Seven P’s of Intercession
This journey of intercession, of carrying God’s heart and being able to go wherever God takes us is such an important gift. There are a few things to consider, and they all start with the letter P. That’s presence, purity, passion, the prophetic, a plan, perseverance, protection and partnership.
Presence
Most importantly, intercession is about the presence of God. It’s coming into his presence, however long that takes, and it’s in that place that he chooses to speak. Now of course he can speak to us at any time, any place, anywhere, and he often will. But if we’re really wanting to seek him intentionally on a particular matter, we need to take time in his presence for him to speak with absolutely no agenda and not even necessarily taking a particular passion of ours to him. I’m never, ever, entitled to my own opinion. And that might be a big statement, but it’s probably for me one of the truest statements that I think I could ever make. I’m never entitled to my opinion. It really does not matter what I think, that’s totally irrelevant because often what I think is so shaped by my own experience. By my upbringing, by my political views, whatever, it has the danger of shaping me and morphing my thoughts into a particular way that might be the complete antithesis of God’s thoughts. His thoughts are so far above my thoughts that I don’t want my own thoughts. So, it’s about coming to that place of humility and it’s only in his presence that truly happens. In his presence when we know that we’re surrounded by his glory, he purifies us.
Most importantly, intercession is about the presence of God. It’s coming into his presence, however long that takes, and it’s in that place that he chooses to speak. Now of course he can speak to us at any time, any place, anywhere, and he often will. But if we’re really wanting to seek him intentionally on a particular matter, we need to take time in his presence for him to speak with absolutely no agenda and not even necessarily taking a particular passion of ours to him. I’m never, ever, entitled to my own opinion. And that might be a big statement, but it’s probably for me one of the truest statements that I think I could ever make. I’m never entitled to my opinion. It really does not matter what I think, that’s totally irrelevant because often what I think is so shaped by my own experience. By my upbringing, by my political views, whatever, it has the danger of shaping me and morphing my thoughts into a particular way that might be the complete antithesis of God’s thoughts. His thoughts are so far above my thoughts that I don’t want my own thoughts. So, it’s about coming to that place of humility and it’s only in his presence that truly happens. In his presence when we know that we’re surrounded by his glory, he purifies us.
Purity
He purifies us from anything that contaminates us. I will repent for where I have thought differently to him. I may have thought about somebody differently to the way he sees them. Whether it’s Nancy Pelosi or Donald Trump or whoever it might be, you know something in your heart starts to vibrate a little bit when you hear the name. Maybe there are people in our own nation, or in your family, there’s a little barrier, there’s something that if you’re really honest with yourself, you know, isn’t quite what God thinks about the matter. Be kind to yourself and recognise, ‘I’m struggling with this, this isn’t easy for me because of X, Y and Z’. God is so kind and he will allow us to understand and receive his heart for the person. If we’re truly seeking him, he gives us the most incredible supernatural gift as he shows us his heart for the absolutely unlovable in our own eyes. And that is the heart of intercession - when Jesus could die for each one of us, no matter what we’ve done or who we are - he still loved us enough to die for us, and it’s that quality of love that shifts nations.
When we start to tap into that and we realise the reality and the gift of that, there’s nothing that he can’t do through us because we become a wide, open channel that he can flow through. Completely pure, untarnished, untinged by our own perspectives, by our own opinions, by our own self. When we are truly washed clean, then he can have his way. And isn’t that what we all want? We all want to be that person for our loved ones, but he needs us to be that person for our nations as well, and he’s crying out for that for each one of us. I believe his Spirit is here in order to impart that hunger to us wherever we see some contamination. We do get a bit dirty, we sometimes need our feet washing. In life we pick up stuff, we can pick up other people’s opinions and we start to feel anger on behalf of another person. Is that really what God feels? Is that really what God is experiencing right now? Obviously, there are injustices that can bring righteous anger, but so often what we feel isn’t necessarily righteous if we’re really honest with ourselves. It’s sometimes payback, it’s sometimes vindication, it’s sometimes all of the stuff that he just wants to free us from, and he’s done it already in Jesus.
