Prophetic Word: God Is Calling Forth Intercessors To Birth His Purpose
I will never forget the birth of our son Jacob. My wife, Therese, felt that she was going into labor, so we raced off to the hospital. When the contractions slowed down, we were sent home again. No sooner had we reached home than Therese realized that this was indeed the real thing!
So we started to speed back to the hospital, but encountered Los Angeles’ famous rush hour traffic and were literally parked on the freeway! Therese kept telling me that the baby was coming, and I kept trying to move through traffic that was barely moving. Once we got to the hospital, Therese gave birth in eight minutes to an eight-pound baby, the eighth member of our family. And yes, the date of birth was the eighth day of the eighth month!
No one knows exactly when a baby will be born. In the first days and weeks after a woman conceives, she does not feel any sign of the life within her. In fact, she may not even know that she is pregnant. But as time goes on, her body begins to change and she endures the morning sickness, leg cramps, backaches, and fatigue that signal the baby’s presence. Still she goes about her daily responsibilities, making some adjustments, perhaps, but seeing no major changes in her life. For nine months, as she carries and nourishes the life within, her body gives increasing evidence of the infant she carries, but the child is not yet in sight. Suddenly, without warning, the birth pains start and the woman’s body prepares to deliver the child.
Birthing prayer is much like this. At first there is little evidence of the life that God is preparing to pour out. In truth, it may even appear that there is no life. This is the way it was for several years after Ché Ahn and I moved to Pasadena in 1984.
In 1982, God had dramatically called 12 of us to move from Maryland to Los Angeles. When we moved to Pasadena two years later, we fully expected to start reaping the “great harvest” the Lord had promised us. So we rented the Pasadena Civic Center and prepared for this great outpouring of the Lord. Don’t do that! When no one showed up, we lost a lot of money!
Chronos and Kairos Prayer
The years that followed were certainly not as exciting as we had originally expected them to be. We had the word of the Lord that we would reap a great harvest, so we planted the new church with ten days of fasting and prayer. This was the beginning of ten years of praying for the revival God had promised. I remember some prayer meetings where 60 people gathered every morning at six o’clock and it was just intense. I also remember some times when there were only two of us praying, myself and an elderly lady from another church. Morning after morning intercessors prayed in that freezing, deserted auditorium, wondering why we got up so early and what we were doing there.
This ordinary prayer in dry times is what I call chronos prayer—that is, prayer within chronos (ordinary) time. It’s the day in, day out prayer that seems to have little effect, but in truth is slowly filling the bowls of Heaven. We often have no idea that our prayers are doing anything; but day by day, little by little, we are preparing for the moment of climax, as when a woman gives birth to her baby: “The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints, went up before God from the angel’s hand” (Rev. 8:4).
Kairos prayer, on the other hand, is the travail that brings the special times, the “divine appointments” on God’s calendar, to pass: “Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it on the earth; and there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake” (Rev. 8:5). These times are characterized by certain climatic events—for example, “the time [kairos] of harvest” spoken of in Matthew 13:30 (KJV). What is important here is that much prayer must be presented to the Lord during the chronos times before there can be an overflowing into kairos events.
As intercessors, we may pray for years in chronos tedium before we experience the kairos passion of God’s great visitations. Let us not lose heart when we do not see immediate results. Christians in the former Soviet Union, for example, prayed through 70 years of patient travail before the communist regime collapsed. Throughout those years, the spirit powers behind the godless government were increasingly bound by the massive outpouring of tears and prayers that arose from the persecuted Church as a memorial before God. Could the praying Church see the work that was being wrought by their years of prayer? Certainly not! It was only in the kairos moment, when the sheer volume of prayer affected Heaven and brought forth an extraordinary season of time, that the results of their many intercessions became visible.
This faithful chronos prayer is also evident in the life of Cornelius, a devout, God-fearing Gentile. Acts 10:4 states that Cornelius’ prayers rose before God as a remembrance. Had Cornelius not prayed in chronos times, he would not have seen the kairos event, a series of divine encounters that led to the outpouring of the Spirit on the Gentiles!
Patience in the midst of intercession is never easy. Yes, I have seen the Lord answer many specific prayers in remarkable ways, but over my lifetime I have been in very few extraordinary prayer meetings. Most of my prayer has been patient endurance. Just as water dripping on the same spot over years can wear away the hardest rock, so persistent prayer for the same request will produce a breakthrough. In truth, an accumulation of prayer releases awesome results, including judgments against demonic principalities and the enemies of God.
