The Difference Between Prayer and Intercession
Lou Engle
God's looking for an intercessor. He is always looking for an earth being to enter into what He is doing to move into what He wants to do. Grace gives us access - Covenant gives us blessings - but we must bear His scars, His reproach.
Genesis 22 -
1 Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!"
"Here I am," he replied.
2
Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and
go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on
one of the mountains I will tell you about."
God
is looking for Abraham, and Abraham responds, "Here I am." He's not on
a 20-year program. Like Isaiah, he moves immediately to accomplish the
call God has put on his life. God does not give Abraham this huge test
and the beginning of his life - He's preparing him for the place of
supreme sacrifice of love.
He's looking for an intercessor to stand in the gap. An intercessor is much different than a prayer. A prayer can pray in a prayer meeting and then walk out of the prayer meeting and say, "that was a great prayer meeting" and go on with what they're doing. An intercessor says "over my dead body this is going to happen."
Isaiah 53 - He made intercession. "It wasn't what He said: It was that He was dead."
Like Rees Howells, it is a journey of an ever-increasing demand on our lives.
As in Gethsemane: "Not my will, but Yours be done."
Friendship is gained through covenant - Through the place of covenant, God will share His secrets. The Lord will not enter into covenant with us unless you fear the Lord because if you make the covenant without the fear of the Lord, you are bound.
3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 He said to his servants, "Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you."
As Abraham sees the mountain afar off, he tells those following, "The lad and I are going up to worship, and we will come back to you." Worship is not just songs we sing or words we say.
6 Abraham took the
wood
for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself
carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7
Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, "Father?"
"Yes, my
son?" Abraham replied.
"The fire
and wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for the burnt
offering?"
8 Abraham answered, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them went on together.
9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood.Kadesh - consecrated
Mount Moriah - the place of offering, the mountain of sacrifice, is where the house of the Lord is built.
We're opting out of comfort: not that comfort is wrong, but when you hear the voice, you move beyond the comfort, because you've heard the call. We're moving beyond the realm of having a nice prayer meeting where the prayer is nice and the music is nice to something totally, totally beyond that. The place of sacrifice is the place of victory. this is our journey, this is our movement. If you wanna know about what the Cause is, this is what we're doing - this is the path of sacrifice. I tell my kids, "There is no easy path, there's no easy way to do this. This is the way of intercession, and the way of intercession is if He sees the suffering, He will divide the spoils."
The more you take responsibility for the thing you've been called to pray through, the more you have to take the responsibility of leadership, and when you begin to take the responsibility of leadership, you become the brunt of all kinds of painful accusations and difficult and painful situations, but in it all, He's conforming us into the image of His Son, the great Intercessor. If you can keep from being offended, you'll pass from death into resurrection power.
10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!"
"Here I am," he replied.
12 "Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son."
"I believe that every revival is a Divine eruption on someone's love, that God cannot withold Himself, that an explosion erupts from His heart, and He says, "I have found him: I have found David."
Abraham now had a - can I say it? - wrestling hold on God. Man now had a - I think I can say it, I know it isn't heresy - a demand on God.
Covenental intercession
Daniel 6
Daniel was, since a teenager, completely given to intercession and prayer daily, to intercede for the temple of the Lord to be restored.
"Do you have a life-dominating prayer????"
Shares the dream about Frank Bartleman, and then he shares Chris' dream about Joel in the basement that he had the night before that Rumble.
He's looking for people who say, I don't know what it will take, but whatever it's going to take, I'm willing to go through it.
The is a lions' den awaiting every intercessor. The devil will try to get rid of you because you are taking down his kingdom.
Psalm 1:10
God wants to bring us into a siege mentality that we don't have events: we move after an assignment against the strong man, and we stay there until the thing can't stand there any longer.
Deuteronomy 20 - the rules of war. - "You must remain there until you take the city."
"I believe that's what we're doing with Harvard - I'm not just interested in just 40 days."
There is a kind of prayer that is a stand of prayer - you take your stand and you stay there until things move.
Our contention is not with people, it's with spirits. Islam is a realm of global dominion - and so is Christianity.
It's not just prayer. It's a whole body laid down.
- Fasting is the intercessory birthing channel
- The word of God is an event, it's not just a word
- We are to be the prophets to governors and judges
- If you gain air supremacy, you can win the battle on the ground
Let's not be insecure, let's just do what God has called us to do.
Your Goliath is the doorway to your destiny. Goliath is there to get you to your destiny. Your personal problem is there to get you into your destiny, not to keep you from it.
I believe God is not just the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords in the new Millenium, I believe He wants to start setting up His kingdom now!!!!
Lou's dream about leading the kids up the steps to the building with pillars to do war - (JHOP DC, the Supreme Court).
We pray into our dreams because we believe dreams bring divine intelligence
Dream about the Civil war - we had to master and understand one battle - the Dirkson battle
Turns out Dirkson was the senator in Illinois who had to break the longest filabuster in history - 1:05:40
We're not just scattering with our intercession, we're striking the mark again and again with laser-precise intercession.