Those incredible prayers of Nehemiah 1 & Daniel 9, can be ours, and he’s desperate for them to be our prayers too. He’s desperate for people, for a remnant, that will really partner with him to see nations transformed, and so purity is so important.
Passion
We’ve all been given different spheres of influence. For some of us it’s our family, for some it’s our community, our village, our city, our nation, and for so many of us it’s the nations of the world. In Flame’s intercession hubs maybe there will be individual passions, but perhaps there’ll be corporate passions and, in that group, together as you’re aligned with him and with one another, there’ll be a download of a passion and you’ll all be stirred in different ways and with different aspects of prayer. As you weave together and flow as one - as you see those beautiful murmurations of the birds in the sky when the wind blows, they all fly in formation together - you will see that happen in your groups. You’ll leave that time not just changed yourself, not just full of faith for the change that you’ve made in the world, but with an absolute desire and hunger to come together again next time, excited for what God will surely do in your midst. It’s in that place that he releases his passion.
He purifies us from anything that contaminates us. I will repent for where I have thought differently to him. I may have thought about somebody differently to the way he sees them. Whether it’s Nancy Pelosi or Donald Trump or whoever it might be, you know something in your heart starts to vibrate a little bit when you hear the name. Maybe there are people in our own nation, or in your family, there’s a little barrier, there’s something that if you’re really honest with yourself, you know, isn’t quite what God thinks about the matter. Be kind to yourself and recognise, ‘I’m struggling with this, this isn’t easy for me because of X, Y and Z’. God is so kind and he will allow us to understand and receive his heart for the person. If we’re truly seeking him, he gives us the most incredible supernatural gift as he shows us his heart for the absolutely unlovable in our own eyes. And that is the heart of intercession - when Jesus could die for each one of us, no matter what we’ve done or who we are - he still loved us enough to die for us, and it’s that quality of love that shifts nations.
When we start to tap into that and we realise the reality and the gift of that, there’s nothing that he can’t do through us because we become a wide, open channel that he can flow through. Completely pure, untarnished, untinged by our own perspectives, by our own opinions, by our own self. When we are truly washed clean, then he can have his way. And isn’t that what we all want? We all want to be that person for our loved ones, but he needs us to be that person for our nations as well, and he’s crying out for that for each one of us. I believe his Spirit is here in order to impart that hunger to us wherever we see some contamination. We do get a bit dirty, we sometimes need our feet washing. In life we pick up stuff, we can pick up other people’s opinions and we start to feel anger on behalf of another person. Is that really what God feels? Is that really what God is experiencing right now? Obviously, there are injustices that can bring righteous anger, but so often what we feel isn’t necessarily righteous if we’re really honest with ourselves. It’s sometimes payback, it’s sometimes vindication, it’s sometimes all of the stuff that he just wants to free us from, and he’s done it already in Jesus.
Those incredible prayers of Nehemiah 1 & Daniel 9, can be ours, and he’s desperate for them to be our prayers too. He’s desperate for people, for a remnant, that will really partner with him to see nations transformed, and so purity is so important.
Passion
We’ve all been given different spheres of influence. For some of us it’s our family, for some it’s our community, our village, our city, our nation, and for so many of us it’s the nations of the world. In Flame’s intercession hubs maybe there will be individual passions, but perhaps there’ll be corporate passions and, in that group, together as you’re aligned with him and with one another, there’ll be a download of a passion and you’ll all be stirred in different ways and with different aspects of prayer. As you weave together and flow as one - as you see those beautiful murmurations of the birds in the sky when the wind blows, they all fly in formation together - you will see that happen in your groups. You’ll leave that time not just changed yourself, not just full of faith for the change that you’ve made in the world, but with an absolute desire and hunger to come together again next time, excited for what God will surely do in your midst. It’s in that place that he releases his passion.
