The Intercessors Handbook Read online

  As LDS members, we were instructed to reject evangelical Christianity. We thought we were the real Christians and the only ones with the truth. I never cared that much for evangelical Christians anyway, my paradigm having stemmed from watching Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker on the PTL television network. I thought they were nuts, and my stepfather and I would watch the show just to mock and make fun of them.

  At the same time, I had a few relationships with some Christians who were acquaintances and extended family. As my immediate family began to crumble, I felt inside of myself that some of those acquaintances were praying for me to become one of them. That infuriated me! I responded to that “knowing” by verbally attacking them with whatever I could make up against them—which was a sign I was probably going to turn around soon.

  An Encounter with God

  In the midst of all this, my mother’s half brother experienced a radical conversion to Christianity. He began serving as a deacon and then later as an elder in a small United Pentecostal church.2 Their relationship was best characterized as a love-hate relationship with undertones of a long-standing sibling rivalry. I believe this dynamic began when my uncle’s father rejected my mother as a stepdaughter when she was very little. No one knows the real reason for it, but he refused to have her live in the home. She went to live with her grandmother as a result, and it drove a perfect wedge into her relationship with my uncle—a wedge that did not stop him from repeatedly inviting us to his church.

  Normally, we would not have given his invitations a second thought. But desperation causes you to consider things you would normally pass by. On a Sunday during my first college semester, then, my mother drove my half sister and me to my uncle’s church, leaving my uninterested stepfather behind.

  It was a culture shock for all of us. As Mormons, we were taught that reverence for God in a church service was demonstrated by a pious and quiet demeanor. This church was completely different. Everything was loud and unrestrained. The people sang extravagantly, and the preachers preached boisterously. It was common for people to clap their hands and shout “Hallelujah!” or “Amen!”

  As unreserved as they were in their worship, they were highly reserved in their appearance. They felt women should demonstrate holiness before God by not wearing jewelry or makeup, by growing their hair long and by wearing long dresses. The men kept their hair noticeably short and refrained from growing any facial hair.

  On that first Sunday we visited my uncle’s church, I sat there and observed as the pastor finished preaching and then took up a guitar and led out in a very moving song. I do not remember his sermon, but I do remember what he sang. He began singing about the nature of Jesus and then sang a question to the congregation. He asked in song, “Are you ready?” When he did, I began to feel something I had never felt before. It felt like liquid warmth poured out on my head and then all over my body, and I was filled with indescribable peace. I knew it could be nothing else but the presence of Jesus Christ. On the inside of me, I understood what was happening and knew I was experiencing Him.

  As tears began to fall down my face, a woman sitting next to me asked if I wanted to commit my life to Jesus. Although I had no idea what that meant, it seemed right. With the tears still falling, I nodded my head yes. She led me right then in a prayer to repent of my sins and surrender my life to Jesus Christ.

  If that was not enough, the woman then put her hands on me and prayed that I would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Although I had no knowledge of the Holy Spirit, something amazing happened. I began speaking in a language I had never learned. This experience is referred to as the baptism in the Holy Spirit and unfolds in Scripture with two primary purposes: the power to witness for Christ and the power to pray.

  The first time we see the baptism of the Holy Spirit in history is in Acts 2. There, the Holy Spirit poured out in power on Christ’s followers, thus giving them the ability to praise the Lord in the languages of the nations. This got the attention of the visiting internationals and led the way for the message of Christ to be preached to all of them with power. Later, Paul described being empowered by the Holy Spirit to pray in unknown languages, making it possible for him to pray past his own ability and to pray the perfect will of God (see Romans 8:26–27; 1 Corinthians 14:18). Before I knew the purposes for the baptism of the Holy Spirit, I had already begun to move in them spontaneously.

  My mother, sister and I came home from that church meeting obviously touched and clearly changed. We had all given our lives to Christ, although I was the only one to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. My stepfather was at home when we arrived and asked me to share what happened. I told him the story and watched tears stream down his face as I shared. That was huge, as I had never seen him cry before.

  A Brush with Intercession

  Soon after, the Holy Spirit moved upon me to pray for my stepfather. Again, I did not know this was prompted by the Holy Spirit until I studied it later. It just happened, and I just went with it. While studying for my exams in my bedroom and before I could think about it, I found myself on the floor, calling out to God for the salvation of my stepfather. I was in tears, and I was wailing. I felt like I was giving birth to something.

  As the Holy Spirit took the lead, this deep and intense prayer emerged from inside of me. I was not using my own words, nor did the words come from my mind. I was using the Holy Spirit’s words, and they seemed to come from deep inside. I could feel power on me strong enough to make my body react. I would compare it to the feeling you have when you touch an electric socket, but not quite as strong.

  When the power began to subside, my final words to the Lord were, “Save my stepfather or just let me die.” I do not know why I used those words, but not long after, my stepfather saw an announcement for a seminar being held at a local Baptist church. The seminar was going to discuss the differences between Christianity and the Latter-Day Saints. He attended, and through the seminar, he was invited to attend their Sunday church services. He attended right away and made a decision for Christ during the altar call. He also began attending that same church on a regular basis.

