Lord, Teach Us to Pray by Janice Bowman April 2012

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 Gods 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 Gods 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 dont feel weve 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 Spirits 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 Gods 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 dont 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 didnt 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 couldnt 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 grandmothers prayers raised my mother from the dead.

I knew my grandmother held a key and as a girl I called it a key into Gods 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 Lords 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 dont. But, I know that if Ive spent the time to discern His heart and pray with Him concerning a matter, all things are for the good.