Prophetic
The next P is the prophetic, and as he gives us that passion, he will also reveal his heart. Often, we hear of prophetic intercession and sometimes it’s prophets who speak the word and the intercessors catch it like a ball and then through intercession give birth to it. Sometimes it’s the other way around. Intercessors can catch something in the spirit, give birth to it, and then the prophet sees what’s happening in the room and makes a declaration of what the Spirit is releasing. But so often they can happen together and some of you will probably already realise that you see something, you feel something, you hear something and that drives you into that place of intercession. And it’s that duality that often does work together. So, I would say even if you’re just operating in one or the other, be open to the other because it’s a powerful duo. Sometimes in your hub some of you will be naturally more prophetic than others and some of you will be perhaps a bit more intercessory than others but it’s the beautiful partnership that God is bringing together.
The next P is the prophetic, and as he gives us that passion, he will also reveal his heart. Often, we hear of prophetic intercession and sometimes it’s prophets who speak the word and the intercessors catch it like a ball and then through intercession give birth to it. Sometimes it’s the other way around. Intercessors can catch something in the spirit, give birth to it, and then the prophet sees what’s happening in the room and makes a declaration of what the Spirit is releasing. But so often they can happen together and some of you will probably already realise that you see something, you feel something, you hear something and that drives you into that place of intercession. And it’s that duality that often does work together. So, I would say even if you’re just operating in one or the other, be open to the other because it’s a powerful duo. Sometimes in your hub some of you will be naturally more prophetic than others and some of you will be perhaps a bit more intercessory than others but it’s the beautiful partnership that God is bringing together.
Some of you may have been gifted with the gift of travail, be open to it. It’s the gift of tears, but it’s with an unction of almost giving birth and sometimes it can actually feel like it. We see it actively across Africa, but I see more and more people moving into that gifting in the UK. It’s like they carry a burden. We talk about groaning in the spirit, with incomprehensible sounds, and that’s often what it looks like and can feel like, and sometimes you’re doubled up in agony over something and through that groaning, you’re actually giving birth to something. Somebody else may have a prophetic word and an interpretation, somebody else may be very aware of what that is.
A plan
We were praying for a city when we just knew there was going to be a mighty breakthrough. We prayed and prayed for this city, it was one of the main slave cities in the British Isles, and we had repented until we couldn’t anymore. We were searching for something else that we needed to repent of. We hadn’t felt the breakthrough, and we knew there was still some kind of a problem somewhere and we asked ‘God, what is it?’ Then he showed me one night that part of the reason why we’d not felt the breakthrough was that there was a curse that had been, understandably, placed upon our city because of the horrific slave trade. The Africans that had been coming into the city, some of them being kept under Anglican churches in their cellars, had placed a curse on our city and that had never been broken.
Exactly a month before, the Lord had asked us in intercession to cover the river, which of course was the slave route through the city, so we had 40 different groups of people over that whole place. I felt that I was to go to one of the major Anglican churches. It was the biggest Anglican church in the city where they had housed slaves underground and to join me, we had this wonderful leader of intercession from Uganda. The Lord had shown me the night before, even though the weather forecast was absolutely fantastic, that in this church they would be lighting candles all around the church, which made absolutely no sense to me. So we took our little team, and we went up to the altar of the church, and I just felt to repent in a way that I hadn’t repented before and it was powerful, it was deep and I knew the Lord was in it. I felt to mention this to my Ugandan friend, of what the Lord had shown me, in slight fear and trembling because it’s a hard thing to say, but praise the Lord by the spirit, he immediately got it. He went down on his knees in prayer and weeping. And breaking off and repenting for the curses and breaking off the curses from our land and at that moment the heavens opened, there was lightning, there was thunder, and there was a power cut in this massive church and literally within 15 minutes the ushers were lighting all the candles around the church – exactly what I’d seen the night before! It felt like this was the breakthrough we’d been waiting for. We went out about 40 minutes later, back to glorious sunshine, but we knew that actually God had done what he wanted to do. Things have just changed massively as a result, which is incredible. And now they have a mixed-race mayor, and the head of churches together is a Zimbabwean. We have a Zambian heading up the prayer ministry in the city. It’s so redemptive. That was one sense of an outworking of a plan.