  I was elated about my stepfather’s decision. However, even though my mother and sister began attending church with him, I was not quite ready to do the same. Up to that point, I was content to attend a small charismatic InterVarsity group that met each week on my college campus. At the same time, my uncle was pressing me to attend his United Pentecostal church. Even though I had that amazing encounter with the real Jesus at his church, I knew I needed a church that was a bit more flexible. As a young person, it seemed ridiculous to have to give up cutting my hair and wearing makeup.

  Eventually, I did choose my family’s new church to be my own, and it was a good short-term experience. It had a very large group devoted to people just my age, which helped me further transition from my old friends to new friends. They also had a class for new believers, where I learned about salvation from the Bible and even began memorizing Scripture. My only issue was that they did not teach about the Holy Spirit, a subject I hungered to know more about.

  After about four months, I made a sudden decision, to the angst of my family, to leave the Baptist church and attend the same church as my college InterVarsity leader. It was a Foursquare church that was smaller in size but had more of a connection with the Holy Spirit. My family tried to reason with me that we should all be in church together. I understood their logic, but I hungered for a deeper spiritual experience.

  Once at the Foursquare church, I was surprised to see one of my neighbors there. When she saw me, she explained with enthusiasm that she had prayed for my family for years. She also invited me to a small weekly prayer group that met in a house. The prayer group liked to do something they called spiritual warfare, and they would go after things they felt the devil was doing in people’s lives and in the city. I did not understand all of it, but I liked the spiritual intensity.

  I began to grow more interested in prayer and started attending the
weekly prayer service at the church. This prayer service was not as intense as the house meeting, but it still helped me feel connected to God. I also liked the feelings that came with prayer, such as joy, peace, power, wisdom and the presence of God.

  All of which is to say, my first year as a Christian was wonderful and full of discovery. I was happier than I had ever been in my life. There was peace in my home, and as a family we were growing in our faith in Christ. I was also learning to pray on my own and could feel the presence of God when I did.

  I never considered that my faith would soon be challenged by Satan and that prayer would become my lifeline for victory.

  A Reckoning with Evil

  When I entered my second year of being a Christian, I was still attending prayer services, but I was becoming more and more troubled. That feeling of peace in my home had vanished, and I did not know why. I was also sensing dark things—a demonic spirit, to be exact—and I had not dealt with anything like that since I had become a Christian. I had, however, experienced it prior to becoming a Christian. In addition to growing up in a false religion, I had connected myself to the demonic realm through some occult practices I did not realize were wrong. I had seen and experienced demonic spirits off and on in my childhood, and this grew in intensity during my teen years. I had never told anyone, and it stopped when I became a Christian. I thought it was all gone, but now it had returned.

  One night, at the house prayer service, it all came to a head. As we prayed together, one of the women looked over at me with concern. She explained her concern, saying, “I see a spirit of sorcery standing over you!” The moment she said it, something picked me up out of my chair and slammed me against the wall. I then lost contact with my surroundings as I began to exhibit a strong demonic manifestation. It looked very similar to a grand mal epileptic seizure, with the added bonus of demonic voices coming out of my mouth.

  The women, all versed in spiritual warfare and in how to break demonic bondages, were helpless to set me free. Nothing they did or said worked. After three or four hours, the demonic manifestations subsided just enough for my neighbor to feel like she could take me home.

  For the next three months, I had terrible nightmares and rarely slept. I could hear piercing screams at night, and my bed and bedroom door would shake on their own. When I walked by windows and doors, I would often hear a loud knocking sound, and sometimes other people noticed it, too.

  I prayed to God for freedom night and day. One day, a sense of faith filled my heart, and I spoke boldly to that spirit. It had entered my room again to torment me. I said, “I will never serve you. I will only serve Jesus Christ!” When I said that, the spirit left and never returned. With that, I lost all fear of the demonic and seemed to gain a newfound spiritual authority and genuine spiritual gifts.

  Through that experience, I found power in prayer and learned some very valuable lessons. Here are some things I learned:

  I cannot rely on others to have spiritual authority for me. I have to have it for myself. (See Hebrews 6:1: “Be taken forward to maturity.”)

  I had found my deliverance in prayer and nowhere else because God is bigger than the devil. (See Psalm 18:6, 17: “I cried to my God for help. . . . He rescued me from my powerful enemy.”)

  Prayer is the ultimate display of weakness. God will meet me at my point of weakness and make me strong. (See 2 Corinthians 12:10: “For when I am weak, then I am strong.”)

  We connect to God through prayer. At the same time, prayer is a spiritual weapon against everything that opposes God. (See Mark 9:29 NKJV: “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.”)

  We cannot be ignorant about the spiritual realm. We have to learn how to pray effectively. (See Hosea 4:6: “My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.”)

  Prayer had become my lifeline, and I prayed more intensely and consistently than ever before. At the same time, I struggled with shame and condemnation in connection to prayer. The spirit realm had opened up to me in unusual dimensions after my deliverance, and my experience was well past the grid of everyone I knew.

