Intercessory Prayer That Roars: How Persistent Prayer Opens Spiritual Doors

Jesus wounds us and then calls us to pray—and specifically to throw ourselves at the feet of the One who owns the harvest: the Lord of the Harvest.

God cares about the harvest far more than we do. His Son died for the harvest, and He is fully invested in it. Therefore, when we wait on Him we can be assured He will send out laborers in His sovereign timing. Right now there is a generation of leaders who have received the wound and thrown themselves into prayer and fasting. I believe we are about to see an explosion of laborers sent to the four corners of the earth. This sending is not casual; it is a violent force. Lou Engle, founder of The Call and a spiritual father of mine, has been consumed by this word in the last year. He calls Matthew 9:38 the prayer that executes the eternal plan of God. In an hour when the harvest is plentiful, God is going to release this prayer in His Church, and the result will be a great sending. In the original Greek, the word send is used to describe the action of casting out demons. In the same authoritative, forceful way the Son of God casts out demonic powers, He will thrust His prepared laborers into the harvest.

From Genesis to Revelation we see this same process of preparation unfold in the lives of messengers. God calls them to the wilderness, the furnace, the dungeon—those places of obscurity where the heavens are like brass and the pressures from within and without rise up—in order to transform them. However, there comes a day and time when they receive a divine sending. Moses encountered the burning bush; Joshua encountered the captain of the armies of the Lord of Hosts; Isaiah saw the Lord in His temple; Jeremiah’s mouth was touched; the word of God came to John the Baptist; Jesus came out of the wilderness in the power of the Spirit; the disciples experienced the day of Pentecost. There are real days when God shows up to those who are waiting in the furnace of prayer and sends them as laborers into the harvest field.

In the same way that perseverance caused the friend in Luke 11 to open the door, so our asking, seeking, and knocking opens doors— doors of opportunity and breakthrough. One of the primary characteristics of true leadership is the ability to open doors in the spirit through intercession so that multitudes may enter the kingdom. The greater things of God manifest in communities of believers and geographic regions when leaders are willing to lay down their lives in prayer. Spiritual doors of blessing and anointing are only opened through costly intercession. Jesus called His disciples to live in this sacrificial way, and He opposed the religious leaders who only sought to build their own kingdoms.

But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men, for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. (Matthew 23:13)

This verse terrifies me. The very leaders who were supposed to open the doors for the people were actually serving as doorstops. The Pharisees controlled and manipulated people to bolster their personal positions, and in the process they prevented the sincere from encountering the Father.

In the fall of 1990 my friend had a visitation from the Lord while on a trip to Wales. In this encounter God spoke to him about the state of spiritual leadership today: “I have a controversy with My people. No one with a control spirit can fully experience My kingdom.” When he released this word at a meeting that night, hundreds of ministers fell under the power of God, repenting and experiencing mass deliverance. I believe this same work of deliverance continues today. God will not stop until a generation says yes to the furnace of prayer and transformation, and the mantle of apostolic ministry rests on these prepared laborers.

Paul’s Apostolic Life of Prayer

If you want to know what these laborers look like, there is no clearer picture than Paul. He is the greatest laborer, apostle, and spiritual father in church history.

For though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel. (1 Corinthians 4:15)

For the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children. And I will very gladly spend and be spent for your souls. (2 Corinthians 12:14c–15a)

This man formerly known as Saul—a murderer of Christians, a zealot for the law, and a Pharisee among Pharisees who unleashed havoc in the early Church—was blinded by the revelation of Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus. Out of this encounter came Paul, a man who literally changed history. His list of accomplishments is almost unbelievable. He brought the gospel to the Gentile world and wrote most of the New Testament. He moved in mighty signs and wonders, healing the sick and raising the dead. He was given divine insight, taken up to heaven, and served as a steward of divine mysteries: the mystery of Christ and His Church, the mystery of Jew and Gentile, the mystery of Christ in you, the mystery of lawlessness, and the mystery of the resurrection.

All this is nothing compared to his life of humility and love. Though beaten, ridiculed, and defamed, he never ceased to manifest the love and compassion of Jesus Christ. He kept loving, giving, serving, and sowing no matter the opposition. And the opposition was considerable. By his own account he was imprisoned multiple times, received thirty-nine lashes on five separate occasions, was beaten with rods, stoned, shipwrecked, and frequently without food or shelter (2 Corinthians 11:23–27). Through all this he manifested the heart of Jesus like no one else, living a life of meekness and humility.

However, far above all his other labors Paul labored in prayer.