A plan
We were praying for a city when we just knew there was going to be a mighty breakthrough. We prayed and prayed for this city, it was one of the main slave cities in the British Isles, and we had repented until we couldn’t anymore. We were searching for something else that we needed to repent of. We hadn’t felt the breakthrough, and we knew there was still some kind of a problem somewhere and we asked ‘God, what is it?’ Then he showed me one night that part of the reason why we’d not felt the breakthrough was that there was a curse that had been, understandably, placed upon our city because of the horrific slave trade. The Africans that had been coming into the city, some of them being kept under Anglican churches in their cellars, had placed a curse on our city and that had never been broken.
Exactly a month before, the Lord had asked us in intercession to cover the river, which of course was the slave route through the city, so we had 40 different groups of people over that whole place. I felt that I was to go to one of the major Anglican churches. It was the biggest Anglican church in the city where they had housed slaves underground and to join me, we had this wonderful leader of intercession from Uganda. The Lord had shown me the night before, even though the weather forecast was absolutely fantastic, that in this church they would be lighting candles all around the church, which made absolutely no sense to me. So we took our little team, and we went up to the altar of the church, and I just felt to repent in a way that I hadn’t repented before and it was powerful, it was deep and I knew the Lord was in it. I felt to mention this to my Ugandan friend, of what the Lord had shown me, in slight fear and trembling because it’s a hard thing to say, but praise the Lord by the spirit, he immediately got it. He went down on his knees in prayer and weeping. And breaking off and repenting for the curses and breaking off the curses from our land and at that moment the heavens opened, there was lightning, there was thunder, and there was a power cut in this massive church and literally within 15 minutes the ushers were lighting all the candles around the church – exactly what I’d seen the night before! It felt like this was the breakthrough we’d been waiting for. We went out about 40 minutes later, back to glorious sunshine, but we knew that actually God had done what he wanted to do. Things have just changed massively as a result, which is incredible. And now they have a mixed-race mayor, and the head of churches together is a Zimbabwean. We have a Zambian heading up the prayer ministry in the city. It’s so redemptive. That was one sense of an outworking of a plan.
Perseverance
Perseverance is so important. You keep praying while you’ve got the burden. There’ll be that moment that you’re praying and you’re interceding or you’re travailing, and you just know it’s like the baby is born, it’s like a mother stops pushing when the baby is born. There’s this relief and a sense of peace, like God has answered and then you just watch in faith for what God will surely do.
Protection
The last piece is protection. Obviously when we go out into any of these forays, we’re always praying protection over ourselves, over our families, over our ministries, our finances, our relationships, anything that could get hit, we plead the blood of Jesus over us.
Partnership
Sometimes there’s been a little bit of a history of intercessors and pastors or intercessors and apostles or leaders, having a little bit of a tricky relationship. Sometimes we’re not always understood and vice versa. It’s important we walk together and recognise that we need one another. Be the solution, not the problem, come under authority, we’re here to serve.
Perseverance is so important. You keep praying while you’ve got the burden. There’ll be that moment that you’re praying and you’re interceding or you’re travailing, and you just know it’s like the baby is born, it’s like a mother stops pushing when the baby is born. There’s this relief and a sense of peace, like God has answered and then you just watch in faith for what God will surely do.
Protection
The last piece is protection. Obviously when we go out into any of these forays, we’re always praying protection over ourselves, over our families, over our ministries, our finances, our relationships, anything that could get hit, we plead the blood of Jesus over us.
Partnership
Sometimes there’s been a little bit of a history of intercessors and pastors or intercessors and apostles or leaders, having a little bit of a tricky relationship. Sometimes we’re not always understood and vice versa. It’s important we walk together and recognise that we need one another. Be the solution, not the problem, come under authority, we’re here to serve.
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