  Perhaps you can relate to this. Perhaps you have had experiences in prayer that no one around you knows, understands or experiences for themselves. Perhaps you wonder how to process all you have encountered and how to live out God’s anointing upon you.

  I want you to know there is a way to process it and a way to live out your calling as an intercessor with knowledge, authority and faithfulness. The teachings in this book will equip you for it.

  To begin, let’s turn to the basics of prayer.

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  The Basics of Prayer

  Each of us has the innate instinct to pray, often before we even know God. In crisis and in pain, people often reach past themselves into the invisible realm, hoping to receive favor from a God they hope is there. They are frustrated when they do not receive an answer, because something inside believes and wants to touch God in those moments of desperation.

  The instinct to cry out to God emerged soon after the Fall of Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve knew close fellowship with God until sin separated them from His presence. They went from being connected in fellowship to being disconnected, and the pain of separation created a deep cry in all of humanity that followed. Men and women, on their own, began to search for and cry out to God (see Genesis 4:26). God did not ignore their cries but responded with His friendship and fellowship.

  But here is the thing. Friendship and fellowship between God and man look as unique as each individual. We see the story of Enoch, for example. The Bible says Enoch walked faithfully with God, and then God took him away (see Genesis 5:21–24). Imagine that! God so delighted in Enoch’s fellowship that He superimposed eternity upon him before he ever finished living.

  Moses had a different story of fellowship. Moses began having face-to-face dialogues with God. The fellowship and dialogue Moses and God shared became so close that Moses would shine with the glory of God after each of their heavenly conversations (see Exodus 34:29–35).

  Or look at the story of Hannah. She was a quiet but tenacious woman who desperately wanted a child. She was barren because God had closed her womb, and her sister-wife, Peninnah, delighted in tormenting her over it (see 1 Samuel 1:6). Hannah was miserable about it, but this did not stop her from petitioning God over and over, year after year. She prayed to God so deeply at the temple one day that the priest watching her thought she was drunk (see verses 12–14). Even then, she continued reaching out to God through Eli, the priest, telling him what she wanted.

  Because of Hannah’s persistence, God responded to her cry and gave her over and above what she had requested. “You have what you asked for,” Eli prophesied (see verse 17). She later gave birth to a powerful son, the prophet Samuel, who became the next judge of Israel.

  Hannah had much opportunity to become offended at God and people. Anger often stops people from praying. Instead, Hannah did the opposite and drew near to God, with powerful results.

  Prayer is about connection, and we each connect with God uniquely. God is a personal God, and He is also supernatural. For that reason, we may have encounters in prayer that others will not have, and others may not connect to our experiences at times. This becomes part of our unique journey in Jesus and is never meant to bring about feelings of condemnation.

  So, how does prayer begin?

  Begin with the Voice of God

  The journey of prayer begins with God’s voice. God is the Word, and He connects to us through communication.

  For example, as I sat in that first service at my uncle’s church, I did not just become aware of God’s presence. I also became aware of God’s voice. It was not an audible voice, but it came to me as a strong awareness with a distinguishable thought. Jesus was saying, I accept you as you are. This ministered to me because in the LDS church, I never felt good enough. According to their doctrine, eternity is based on good works. I had failed their standard and felt ashamed as a result. But as Jesus stirred
my heart and spoke to me of acceptance, I responded and received Him as my Lord and Savior.

  If you are a believer in Christ, you might not have heard His voice in a distinguishable way that you know of. The Bible shows us, however, that no person comes to Jesus unless the Father draws them (see John 6:44). That means if you know Jesus, the Father first spoke to the depths of your spirit to come and receive His Son. You heard God’s voice and responded, even if you did not know He was speaking to you.

  I watched this happen in the life of one of our church attendees. Stephanie walked into our church one night and sat down at a table. I had never seen her before, and she acted unfamiliar with church culture. At the end of the service, she came over to me, looking confused, and said, “I don’t know why I’m here.”

  Once it was all said and done, Stephanie gave her life to Christ. Our heavenly Father had been speaking to her spirit, even though she did not know it. She followed His voice into our church, not knowing why, and responded to His call of salvation.

  Know That God Still Speaks

  God not only spoke to us at salvation, but He continues to speak to us. The writer of Hebrews seems to shout, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts” (Hebrews 3:7–8). That is because God never stops speaking to us. On earth, Jesus spent many hours in prayer, connecting the act of prayer to hearing His Father’s voice. He said, “The Son . . . can do only what he sees his Father doing” (John 5:19). When did Jesus see what His Father was doing? He saw it in the place of prayer—and so will we.

  I know God still speaks today because I have experienced it. For example, I was in prayer one afternoon in our prayer chapel and heard the word Asia in my spirit. That same day, my assistant contacted me, letting me know a woman had been ordering my resources from overseas. That was exciting to me, as this was the first time anyone overseas had shown interest in what I had been teaching. I asked my assistant to connect with her and get her information. We ended up exchanging emails, and it turned out she was a missionary to Central Asia.