An Intercessor Highly Esteemed by God
A young man named Daniel learned this many centuries ago. As a teenager, Daniel was exiled to Babylon from his home in Judah. A member of the nobility, he was chosen to serve in the palace of King Nebuchadnezzar and to be taught in the “Babylonian University.” Despite his exile, Daniel made up his mind not to defile himself. So he refused the king’s food and wine and instead ate vegetables and drank water. This so pleased the Lord that He gave Daniel “knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning. And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds” (Dan. 1:17) so that none surpassed him in wisdom and understanding (see Dan. 1:20).
Throughout these years in the palace of King Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel developed a pattern that served him well: “Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed” (Dan. 6:10). For 70 years, possibly, he knelt at his window that faced Jerusalem and prayed, “Lord, take us home to rebuild the temple.”
Imagine praying the same prayer for 70 years—not once a day, but three times a day. That’s ordinary, persistent, chronos prayer. I’m sure that there were days when Daniel wondered if his prayers would ever be answered, but Daniel learned a secret that all intercessors must discover if they would be effective in their prayers. Daniel searched the Scriptures to understand the counsels of God. He was not praying mindless or wishful prayers, but ardent, informed petitions: “I, Daniel, understood from the Scriptures…that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years” (Dan. 9:2). He did so from a position of intimacy with God—as His friend:
You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you (John 15:14-15).
The Responsibility and Authority of Intercessors
To be God’s friend is to receive the responsibility of prayer. This was Abraham’s experience. When God was about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, He shared His secret with Abraham: “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” (Gen. 18:17) God then laid on his shoulders the very fate of these cities.
What an awesome responsibility! Derek Prince says, “God has vested in us—His believing people on earth—authority by which we may determine the destinies of nations and governments. He expects us to use our authority both for His glory and for our own good. If we fail to do so, we are answerable for the consequences. Such is the message of Scripture.”(1) Daniel was faithful in this responsibility. For 70 years he dominated the political scene in Babylon, unflinchingly holding to the worship of Jehovah. Then, when he was old, the time came for him to change the very course of history. As was his custom, Daniel was coursing over the prophetic Scriptures. Suddenly his eye fell on Jeremiah 29:10—“This is what the Lord says: ‘When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place’”—and a flash of light exploded in the old prophet’s heart. Daniel quickly checked his calendar. “It’s time! It’s time!” he cried. “Seventy years are up and we’re going back to Jerusalem.”
Now remember, Daniel’s environment hadn’t changed. What had changed was his understanding of God’s plans and purposes. God had brought His prophetic friend into the divine know, into God’s intelligence system. So Daniel humbled himself, confessed the sin of his people, and prayed for the fulfillment of the secrets God had revealed to him (see Dan. 9:1-19).
Daniel’s prayers were no mere routine. He knew the value of what he was doing. At another time, he had fasted and prayed for three weeks to understand a vision the Lord had shown him (see Dan. 10). Prayer burst from his heart and found its way to the very Source of the universe. Why? Daniel exerted in the heavenly realm the authority of a holy life. For 70 years he had remained faithful to the God of his youth. Though he lived in Babylon, he had not allowed the spirit of Babylon to live in him. Therefore, his prayers were effective in binding the principalities and powers over Babylon.
Daniel’s prayer from a pure, righteous heart so affected Heaven that the angel Gabriel came to him, saying, “As soon as you began to pray, an answer was given, which I have come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed. Therefore, consider the message and understand the vision” (Dan. 9:23). The first thing God said through His messenger was Heaven’s estimate of prophetic intercessors. They are highly esteemed. Then the angel revealed what must yet happen to God’s people.
Our world needs Daniels—intercessors who will study the Scriptures and live holy lives that give authority to their intercession. (An intercessor cannot bind demons when he or she is bound by them!) These men and women stand in the very counsel of God crying out, “What’s on Your heart, God? Reveal Yourself to us. Speak, Lord, for Your servant is listening” (see 1 Sam. 3:9-10). They want to know the timing and purposes of God and are willing to humble themselves—fasting, praying, and confessing individual and corporate sin—until they receive what they seek.
