The disciples came to Jesus and said, “Lord, teach us to pray.” In a way it was an admission. They thought they knew how to pray, yet when Jesus prayed something different happened. When He prayed, stuff happened. Blind eyes opened. Things changed. I believe we have a God who answers prayer.
I have done this hundreds of times. At the beginning of a gathering I will ask how many people have pain in their body right now. Usually ten to twenty percent stand. I ask them to lay hands on their own bodies. I pray. I tell the pain to go. I thank the Lord. Then I carry on. Ten minutes later I stop and say, “If you stood earlier, check yourself. Move that shoulder. Is the pain still there?” I ask how many are now instantly healed. Satan always lies and says no one will be healed. You will look stupid. Yet I have never done this without at least a third of the people, usually eighty or ninety percent, being instantly healed. Sometimes they do not even notice the absence of pain until I ask. My point is simple. God answers prayer.
God Answers Prayer
Our biggest challenge is not to persuade God to answer. I think that is easy. What we have actually got to do is let go of all the baggage of unanswered prayer. We pray. Nothing happens. We carry around the emotional entanglement, the emotional baggage of those bad episodes, those pieces of history. As written in Proverbs 13:12, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life.” With the heart man believes. How can you believe if you do not have hope, or if you have bad hope rotting on the inside of you? It is vital that we get healed. We get set free from that. Let go of it.
What Intercession Really Means
Intercession basically means to pray for somebody else. It is legitimate and good to pray for yourself. You should pray for yourself. You should pray for kings, rulers, those in authority. There are specific things we are told to pray for. Yet it is really important that we also learn to pray effective, fervent prayers for other people. As written in 1 Timothy 2:1, “Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men.”
I want to focus on how to pray for people near and dear to you—your children, parents, grandparents, siblings, family, neighbourhood, the people you actually know. Sometimes the rules of engagement get a little different when we stop praying only for ourselves. There are things I can pray for myself with one hundred percent certainty that I cannot pray for you with the same certainty. Yet there are many things I can pray for you with seventy or eighty percent certainty. I can shift the landscape in your life by doing that. It is really important we learn to pray effective prayers for others.
Reject What Replaces the Cross
In the body of Christ you will often find streams of thought around how to pray. People take a biblical word like intercession and produce a whole bunch of teaching you would never get if you read the Bible a thousand times over. They sell it saying, “This is intercession, and the Bible says we should intercede.” If you question the teaching they immediately say, “You do not believe what the Bible says about intercession.” Do not be hoodwinked. If anybody teaches you something you cannot clearly see Jesus do or teach in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, something you cannot see the apostles do in the book of Acts or teach in the epistles, throw it out or at least treat it as third-grade speculation.
It is okay to have ideas. If I told you God likes sneakers more than formal shoes, it would be hard to prove from the Bible. A lot of people are selling ideas. Intercession and spiritual warfare often become places where people develop weird, highly structured theories of how to pray. You have to organise this. You have to go into the courts of heaven. That is complete and utter nonsense. Nowhere in the Bible does it say you need to go into the courts of heaven and fight your case. Nearly all of these teachings replace the cross of Jesus with a methodology, an effort, specialised secret knowledge that only they know. They try to replace the blood of Jesus and the work of the cross with some system. Do not go down that road. If you have fallen into some of those pathways, come back. Open your Bible. Let the Bible be the litmus test. Sola Scriptura. Let the Bible be the test of what we believe.
If someone says we must pray to the saints, remember we are all saints if we are believers, and nowhere does the Bible tell us to pray to saints. Jesus said do not call anyone on earth father, yet some still do. We do not go to a man to have our sins forgiven. We go to God through Jesus. If someone is weak in faith and living under condemnation, I can pray with them and help them step into what is already theirs. I will take them to the Father. I will not forgive their sins. When somebody teaches something outside of Scripture, throw it away. Come back to the simplicity that is in Christ Jesus. As written in 2 Corinthians 11:3, “But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.”
Keep It Simple
What is intercession? Intercession is praying for somebody else. End of. It does not mean shouting and screaming all night long. It does not mean rolling on the floor—though I am not against the odd roll depending on the circumstance. It does not mean adopting some weird methodology that is not in the Bible. To intercede means to pray for somebody else.
Imagine a man eating his lunch. I simply say, “Lord, would You bless this man? Would You touch him? Would You reach out to him? Send the right person across his path. Bless him in the name of Jesus.” I have just moved into intercession. It does not have to get any more complicated than that. God wants you to pray effective prayers for other people. As written in James 5:16, “The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.”
Let go of the baggage. Come back to the simplicity that is in Christ. Pray for those near and dear. Shift the landscape in their lives by faith. Keep intercession simple. Keep it biblical. Keep it rooted in the finished work of the cross.
Selah.
Scriptures for Study
Luke 11:1, Matthew 6:6, Proverbs 13:12, Romans 10:10, 1 Timothy 2:1, 2 Corinthians 11:3, James 5:16, John 14:13, Hebrews 7:25, Romans 8:26, 1 John 2:1, Matthew 5:44, Ephesians 6:18, Colossians 1:9, Philippians 1:9, 1 Thessalonians 5:17, Jude 1:20, Acts 12:5, Genesis 18:23, Exodus 32:11, Job 42:10, Psalm 106:23, Isaiah 53:12, 1 Samuel 12:23, Ezekiel 22:30
10 Questions for Reflection
- Where am I still carrying emotional baggage from times I prayed and nothing seemed to happen?
- How does hope deferred affect my ability to believe with the heart?
- What does it look like in practical terms for me to pray for those nearest to me?
- Have I allowed any teaching on intercession to replace the simplicity of the cross?
- Can I clearly see the practice I follow in the life of Jesus or the apostles?
- What would change if I treated intercession as simply praying for someone else?
- In what areas can I shift the landscape in another person’s life through prayer?
- Am I more focused on methodology or on the finished work of Jesus?
- How can I help someone step into what is already theirs without taking the place of the Holy Spirit?
- What one simple intercessory prayer will I offer for someone near to me?
