What Is God's Plan And Your Intercession (Article 12)

What is God’s Plan?

Knowing the provision, the provider, and the providence.

How often we underestimate God’s provision for us. The Israelites are our witness to the folly of human reasoning and judgment. A good example of not, walking in the Spirit.

The Way

The writer of the book of Proverbs reminds us; “Lean not on your own understanding, but in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your path straight.” Prov. 3:5-6

“To Lean” means, to confide in or depend on. The writer of Proverbs tells us we are not dependable creatures. We have insurmountable weaknesses and are prone to being driven by every wind that may stir us because we are not only creatures of habit but we depend too often on raw feelings, rather than on our faithful God. Many are still overtaken by soulish thinking rather than spiritual direction.

Our own understanding can be subverted and our discernment of a situation may be completely flawed because of our lifestyle, prejudices, fears, background, doctrinal emphasis, denial or tradition. Our so called experiences or more likely our inexperience causing us pride will completely divert us from the heart of God if we are overcome by these things. Knowledge does not always produce wisdom in our actions.

The beginning of verse 5 actually says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart…”

The Truth

“To trust”, someone usually means you have come to know that someone or you’ve had good advice that this person can be trusted. To put our trust in God with ALL our heart, may have different applications for each one of us. Many people have had a negative action against them from father figures and therefore do not allow trust to come easily. God will have to do a major work in their hearts to assist them to develop trust in him.

He understands this and is willing to come along side and help heal wounds of a negative spirit and or broken spirit.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart…” means, Depend or rely on him, he is trustworthy. It can take some time to bring us to this place of trust. Our time spent in God’s presence will enlarge our ability to trust him; with all our heart, with all our strength, with all our emotions, with all our passion and with our entire mind. The more we allow ourselves to encounter the love experiences of God, the Lord Jesus, and Holy Spirit the easier it will grow within our lives. Once this is established the greater the comfort will be to transfer that same love to others; especially in intercession.

The Life

“In all our ways” means, in every aspect that makes up our life from family, workplace, leisure activities, hobbies, this includes everything about us. We need to let God in and acknowledge that he can be a part of and is welcome to share in all our life.

“He will make the path straight” means, God helps make the pathway negotiable as we trust, acknowledge, rest in, and put our faith in him.

For the intercessor trusting God must become a familiar place. As we pray for others this experience of trust will be transferred and become an encouragement and a blessing.

A Living Testament

We live in a busy world that is becoming more of an understatement as technology thrusts us faster and faster into the future with newer and greater accomplishments. It is becoming more difficult to find the time for physical rest for ourselves let alone to find time to rest in God. But God will make provision for us if we ask him and trust him.

In the spiritual outpouring that is happening around the world these days; God is literally stopping people in their tracks and causing them to have rest in him. He is touching them so severely with his power that they have little choice but to submit and be overwhelmed and changed forever.

Provision

This is God’s plan that we should know him intimately having such a familiar closeness with him that we would acknowledge and respond at even his slightest whisper. This is not too radical. He wants intercessors totally immersing themselves in the Holy Spirit.

There is provision in Christ for us. Our redemption is in place, Jesus has paid the price and we have been set free to respond to God and to be enlightened by His Holy Spirit. What is his command to us, but to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself. This fulfills all the requirements of the law and the prophets. (Eph.1:3-23, 1Peter 4:7-11)

If we look at Israel’s provision as a comparison we will see how wonderfully God works on our behalf. When Israel finally crosses over to take possession of the land we find that God had given them a land that was already established with towns, cities, farms, cattle, flocks, gardens, and vineyards. They simply moved in and took up ownership. They did not have to pay mortgage on the properties. Everything was bought and paid for by God. We have the very same provisions established in Christ for us. This is God’s plan for us in Christ Jesus. The intercessor must understand what we are entitled to through Christ, so we can pray and intercede more effectively for others and for the world around us. (Duet.31:7,8, Josh.1 & 3)

There are things that God has provided for us, similar to what Israel experienced with the taking of the land that we will gain a better understanding of as the Lord gives us revelation to incorporate into our intercession. God will often overlap past scriptural teaching and commands and show us how to use them to make application for today. So we need to learn the greatness of God. We need to remember that God is a God of order. He has a plan for each of us individually and corporately and how we are to work together in the church body setting. The apostle Paul goes to great lengths to make available wonderful teaching on these things for us to have a clear understanding. (Col.1:9, 1Cor2:13, Is.11:2, Lk.1:17)

Training

We have the help on hand through Holy Spirit, to assist us, to counsel us, to bring enlightenment from the scripture and from God himself. All we need to do is ask.

