Prophetic Intercession: Perpetually Meeting With Jesus

When I first began leading a small intercessory prayer group, those of us who were involved were all excited about our new group and excited about the authority God has given us as believers.  We knew we had power over all power of the enemy and we weren't afraid to use it!!  We would come together one night a week at our church to pray.  Most of us were young at intercessory prayer and had a lot of zeal.  After a few weeks, the Lord began speaking to my heart and causing me to examine our prayer times.  I noticed it was mainly warfare and binding strongholds (which is scriptural to do).  I felt like the Lord wanted to rearrange some things though and that He wanted to show us a better way to pray.  Jesus then gave me a mental picture of what had been happening.

In this picture, Lord would come to meet with us for our prayer time.  We would come into the church and get all geared up in our spiritual armor (Eph. 6:10-13).  The devil would show up, too.  He'd stick out his tongue like a little kid and say, "nay, nay, nah, boo, boo!" while shaking his hiney (remember doing this as a child when you wanted to be chased?  I know, I know what you may be thinking, but this is MY mental picture and God speaks to me in a way that I can understand which may not be as intellectually as He speaks to others.  I'm simple and I like simple explanations.  Anyway, this picture is what the Lord used to get His point across to me.)  Okay, so there's the devil getting our attention and distracting us from the Lord.  Then he runs off wanting us to chase him.  We all start binding and rebuking anything and everything we can think of as we run after him.  In my mental picture, we are no where in sight.  Jesus is still standing there, waiting to meet with us.  He was there wanting to talk to us, but we were so caught up in our authority of the devil and our right to use that authority and so focused on what he was doing, that we missed our encounter with Jesus.  We didn't even get to hear what He had to say.

The Lord showed me through that picture that we weren't allowing Him to direct our prayer meetings.  See, Jesus knew what needed to be prayed about; instead of coming to Him and asking Him what to pray, we let the devil get our attention and the things Jesus knew needed to be addressed in prayer were left undone.  The devil didn't mind us praying--he was sent as a distraction in order to keep us from hearing Jesus which would cause us to pray effectively, with actual results.

"Okay, Lord, now what do I do?" I prayed.  "Just because an enemy presents himself to you," He answered, "doesn't mean you are to fight him.  You first need to come to Me and let Me tell you what to do."  From that time on, we began learning the importance of beginning our prayer times in worship with each person getting alone to personally meet with Jesus--above anything else, that was our main priority.  When we came back together to pray, each night was different, with each person praying about the different areas that person felt like the Lord impressed on them to pray while they previously got alone with Jesus.

Do you know that's what David learned to do in the Bible?  David was a man of war; there were many battles he fought in his life-time.  Do you know what he did when he found out that enemies were near him wanting to fight?  The Bible records several times that David would first "inquire of the Lord" asking if he was supposed to fight or not (I Sam. 23:2, I Sam. 23:4, I Sam. 30:8, II Sam. 2:1, II Sam. 5:9, II Sam. 5:23, I Chr. 14:10, I Chr. 14:14).  The Lord would answer--sometimes the answer was yes, sometimes the answer was no.  If God did want David to fight, He would then tell him HOW to fight.  As long as David did it the way God said, he always won the battle.

David was our new example...from that time on, the devil wasn't leading our prayer meetings, but the Lord was.  We first spent our time in praise and worship, ministering to Him as priests to our God.  Entering into His presence FIRST positioned us to be able to hear what He had to say and to pray what HE KNEW needed to be prayed about.  Then, if He wanted us to address demonic spirits, we would turn, face the enemy, say what God wanted us to say, then turn our attention back to the Lord.  Now, instead of being out of balance with our "kingly" authority over the devil, the counsel of peace was between both offices of priest and king (see previous post on KINGS and PRIESTS).

Look at Psalm 149--an excellent example that shows entering into God's presence is first and taking authority over the enemy is second.
     "Praise the Lord!  Sing to the Lord a new song, and His praise in the assembly of saints.  Let Israel rejoice in their Maker; let the children of Zion be joyful in their King.  Let them praise His name with the dance; let them sing praises to Him with the timbrel and harp.  For the Lord takes pleasure in His people; He will beautify the humble with salvation.  Let the saints be joyful in glory; let them sing aloud on their beds.  Let the high praises of God be in their mouth..."  

(notice the transition here)

"...and a two-edged sword in their hand, to execute vengeance on the nations, and punishments on the peoples; to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; to execute on them the written judgment--this honor have all His saints.  Praise the Lord!"


I see all this praise and worship going on and then warfare; I see the attention being first on praising God, then on fighting enemies; I see that first God is looked at, then the enemies are looked at.

Praise and worship positions us in the "heavenly places" (Eph. 1:20, Eph. 2:6) to be able to hear from God and then to be protected by God (Ps. 91) as we face spiritual enemies and do warfare.

I cannot tell you how much we learned in prayer as a group from that time forward.  We learned to hear from God more than we ever had by coming to Him first.  Over the next couple of years, there were 2 specific strongholds the Lord directed us to pull down in prayer and there were plenty of times that we would feel led to pray against certain spirits in certain situations, but there were many more times that were filled with worship and adoration of Jesus Christ.  There were times our worship alone was the only agenda of the night and there were times our praise alone did more warfare than we could ever accomplish by "binding" and "loosing." No longer were we distracted to take "bunny trails" that left Jesus standing there forever waiting to talk to us.  We were knowledgeable and learned to be skillful about our armor and our authority while learning even more how to get close to Jesus and hear the things that were on His heart, to hear His very heart beating....