No one has to look very far around themselves, or just watch the news to see suffering persons. Some of it is horrendous. Sometimes I feel it from a distance and my heart is heavy. I wonder who God is using to minister to them (invisibly). I know at those times it is not me who has been given the burden, but today I have a great one. For the last few days I have been swallowed up with the pain of people who are so heavy laden with issues of this “life” that they want to end it all. I feel their despair and hopelessness. I am “one” with them, and the intercession has consumed me. As an intercessor, I am overtaken with God’s passion to deliver us through the pain. He never leaves us alone to suffer, and His location (dwelling with us) guarantees that we couldn’t be. In the invisible spiritual network, the burdens are shared by any who he has delegated the assignment to: to deliver persons from hell.
I hold the keys to death and hell (hades) firmly in my hands. (Rev 1:18) Our world is the death realm that many call life. Death was swallowed up in victory and is therefore obsolete. (It was killed--the 2nd death, when it was thrown into the lake of fire. Death was thrown there, not people! Rev 20:14) And the transliterated word “hell” is from the original “hades”--an unseen world where all of the dead reside (body or not). All were dead before the crucifixion, and all were made alive because of it.* So death is really history, but still believed in by mankind. This is the reason for all of our problems. Our world is masked and veiled by a belief system of death. We can escape it, because I have. Why am I still here? Because God is in me, and God is here!!! Mankind has not yet embraced this glorious truth. But truth it is!
Now, back to my intercession (no less passionately)......
As with many times before, it consumes me. There is physical pain from the emotional breaking, and it hurts to breath. There are rocks in my stomach. The feeling of not wanting to live is overwhelming. How I cry out for the life of that dear one who I suffer with! How I long to comfort and deliver them, giving them peace. How I want to free them from ever having to feel this horror again! Having walked out my own hell, I have learned to rise above it and get free. But the beauty of this pain--the biggest encouragement--is knowing that the pain and anguish that I am wracked with is proof that the hand of God will move. I am one with the burdens, and it is truly mine--for it is truly God’s. He is responsible for us. Success is inevitable. In Him, I can conquer the outer world.
My weapons are thoughts and words exuding complete trust in the Creator’s love and purpose. I praise Him! I speak out my trust in Him! I speak out to creation words that bring my own faith up to a crescendo pitch incorporated with God’s faith. My speaking becomes His authority. My words deny the phantoms (memories of past things that interfere with "today") of the corporate soul (all of our souls joined together) with all the fear and trembling that goes with it. All memories of death, destruction, and failure, all anxiety and fear are tackled and stopped. Standing against them with firm strong words will do just that! Scriptures come to life when they are quickened with spiritual dynamite (Holy Spirit power - dunamis, Strong’s 1411). The letter of the word “knows” (intimacy) the Spirit and they produce life. Evil may not pass into my space.
The Real God--the only God--has a commanding presence with me during those times, but I don’t usually feel it until I start speaking out to a creation that He bought and paid for, and took back. He loves them, and so do I! Creation is waiting for these manifestations. Creation needs to see proof that it has received a complete salvation that is only hidden. In the meantime, I am a surrogate for many until they can also stand in the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And I am not alone in this conquest, because intercessors abound.
All that I have said above is true, and all that I have interceded for were delivered for that moment, and sometimes beyond. An intercession is a spiritual directive of assistance to the person receiving the help. People are interceding all over the planet, whether they know it or not. Some do it in another language (tongues), some do it with natural prayers that proceed to God (speaking out) about the emotional pain they are in. Or the physical pain. Sometimes we know it is not “ours”. Sometimes we don’t have a face or name on it because we are walking through a scenario of our own that seems to nail the pain to our spot.
There are also times (plenty of them) when we have an intensity in our own trial that doesn’t make sense. We may wonder why we feel so deeply bothered, stressed, and stirred by something that shouldn't cause us to be that moved or shook. This is when we have been invisibly linked to someone else's trouble and we sink deeper into that larger soul arena as we are aiding them in their torment. Believe me, I have seen the bigger arena and we are all attached to each other. It’s just that we don’t always have our receptors tuned in to other “channels”. And thank God for that!
If we could feel the personal pain of the whole world all of the time, we wouldn’t be able to live. We would be overtaken with grief and anguish and want to die. And because God feels pain for and WITH US (and more), He has created--in His infinite wisdom--escape routes for the negative energy (at least) to be distributed and spread out to keep balance and order in place. Just like in a circuit board.
If you’ve ever really looked at a circuit board and know what you are seeing, you would see this very principle in place. Resistors and capacitors are components incorporated and arranged to handle overloads, aiding the board in its propensity to short out. Resistors dissipate energy, and capacitors store it: little workers to enhance the success of the board’s application. There are even little routing trails, safeguards for the energy to flow correctly. Some goes to active component parts, some to passive.
And in this same way, God’s spiritual network has its connections, intersections, “off” ramps, storage stops. Some persons use the energy, some store it, and some disperse it. (Note: the spiritual network is no different than the internet. Both are invisible, and both have the power to cause flowing between specific points. And so much more!!)
The successful overcoming I experience in my life and in intercessions is according to 2 Cor 10:3-5. It is about spiritual weapons: “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (NIV) What a powerful testimony from Paul. And it is mine!!
I stand on the name of Jesus Christ & I speak it out. I remind myself regularly to take just one day at a time, and to not get ahead, for this is God's economy. I turn my back on "phantoms", sometimes literally standing up and turning my back to them. I see them drifting past me on an iceberg that is floating in the opposite direction of me. I will not look back, returning to the past, and know that those thoughts and memories are drifting further and further from me. Praise God! I refuse to let them whisper despair in my ears (for very long). When anything causing us grief, anxiety, or fear is whispering or shouting, it isn’t the voice of God we are hearing. We must, therefore, address it accordingly--as a lie!
I rebuke myself when I start thinking and speaking negatively. I see Peter stepping out while the storms raged, stepping out toward a man he loved and trusted in. Stepping out toward God’s Christ! I praise Him during the good and bad times. I thank Him for everything! I thank Him for the honor of being a part of delivering creation. I thank Him for letting me display His glory to disperse darkness in lower, unseen realms. I know that my own pain is a showing of God’s healing hand. In myself and others, through Jesus, all of the outposts of hell are surely being tamed!
* Romans 5 (all), 2 Cor 5:14-15, Col 2:13