These highly esteemed of the Lord scare the devil. He’s not afraid of experts in end-times prophecy. They have little power. Rather, he fears the men and women who understand God’s plans for the present and are available for His use for birthing these prophetic purposes now. They give themselves to prayer and fasting and carry authority in the heavens because of their holy, righteous lives.
Concerning this salvation, the prophets…searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow (1 Peter 1:10-11).
These are the people who bring about the kairos moments of God, the reopening of revival wells long closed. They labor for the coming salvation of God until it is revealed. They are the Annas and Simeons who continually stay in the Lord’s presence, serving Him day and night with fastings and prayers, believing with faith that they will yet receive what God has promised—even if the promise was given many years before (see Luke 2:25-38).
Frank Bartleman, with whom my heart is so knit beyond time, was such a person. The Lord had given him a vision for Pasadena that he embraced with his whole heart. So captivated was he by this divine assignment that he travailed in this way:
We prayed for a spirit of revival for Pasadena until the burden became well nigh unbearable. I cried out like a woman in birthpangs. The Spirit was interceding through us… By this time the spirit of intercession had so possessed me that I prayed almost day and night. I fasted much also, until my wife almost despaired of my life at times. The sorrows of my Lord had gripped me. I was in Gethsemane with Him. The “travail of His soul” had fallen in a measure on me. At times I feared that I might not live to realize the answer to my prayers and tears for revival…
On one occasion, Brother Boehmer [Bartleman’s prayer partner] had an impression I was coming. He went to the little Peniel Mission and found me there. We spent several hours in prayer…. We often spent whole nights together in prayer during those days. It seemed a great privilege to spend a whole night with the Lord.(2)
This is the destiny of all true intercessors. God shares His secrets with us and enlists our aid to bring to pass all that He has already set into motion: “Surely the Sovereign Lord does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7). He reveals His promises and prophecies to provoke us to pray with increased earnestness, purpose, and understanding. Then when the timing is right, He sends the travail to release His purposes. This is the key of the intercessor, the authority given by the Father: “I will place on his shoulder the key to the house of David; what he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open” (Isa. 22:22).
It is no wonder that satan is threatened by these committed well-diggers. They know the secrets of God and have been given the authority to bring them to pass. They spell doom for the reign of fear and wickedness that satan and his minions have perpetuated throughout history. Should we be surprised, therefore, that he tries to sidetrack them by convincing them that the prophecies and promises of God are an excuse to cease praying? Or that because a promise is long in coming, or is difficult, it is not worth the effort to pursue it?
We must not let this happen. Whenever God reveals His secrets to His people, it is always for the purpose of calling them to arise and birth through prayer and fasting all that He has shown them. To do anything less is to forfeit our authority in the heavenlies and to become passive spectators on the sidelines of history. God-given revelation always demands involvement.(3)
This involvement carries a cost. After Daniel stepped into the Lord’s counsel he found himself in a lion’s den (see Dan. 6). We can expect no less today. A lion’s den surely awaits all who refuse to compromise the burden the Lord has laid on their hearts. Nevertheless, we must persist despite the distractions, misfortunes, and bodily discomforts we experience. Like Daniel, we must be focused, undistracted, and determined, refusing to take no for an answer. This is true prevailing prayer.
Birthing the Purposes of God
God is calling forth intercessors to birth His purposes. Mario Murillo describes this all-consuming prayer:
In revival prayer, a person presents himself before God to give birth to an act of God in his city. He is not muttering requests, he is suspending his very being between God and man. At first it is just words and petitions, but soon it envelops the person. He is reduced to one long, all-consuming declaration. His whole body becomes the prayer.
Hannah achieved this state when Eli thought she was drunk…. When he prayed for rain, Elijah literally assumed the position the Jewish women assumed in order to give birth. “So Ahab went off to eat and drink, but Elijah climbed to the top of Carmel, bent down to the ground and put his face between his knees” (I Kings 18:42).(4)
Elijah had the prophetic word of the Lord that it was going to rain. In fact, we are told that he was granted power just to speak and command the rainfall: “As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word” (1 Kings 17:1). Yet Elijah still needed to birth the rain in prayer.
The sign of the Church is the woman in travail, according to Revelation 12.
A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun… She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. …She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne (Revelation 12:1-2,5).
