Colossians 4:12 Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ, saluteth you, always labouring fervently (agonizing with athletic zeal) for you in prayers, that ye may stand perfect (to the very maturity of Christ’s character) and complete (fulfilling every aspect of Christ will, will so that you have total confidence and assurance in everything that He wants from you) in all the will of God.
1) Brought to a place of spiritual maturity in every aspect of our lives; and having a full assurance and understanding of everything that God has willed for our lives.
2) Knowing and understanding every aspect of what God has called us to do and willed for us, and do it with all spiritual maturity)
3) To the limit of the very maturity of Christ’s character so that we can fulfill every aspect of Christ will through it.
James 5:16 Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
The prayers of a righteous person carry much inner strength and punch to exert a mighty flurry of activity and efficiency before the eyes of God.
Tim 2:1 I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men;
Supplications- specific petitions about our needs and desires.
Prayers- General prayers made unto God
Intercessions- An interesting word that can be defined in many ways.
“Conference, encounters, conversation,” are all part of intercession.
We can describe it as the act of developing a relationship with a person as to become intimate with him or her, resulting in the ability to hold conversations with that person.
Holding sustained and intimate conversations (intercession) with the Lord can only be the result of breaking through into the Spirit realm.
Paul describes the Spirit realm as the third heaven.
2 Corinthians 12:2 I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven.
The first heaven is the area of our physical existence.
Ephesians 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
The second heaven is what Paul refers to as “spiritual wickedness in high places” This is the area of demonic activity. For us to get into a place of holding sustained and intimate conversations with the Lord we must break through the first heaven of our earthly circumstances, and the second heavens of demonic activity, into the third heaven of God’s glory.
Breaking forth into the Spirit realm takes physical time and labor in the Lord.
Spiritual labors are such things as speaking in tongues, worship, spiritual warfare, and waiting on the Lord.
Time is the most important factor in breaking into the third heaven. We live in the Burger King culture of the fast food life.
One of the greatest attacks by the devil on believers living in Western societies is to tempt them into attempting the same fast food approach with the Lord. God is not the God of the fast foods or shortcuts.
Breaking into the third heaven is founded on time and that time on many occasions takes hours a day with the Lord.
Intercession is the most important and the most difficult ministry in the world. There is nothing that the devil will attempt to hinder most than the time that the believer plans to spend in intercession. We must understand what true intercession is. Let us look at the following scriptures.
Romans 8:26 Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.
Helpeth our infirmities- The Greek tells us that the Holy Spirit comes face to face with us to take a hold together with us of our infirmities and frailties.
The Spirit itself maketh intercession for us – Greek: “To hit the target above and beyond what is normal.” Or, to do the right thing and do it with skill.
The intercessory ministry of the Holy Spirit, as He comes to take a hold of our weaknesses, is to give us the breakthroughs, answers, and deliverances that we need with bull’s eye accuracy.
This, is called the sword of the Spirit at work, which is none else than the rhema word of God.
The rhema word of God is the Lord’s surgical weapon (or sword) as it is wielded during intercession to discover, isolate, and spiritually operates upon the specifics of an ungodly situation that has been brought before you by the Lord in prayer.
Eph 6:17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the rhema word of God:
1Cor 2:10 But God hath revealed them (taking the lid off) unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth (sounds out like a sonar sounds out the deep things in the ocean. all things, yea, the deep things of God.
The rhema word of God reveals the things of God. It also sounds out, in the same way that a sonar on a ship sounds the bottom of the ocean floor, the deep things of God.
The Lord never deals with the symptoms of problems. That is the work of the devil.
The evil one has the world riding on a merry go round of psychology, symptoms, syndromes, and disorders. The Lord on the other hand always drives straight to the root of the problem.
It has been my experience that in most cases of serious diseases among Christians there is a spiritual, family, generational, or sin root associated with it.
The purpose of intercession is to sound out the depths of God so that He reveals and isolates the specific roots of the malady, and we destroy it in prayer with the same sword of the Spirit all while in the same time of intercession. Intercession is the revelation of the ungodly roots of a problem. We pray back in accordance to the specifics of what the Lord shows us warrants the situation. In all situations, and especially serious ones, the surgical work must be done in the Spirit and the results in the physical will always follow. The devil keeps us locked in the physical and psychological, and the roots continue to bear bad fruit.
True intercession is usually most successful through a human vessel that has gone through the cross so that the believer’s emotions and will have been healed and stilled and are now submitted to the voice of the Holy Spirit. A believer that has his or her soul life healed and stilled can hear the voice of the Spirit clearly.
Secondly, their state of quietness and submission is enough to allow the Lord to intercede through them. Deep intercession, many a time, is not the believer interceding, but the Lord interceding through the believer. This believer is the clean vessel for the Lord to move within.
As we discussed earlier on, it is only when the Lord intercedes that He knows how to hit with perfect accuracy the bull’s eye of the roots of any problem that we bring before Him. He reveals it to us in the third heaven and we use this revelation as the sword of the Spirit to pierce, destroy, sever, and deliver.
Jose and Mary Alvarez 