Becoming an Intercessor

This past week I have had the privilege of knowing the 24/7 dynamics of the prayer room. The last time I was in LA, I was mentored and taken under the wing of a man that I now call my spiritual Father. It was through his mentorship that I became acquainted with the role of an intercessor and what that looked like. In fact, even though I have belonged to a Pentecostal church since I was first saved, Jason helped me seek out and understand revelation on what it really means to be an intercessor. Jason opened my eyes to a gift and an identity in Christ that I never thought I had. You see, I've always been the kind of person who wears my heart on my sleeve, the emotional type. It was always viewed as a curse or a weakness by my family, my father most of the time was embarrassed or ashamed of how emotional I could be. Needless to say, I began to view my emotions as a major weakness as well, accepting the label that my family put on me.  Jason was the first person in my life that helped me to understand that God had created me to feel and love deeply and it was not at all a weakness, but one of the greatest gifts that God could give to His children.

Since being here at PIHOP, God has strategically placed me in a few different situations where He has been able to grow me and put feet on what I have been learning over the past few years with the help of Jason’s mentorship and other revelations that God has walked me through in the past. Over the last three years or so, I have learned that my emotions and what I feel, is one of the primary lines of communication in how God speaks to me. This is especially the case when it is reference to someone else, and how the Holy Spirit is moving me to pray for them. God has placed me in several different experiences in the past involving anything from family members, to my church, or my college campus. This has been anything from an intense emotion of anger or fear, or sorrow to a physical manifestation and usually seems to come upon me at random and requires me to really seek the Lord and break through a heavy burden or oppression that is either assigned at something or someone I am to pray for or to keep me from the revelation of what is going on the spirit and waging war against it.

Lately this revelation has been showing itself through conversation of those that I live in community with, bringing an understanding of the spiritual war that is raging around me and the people that have been called to PIHOP- for staff, interns and individuals in the community.  At least a couple of these experiences have taken place in the prayer room. The first night, I had a conversation with my house leader about some legal battles one of our leaders was dealing with, and that escalated to what was going on with the relationships and tension with the staff in general that I had been sensing, I had been planning to go to the prayer room for an intercession set for the middle east, but after this conversation God highlighted many other areas within our community that definitely needed some prayer and authority taken over them.  I ended up being in the prayer room for most of the night, returning home for just a couple hours to take a “early morning nap” and get cleaned up, only to return to the prayer room and intercede some more before my internship classes started at 8am.

The next major experience I had where my emotions and intercessory gifting went haywire was at a bonfire in my backyard, where my Christian community that I lived with and a few friends were gonna get together and worship and prayer over some of the people in our group who were leaving for a missions trip, sending them off with some prophetic words of encouragement. I was feeling a bit excluded and somewhat restless even before we started, but once worship started I really began battling something! I am a worshiper at heart- everything in me worships the Lord and when there is a dedicated time to sing and worship God, I will push through and enter in! But something heavy was distracting me and keeping me from singing or entering in at all! I was praying and watching the scene around me to see what was going on to keep me from worship, and could find nothing. When worship ended, a few people gave some corporate prophetic words. I tried to pay attention and try to receive whatever God had for me in that to, but I felt like there was a big wall surrounding me keeping everything out and not letting me break through either. Finally my friend Brad noticed I was struggling and came over and hugged me and began praying, mostly just for God to fill me with His spirit and His love, but he wasn't getting anything specific. It wasn't until he asked me how I felt, and I replied, “everything in me wants to leave right now.” That I realized what was going on.

Behind me in the corner of the driveway, hiding in a dark corner by the garage was a girl, I noticed a couple people walking over to talk to her and pray for her. One of the people was my friend Ben who I heard rebuking things that I could at that point see trying to manifest in her. I left Brad and walked over to this girl and began praying with the others. I felt very strongly that this was the oppression that I was feeling that was manifesting itself in her. We prayed over her for several minutes identifying and rebuking the spirit of fear, and eventually as we got this young lady to agree with us and renounce some of the ties with fear and walk through some inner healing, she was released and just moments later was slain in the spirit. This undoubtedly allowed God to do some deep work and healing in her heart.  As lay on the ground a few feet from the bonfire, I then felt like I was released to go and pray and give prophetic encouragement to the others in our group! God showed up big time that night! Not just with deliverance but the ways He has been using me in the prophetic to have His love flow through me and as an intercessor to stand with Him in partnership and authority has been amazing! Watch out world! I will never be the same!