Whenever we see this travail, we can be assured that great spiritual events are just ahead! Something is being birthed in the realm of the Spirit. The Church in every generation, from Eve to Mary to the Bride of Christ, is in travail “for the sons of God to be revealed” (Rom. 8:19; see also Rom. 8:14-30).
In the weeks prior to John Arnott’s coming to Mott Auditorium in December 1994, I had been meditating on the woman in travail as being the sign of the Church and had asked God, “Show me the sign.” I will never forget the night He did just that. It was so amazing. During the ministry time at our fledgling Harvest Rock Church, many people were being filled with the Holy Spirit. Suddenly three women were seized with groaning and manifestations just like those I had seen in my wife when she gave birth to our children. I could hardly bear to look. Then the voice spoke, “This is the sign you asked for!”
Those women were birthing the revival in Pasadena and Los Angeles! Their pain and crying out were evidence of the secrets God had laid on their hearts and the work they were doing to bring His purposes to pass. They were literally experiencing the birth pangs of the revival that hit Mott Auditorium January 1, 1995. They were sharing God’s birth pangs.
Many others are being overtaken by these birth pangs. Mario Murillo graphically describes a travail he experienced over Berkeley, California, while he was trying to plant a work on the campus there:
It was 3 A.M. and for no earthly reason I woke up screaming. I sat straight up in bed and could not stop the mysterious gusher of grief that was exploding from my soul.
I threw on my clothes and raced out of my house. I walked for miles, sobbing… So there I was, staggering through the night desperately trying to find a place to release this torrent of prayer. Hours passed and I found a lake and buried myself in the thickest part of the trees and bushes.
To try to describe the travailing and unutterable groanings is futile. Simply believe me when I say that time stopped, my soul went behind the veil. All my life I had wanted to pray like that. I knew that heaven heard and that hell dreaded the answer that was to come.
The very place of prayer seemed to shine with God’s glory. Then, as I never had heard His voice before, Jesus said to me, “The power of Satan in this city has been pierced tonight. Now you will see a breakthrough. I have given you this city.” …“[The next morning] I felt elated that God had given me this city. I knew the frustrations of the past were gone. I zealously approached student after student, simply waiting to tell them that Jesus loved them.
Then my hope was shattered. A tall, muscular, student radical flew into a rage. “Jesus loves me, does He? Well, I hate Him and I hate you!” he said to me. And with that, he spat in my face and tore up my literature. A crowd was gathering to watch the preacher pay for being on campus.
Standing there alone, I felt betrayed and totally humiliated. This was a despair I felt sure I would not recover from. Then, without warning, a pleasant-looking young man stepped right up to the radical and confronted him gently, but firmly.
“Do you know who this man is?” he asked. The radical, somehow knowing he should back off, calmed down and responded, “No, I don’t know who he is.” “This is Mario Murillo, a man of God,” the young man said. “And God has given him this city.” After saying that, he cast deep, confident, knowing, loving eyes on me. Those eyes looked deep within my soul and confirmed the promise God had made to me the night before. Normally, the kind of words he used would evoke laughter from the listening students. For some reason there was a sense of respect and recognition. The radical apologized for his behavior and I told him I accepted his apology. Then I turned to find the young man but he had vanished. An angel? I have wondered for years and I still don’t know. What I do know is that on that day an awakening began and within two years we had prayed with almost 2,000 young people to be born again.(5)
This travail is God’s means for bringing forth all that He has promised and purposed. Just as a woman cannot choose the moment at which she will give birth to the child she carries, so there is a birthing in the Spirit that comes spontaneously. It cannot be summoned up by mental exertion or induced by emotionalism! It comes by the Lord’s appointment and in His timing. “‘Do I bring to the moment of birth and not give delivery?’ says the Lord. ‘Do I close up the womb when I bring to delivery?’ says your God” (Isa. 66:9).
Crystal Brown, an intercessor at our church, had a profound dream in which she watched a man walking along, interceding for his neighborhood. Suddenly he was overcome with travail. As he began to weep, his legs melted into the very ground that he was interceding over. The Lord then spoke in the dream saying, “This kind of intercession is by appointment only.”
God is giving many such appointments in our day. If we want to see extraordinary revival, it will be birthed by extraordinary prayer.
