By Janice Bowman
I believe now more than ever in the history of the church that
we, like the first 12 apostles, should be feeling within ourselves a great
urgency to ask our Lord to teach us to pray. Like other watchmen who are the
minority on the subject of judgment from God coming to the people of God first
and not to those outside of the church, I am feeling more and more pressed by
the Holy Spirit to say, “ Wake up foolish, sleeping virgins, for the bride
groom comes and you are not making yourselves ready.” I know that God has a
small remnant among His people who are listening to what the Spirit is saying
to the churches, although many of God’s people are sleeping and see no need for
God to send judgment among His people.
Here in America, the majority of our churches have experienced
much freedom to worship without persecution. Is this because God is so pleased with us or
because we have been so lukewarm and ineffective in our witness as to draw
persecution to us? Could it be, as the
apostle Paul characterized it in his day, that we have not yet striven against
sin unto blood? In other words, have we saved our lives and compromised the
truth in order to have the kind of life style we now have? Have we been so
careful to not say or do anything that would make people angry with us to the
point they want to shut us up or do us harm? Have we done what we consider the “reasonable”
sacrifice of Romans 12:1 but neglected the unreasonable sacrifice that the
message of the cross actually calls us to?
Our freedom of religion is not necessarily God’s stamp of
approval on us, but more likely a time of grace to judge ourselves, lest we be
judged. We as a nation are increasingly seeing the noose tightened around our
necks, but many in the church are as oblivious to it as the inhabitants of
Jerusalem were as their destroyers surrounded the city. A majority of the
prayer rooms in churches are devoid of those who weep and travail at the altar,
crying out to God to turn His people back to Him because they don’t feel we’ve
turned away from Him. It is one thing to be in the very dangerous position of
backsliding, but it is even more dangerous to be in denial of it. A full lamp
of oil, without the prudence to bring more oil, is not going to get us through
the trying times that are upon us.
The ministry of intercession has all but become extinct in
the church. Where are those who will
actually allow the Holy Spirit to seize them that He might teach His people to
pray with him rather than praying to him? Prayer has become, for the most part, an
exercise in telling God what we want rather than allowing Him to put us under
the burden of what He wants. I am convinced that most people who will allow the
Spirit to weep and travail in them and through them would be told they are
disturbing the prayer meeting with this sort of strange unreasonable behavior. Most
who engage this sort of intercession do it alone at home because much of the
church sees this kind of praying as a real embarrassment. They would probably
be asked not to come again or some may even be accused of having demons. Much of the church has no clue about this kind
of praying because there is little or no teaching on it. I personally have
never been taught in any church about intercessory prayer. I can only equate
this to a lack of attention to the Holy Spirit’s agenda. The church is where
prayer should be taught and ministries of this kind of intercession should be
honored and promoted, not relegated to a back room where the congregation is
shielded from the sight and sound of true intercessory travail.
There is a lot of holy laughter in the church today and I
certainly will not criticize holy laughter and the joy of the Lord coming on His
people. But oh, how sad, ignorant, and neglectful
we have become to not see the many hours others prayed their hearts out; wept, cried,
and travailed in much pain alone in secret places, so those who never laughed may
be able to do so. There are generals of intercession the church has never seen,
honored, or acknowledged as an important joint that supplies. Those that reap
in joy are often the products of those who sow in tears. In much prayer they
plowed up the stony and hard ground that was once the heart of many. They weeded
the spiritual garden, dying out to self in their private prayer closets, so
others could experience the harvest. These
are not people who say a few short prayers and are done with it. These are
people who are seasoned generals in a ministry of intercession for the church
and the world. They are watchmen on the walls and the church cannot afford not
to listen when God shows the hidden things in tough places of prayer. Many of
them are prophets who, like Moses, plead with God not to destroy a rebellious
people. Like Moses, they plead for our very lives and change God’s mind,
reminding God of His faithfulness.
We need to know those who labor among us as true intercessors.
Faithfull intercessors are a lot more
than little old ladies who don’t do anything but pray. I suggest that if you
ever have the rare privilege of being around an old person whom you hear
weeping and praying their hearts out, you skip all the seminary classes that
teach you about prayer and hunker down next to one of these seasoned old souls
and learn from them. They will teach you
far beyond any seminary class on how to pray.
When I was a very young girl, I watched my grandmother
retreat to her bedroom everyday to pray. Often, when I was supposed to be
napping, I would sit outside her bedroom door in wonderment. As I listened, sometimes
for hours, I often heard many different languages come out of her. I would hear
her weeping for others and knew that something was going to get done. I didn’t
know what, but I knew something, in some situation, was going to get confronted
because Grandma was on the job. And then
many times she would be at it again at night.
One time my mother got into a very serious car accident. She was hit from the front and then from the
back by two speeding cars and she was smashed like a pancake. Upon arrival at
the hospital, she was thought to be dead. But grandma told us she would
intercede for our mom, because she couldn’t die and leave us orphans. I will never forget the way grandma sounded
that night and well into the next morning in that prayer room of hers. I have
no words to describe that kind of praying, but that day we got a phone call
telling us my mother was going to live and not die. My mother was on the
operating table and heard the doctors saying there was no use in continuing
with treatment, as it was too late. As the story goes, mom suddenly sat up
straight and told the doctors they better put her back together because she had
four children waiting for her at home.
So the chief doctor said, “You heard the lady!” I have no doubt my
grandmother’s prayers raised my mother from the dead.
I knew my grandmother held a key and as a girl I called it a
key into God’s heart. Today I call it
warrior intercession. I learned at the feet of a little old grandmother and
learned more about intercession than any school could ever teach me about it. I
listened to it every day as a child and saw what it could do and when I got
older God sealed me as an intercessor also. I also had the great privilege of
sitting behind a man of God who often prayed up to 6 and 8 hours a day. Sometimes he would come down off the mountain
he was on literally glowing with the presence of God permeating from him. Many
times, when opportunity presented itself, I got right behind him while he was praying.
I once prayed with him for 4 hours. But he was still in deep intercession 4
hours later. I was amazed to say the least.
How many things are accomplished during these kinds of
intercessions, we will never know on this side of glory. But people have been
translated in the Spirit to different locations to do ministry during such
intense times of prayer. There is a whole different world opened to us when we
are in serious pursuit of the presence of God. Now I am not saying that we can
accomplish this in our flesh. These kinds of marathon intercession encounters
come along with maturity and not by fleshly striving. We must not learn methods
but learn hunger, and that hunger then become the rule by which we seek our Lord’s
presence. Time ceases to exist for us
while we are in this realm of the Spirit, because this realm has no space and
time. I was in intercession at The
Station Prayer Chapel recently for two and a half hours but I thought I had
been with the Lord in prayer for only twenty minutes. Sometimes I know what is
accomplished in prayer and sometimes I don’t. But, I know that if I’ve spent
the time to discern His heart and pray with Him concerning a matter, all things
are for the good.