Now the action of Satan against us is to get our attention away from God directives and on to our own. Our enemy would like us to slightly alter our course, by bringing us lies, subtle changes to the way God has directed and so on. Because God does not always answer immediately, has caused many a person to make a hasty decision. In intercession we have to train ourselves to wait on the Lord. Isaiah 40:31 says “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.” There is a saying “God is seldom early, but he is never late.”

In intercession there is warfare and with this comes warfare strategies. Natural armies have a commander. He tells his troops to “wait, till you see the signal, or hear the signal”, then move forward or whatever. He knows how best to wage war and needs the discipline of his men to follow his orders. We have a great commander and chief, the Lord Jesus; therefore we must be attentive to him.

Every instance where we enter into a spiritual conflict we will need God’s mind in the matter. God may tell us to leave something completely alone and to himself or he may change the order of the battle altogether. This is why it is important not to prejudge the situation or to have preconceived ideas made out of what we perceive in the circumstances. In the Old Testament we have examples of the commander of the army seeking counsel from the man of God or going to God directly. There were accounts of how things were done, some normally and many not to the norm. (See Gideon’s example) There were others who did not seek God and had tragedy because of it.

So with our intercession and some intercession will be warfare, we need to be disciplined to hear from God. God has given us liberty in Jesus, but not to be a loose canon, nor a lone warrior. We need submission not only to God and the Lordship of Jesus and the obedience to Holy Spirit; we need to come under the authority of our pastor, kinship leader or group of people that God has placed there for us. We also need to let others know when we are fasting or praying and doing warfare so we have a support group and prayer covering. If God doesn’t ask or tell you to enter into a certain area of intercession, then don’t go there. We have to decide right now, who knows best. Better a year in the grace of God, then two or three mending your wounds from a battle that was not yours. God always, always has a plan and he desires for us to seek him out, as we make our prayers and petitions known to him. We cannot wear God out by our persistence, but we can wear ourselves out by our presumptuousness.

So in conclusion; let’s not sell God short on his directive nor think more highly of ourselves than we ought to. We can train ourselves not to lean on our own understanding. We can teach ourselves to trust God and we can continue to let Holy Spirit counsel us and lead us into God’s plans.

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QUERY (From Handbook)

What is God’s Plan?

The Way

1) Does knowing God mean we have complete Understanding of him and his ways?

The Truth

2) What’s wrong with our understanding (discernment)? Why is it untrustworthy?

3) What have you learnt in your walk with God about your own heart? Why do we need a New Heart?

4) Emotion: Are you in touch with your own? What does this have to do with trusting God? Men tend to have more of a problem here, because they think it’s not their place to have feelings that might be called a weakness.

5) Passion: We can express this in almost any other area of life except where it comes to being passionate about prayer and intercession.

The Life

6) Is God welcome in ALL your life experiences?

7) The ways (road, path, trail) of God, are they always perfectly clear?

8) Familiar: Walking in the Spirit, praying, trusting, encountering God should be done with ease… as Jesus did, so we can also.

Do you believe this in your heart?

A Living Testament

9) Since the latest outpouring of God that started in the mid 90’s, why was God intent on getting people’s attention with powerful encounters and manifestation?

10) What would it take for him to really get your attention today?

Provision

11) Do you really believe in the provision of God and are you seeing its power demonstrated in your praying/intercession?

Training

12) Have you experienced bad choices in your prayer life, where you went on presumption instead of direction?

13) Why is it important to share and stand with others during times of warfare?

(Personal experiences)