During labor, a woman is totally focused on the task of bringing her baby into the world. In the months prior to delivery, she is able to continue with her normal activities, but when she goes into labor, the things that normally concern her become unimportant. All her strength, all her concentration, is on the task at hand. She wants nothing to distract her.
This is a type of the holy travail that God is sending on His faithful ones who have persisted in the chronos times and are now privileged to give birth in these kairos times. In this holy season, our focus is completely on our burden of prayer. There is a complete consecration to prayer that moves us beyond the routine of our daily lives into extended periods of prayer and fasting. The hunger for revival consumes us and all other things seem trivial, as they indeed are, in the light of the eternal souls of men and women that hang in the balance. Tears are our daily meat. Just as a woman cries out in labor, there is a weeping that consumes us.
As Paul Cain so urgently entreats us:
We must have tears if we are going to see revival. If we have no tears it’s because our hearts are parched. The gift of tears is more than a result of suffering that comes from living in a fallen world; it flows from feeling the pain and the suffering that the Lord Jesus feels for us. He is our High Priest, touched by the feeling of our infirmities. The shedding of tears shows that the heart is engaged. Where are tears today? …Prayer and intercession is the most important work of the Church. Ministry in the last days is worth everything. It will cost everything. …Ask God for the gift of tears and expect it. I tell you, there will be no public reaping without some public weeping. The greatest reapers in this world are the greatest weepers.(6)
Jesus Himself was not exempt from weeping as He fulfilled God’s purposes for His days on earth. He clearly portrays this work for us: “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission” (Heb. 5:7). All who follow in Jesus’ footsteps, giving themselves to this ministry of tears, receive this sure promise: “Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him” (Ps. 126:56). This is one of the few Scriptures where we are guaranteed a harvest! Those who sow with tears will reap the harvest.
I’m hungry for that harvest. When Rick Joyner gave the prophetic word that we can delay judgment in Los Angeles by re-digging the wells of revival here in L.A., a flash of light exploded in my soul like the flash that must have gone off in Daniel when he realized that it was time to go home to Jerusalem. I have been praying for the re-digging of the wells in Los Angeles for over 35 years. Could now be the time? By the grace of God, not just for this city but for cities around the nation, we are setting our faces to seasons of prayer and fasting to birth that very purpose. We are determined. We will not stop until we see the harvest we seek.
This kairos moment is not just for Los Angeles. Cities across America stand on the brink of disaster. Nations around the world are controlled by demonic principalities and the enemies of God. We need intercessors who by their very travail will pull down these principalities and close the mouths of these lions. We need spiritual warriors who will not be discouraged or distracted by the worst that satan can throw at them, but will consecrate themselves to digging the wells of revival where they live.
May there be such an outpouring of prayer and fasting in the Church that God comes to pull down the demonic strongholds that control our cities. May we, like Daniel, recognize the prophetic hour we are in and travail as long as is necessary to free our nations from the bondage of satan. Let us ask the Lord of the harvest to give our indifferent hearts the tears we need—tears of repentance, compassion, and grace. God is waiting and listening for your cry. Walter Wink says it so well:
Heaven itself falls silent. The heavenly hosts and celestial spheres suspend their ceaseless singing so that the prayers of the saints on earth can be heard. The seven angels of destiny cannot blow the signal of the next times to be until an eighth angel gathers these prayers…and mingles them with incense upon the altar. Silently they rise to the nostrils of God.
Human beings have intervened in the heavenly liturgy. The uninterrupted flow of consequences is dammed for a moment. New alternatives become feasible. The unexpected becomes suddenly possible, because God’s people on earth have invoked heaven, the home of possibles, and have been heard. What happens next, happens because people prayed. The message is clear: History belongs to the intercessors.(7)
Notes
1. Derek Prince, Shaping History Through Prayer and Fasting (New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 1973), 31.
2. Frank Bartleman, Another Wave of Revival (New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 1982), 17,28.
3. Prince, Shaping History, 140.
4. Mario Murillo, Critical Mass (Grand Rapids, MI: Anthony Douglas Publishing, 1985), 25.
5. Murillo, Critical Mass, 21-24.
6. Paraphrased from an article by Paul Cain, “Shiloh Newsletter,” Vol. 1, No. 1.
7. Walter Wink, “History Belongs to the Intercessors,” Sojourners, October 1990. Reprinted in George Otis, Jr., Last of the Giants (Tarrytown, NY: Chosen Books, 1991).