can the Holy Spirit give you prayer assignments that will help save other people, but He may also give you a prayer assignment that will be on someone that may be very close to you – like a spouse, one of your children, one of your parents or other siblings, or possibly one of your own close, personal friends.
Conclusion
I know in the fast-paced, hectic type of lifestyle many people are now living in, many of God’s people are not open to being able to be used like this – where in a moment’s notice the Holy Spirit can prompt a person to go into the gap to save someone from a dire circumstance that is either getting ready to hit them full force, or go into the gap for something that they may have already fallen into, like a sudden drug addiction, or just getting diagnosed with a terminal illness.
When God tells us in the first two verses mentioned above that He is actually looking for people who are willing to intercede for others, you know we are talking about a major and powerful, prayer secret.
I believe one of the reasons that this particular prayer secret is so powerful with the Lord is because it is such an unselfish act. You are not praying for any of your wants or needs. You are completely praying for someone else’s need.
You are totally concentrating on this other person’s need with the Lord, and you are doing everything you can to try and get God to want to move on this other person’s behalf.
When you are willing to sacrifice a part of yourself and a part of your time – when you are willing to put forth some quality time and energy on behalf of another in your prayer closet with the Lord for something they may really need with Him – I believe God really gets touched and moved when He sees this kind of an unselfish act.
And being able to touch and move God in this way may just be the thing that will get Him to want to answer the intercessory prayer!
For those of you who are really looking to advance in your spiritual walk with the Lord, open yourself up to Him and let Him know that you will be willing to step into the gap for another person – no matter who that person may be, no matter where that person may live, and no matter what kind of danger is getting ready to hit that person.
If you let God know that you really want to tread into these kinds of deeper waters with Him, then He will take you very seriously and He will then start to guide you further into this realm through the Holy Spirit.
If you will allow God to use you in this way from time to time as different needs arise, you have absolutely no idea how many other people you may be able to save, touch, help, heal, or deliver in this life.
And this is the kind of activity that will be highly rewarded by God once you enter into heaven and He rewards you for the different kinds of works and labors that you did for Him in this life.
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Word Ministries invites all intercessor partners of any tier to join a conference call with Germaine Copeland and the Global Company of Intercessors to pray every Tuesday night at 8:00 pm EST.
God is looking for just one person committed to pray! Are you willing to be the one?
An intercessor is an individual who prays for others. That is the simplest yet most comprehensive definition that one could have. The person who is willing to pray for others sometimes states that she/he felt that it was a deep seated desire or a prompting of the Holy Spirit that drew them to times of prayer for others. The individual may pray for family members, communities, elected officials, entire regions of a country or at times for a particular nation or its leaders.
Intercession is a part of the life of all believers but for some individuals there is a heartfelt desire or stirring within them to spend time dedicated to bringing individuals and their concerns before the Lord in prayer for extended periods of time. They are drawn to the prayer times at their church to pray not just for themselves but for the concerns of the church and others. They read books on prayer and find themselves drawn to them. Intercessors tend to flow in compassion and operate in the gift of faith, believing that the Lord will intervene in situations as they pray. They spend time studying scriptural promises connected to God’s answers when His people intercede in prayer. The intercessor stands in the gap and makes up the hedge (Ezekiel 22:30) for the people of God. They have an ear toward the people to hear their burdens and a heart open toward the Lord in prayer to take these burdens and cares before the Lord. They learn to walk in humility and the grace of the Lord, knowing that all the glory for answered prayers belong to Him.
If you are interested in joining the great company of Intercessors here at Word Ministries check out the options below. Join us as we join the innumerable company of praying people on the earth believing in a God and Savior that will hear and redeem us.
prayers.org