Paul gave himself to prayer. So with him, praying was not an outer garb, a mere coloring, a paint, a polish. Praying made up the substance, the bone, the marrow, and the very being of his religious life. He did not vainly expect to make full proof of his ministry, by the marvels of conditions and by wonderful results in the conversion, nor by the apostolic commission signed and sealed by divine authority, and carrying with it all highest gifts and apostolic enrichments, but by prayer, by ceaseless wrestling, agonizing and Holy Spirit praying. Prayer was a royal privilege; that prayer was a mighty force; that prayer gauges piety, makes faith mighty and mightier; that much prayer was necessary to Christian success.6

Paul took the revelation of all he had received in Christ and used it as fuel for his prayer life. “I have been raised with Christ, I am blessed with every spiritual blessing, my old man is dead, and I am alive to God so that I might join in the intercession of Christ. His prayers, His faith, His tears, and His labor are released through me.” This is the heart of an apostolic father. Through continual fasting and prayer, spiritual fathers birth entire generations and mentor them in the things of God. Their ministry is multiplied as they lay down their lives for the sake of others.

Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. (John 12:24)

When Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he highlighted this very point. “There are a lot of people who can preach and teach, but not many who can give birth in the spirit and raise you to maturity in Christ” (1 Corinthians 4:15, paraphrase). In fact, Paul criticized the church for running after “super apostles” who used ministry as a platform for personal power. The Corinthians compared Paul with their other leaders and judged him for his constant suffering, humility, and intercession. Yet these very characteristics marked him as their father in the faith.

In his letter to the Galatians, Paul wrote, “My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4: 19). In other words, he understood that apostolic ministry stood on the foundation of laboring in prayer. This was how he won souls, and this was how he matured disciples. Though Paul was often absent from the churches he founded, he did not see this as a hindrance when it came to his ability to effectively disciple and mature the believers. He knew that prayer transcends distance, and he lived in prayer, laboring until Christ was formed in them. He was after more than getting people to sign on the dotted line; he wanted to see Christ manifested in the human soul.

Throughout the New Testament we see the testimony of Paul’s prayer life. From the moment of his conversion, he was found praying.

Arise and go to the street called Straight, and inquire at the house of Judas for one called Saul of Tarsus, for behold, he is praying. (Acts 9:11)

Paul understood prayer, valued prayer, asked for prayer, and taught on prayer. This defined his life more than anything else. Again and again he affirmed his constant intercession for the churches and exhorted them to pray:

For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of His Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers. (Romans 1:9)

I thank my God I speak with tongues more than you all. (1 Corinthians 14:18)

Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints. (Ephesians 6:18)

Continue earnestly in prayer, being vigilant in it with thanksgiving. (Colossians 4:2)

Night and day praying exceedingly that we may see your face and perfect what is lacking in your faith. (1 Thessalonians 3:10)

Pray without ceasing. (1 Thessalonians 5:17)

According to Leonard Ravenhill, no man is greater than his prayer life. If this is true, it places even more emphasis on Paul’s exhortations. As a father, he desired to see his spiritual children follow in his footsteps. Can you hear him pleading with believers to pray without ceasing? His heart was filled with concern for the churches, a concern he described as one of his greatest burdens (2 Corinthians 11:28–29).

Greater than this burden, however, was his desire for Israel’s salvation. In Romans 9 Paul pulls back the curtains of his heart and reveals the depths of his cry for this nation:

I tell the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises. (Romans 9:1–4)

Paul actually wished he could go to hell so that Israel might be saved. This intense level of intercession is only seen a handful of times in the Bible. As we stated in an earlier chapter, Moses touched the heart of God for His people when he asked God to blot him out rather than destroy Israel (Exodus 32:32). This is the same cry in Paul’s heart, and it is the path that Jesus walked down. Through His sacrificial death He was temporarily blotted out so that Jew and Gentile could be written into the Book of Life. Moses and Paul did not generate this passion on their own—they carried the cry of God within them: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!” (Matthew 23:37).

Today God is restoring this passion and the apostolic burden of Paul’s life: “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved” (Romans 10:1). The prophet Isaiah emphatically states God will set watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem— intercessors who will cry out night and day until her righteousness goes forth as brightness and her salvation as a burning torch (Isaiah 62:1, 6–7). We are asking the Holy Spirit to raise up one hundred million intercessors for the salvation of Israel. This is not mainly about connecting with a group of people in the Middle East; it is about connecting with the God of Israel who has chosen a nation and a people through which He will reveal Himself to the earth. As Gentiles we have been grafted into this glorious storyline, and we have become partakers of their inheritance, that we might contend for their salvation.

He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. (Isaiah 53:11a)

This is the promise given to Jesus by the Father, and it is the labor we are called to share. There is only one atoning sacrifice, but all are called to join in the labor of prayer for the sake of the harvest. Jesus will not be satisfied until all the nations come to Him and worship arises across the earth. To that end He is bringing the prayer movement and the missions movement together, forming a new culture that is redefining Christianity. In this context we will see a restoration of apostolic ministry as believers first pray to the Lord of the harvest and then receive a divine sending that violently shakes the nations and prepares the way of the Lord.