Heart Cry for intercessors and consequences of delayed Intercessions by John Abiola

” And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it”( (Luke 19:41).

And he said to them, ” The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into the harvest ( Luke 10:2 ESV).

Oh, that my eyes were a fountain of tears; I would weep forever! I would sob day and night for all my people who have been slaughtered”( Jeremiah 9:1).

” We hoped for peace, but no peace came. We hoped for a time of healing, but found only terror.

The snorting of the enemies’ warhorses can be heard all the way from the land of Dan in the north! The whole land trembles at the approach of the terrible army, for it is coming to devour the land and everything in it–cities and people alike.’

I will send these enemy troops among you like poisonous snakes you cannot charm,” says the LORD. “No matter what you do, they will bite you, and you will die.”

My grief is beyond healing; my heart is broken.

Listen to the weeping of my people; it can be heard all across the land. “Has the LORD abandoned Jerusalem?” the people ask. “Is her King no longer there?Oh, why have they angered me with their carved idols and worthless gods?” asks the LORD.

The harvest is finished, and the summer is gone,” the people cry, “yet we are not saved!”

weep for the hurt of my people. I am stunned and silent, mute with grief”(Jeremiah 8:15-21).

Prayer:

Heavenly Father, please give me a burning burden for revival, for the dying Church, and a deep passion for the harvest of the lost world. Let the power and the Spirit of Intercession grow in me to weep and groan day and night ceaselessly like Jeremiah, Moses, Epaphras, Elijah, and our Lord Jesus Christ.

I wrote in the 57 series of this publication that,https://www.churchtimesnigeria.net/intercession-weapon-church/

“God needs more Intercessors and supporters now

Where are the Intercessors who are not bound by their church denominations, doctrines, and walls, who will stand in the gap to represent the body of Christ in Intercession daily for hours with fasting until righteousness rules their nations?

Where is that person who would labour earnestly in intercession for the persecuted church, salvation of millions of souls that are perishing daily without a ray of hope?

Where are the selfless and righteous Intercessors that would forsake all the comfort of this world and have trials, persecution, loneliness, and hardships, retire to secret prayers in closets, just to prepare the church (Bride) for the imminent coming of Jesus Christ for the rapture?

Where are the Intercessors and churches that will pray and pray until God releases great outpouring of the Holy Spirit and revival power, repentance, righteousness, and holiness to our churches and nations?

Where are the godly servants and faithful ministers and brethren who would go at any length to help and support with their substance those in need, in fulfilling their ministry,

God is on the lookout for more Intercessors that will forsake all to intercede for more missionaries and for the fruitfulness of the labour of those that are already in their fields.

Will you answer God’s call today?

Epaphras:

Epaphras the intercessor was the secret behind the spiritual and numerical growth of churches and Apostle Paul’s successful ministry. Paul recognized the unique role of this great Intercessor and his selfless and relentless intercessions, he wrote,

“Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ, saluted you, always laboring fervently for you in prayers, that ye may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God. For I bear him records, that he hath a great zeal for you, and them that are in Laodicea, and them in Hierapolis (Colossians 4:12-13).

Moses:

Also, the account of Moses’ hands lifted up on the mountain while Joshua and the Israelites prevailed over the Amalekites is proof of the gift of warfare prayer and intercessions in operation. The Bible says, “Then came Amalek, and fought with Israel in Rephidim and Moses said unto Joshua, Choose us out men and go out, fight with Amalek; tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in mine hand. And it came to pass, when Moses, held up his hand, that Israel prevailed: and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses’ hands were heavy, and they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat thereon, and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands. The one on the one side and the one on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. And Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword (Exodus 17:8 13).

Elijah:

Elijah prayed earnestly with a great burden and deep passion for ceaselessly, for the Israelites to turn from sins, idolatry, and evils back to God. He was called by God into the forefront of the battle against the host of darkness that ruled supreme over the nation and God’s people, while God hid 100 prophets in a cave from death.

Elijah prayed until Satan was subdued, the darkness disappeared, the ruling princes over Israel were dislodged, the evil political leaders, King Ahab, and Queen Jezebel were rendered powerless, their 850 prophets of Baal were publicly disgraced and killed. He prayed and God averted His judgment and sent great fire from heaven that consumed the sacrifice on the altar which he rebuilt on Mount Carmel.

Elijah’s prayer closed up the heavens for three years and six months, he prayed again and heaven opened, and rain came down. He prayed again and the sinful, stubborn, and idolatrous nation of Israel turned back to God. The entire Israelites repented of their sins.

“And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces; and they said, Lord, he is the God; the Lord he is the God(1 Kings 18:39).

What a mighty revival in answer to Elijah’s prayers however, shortly after, Elijah received the greatest missile in his life; death threat, loneliness, and terrible hunger but thanks to God, he was delivered.

The British missionary

I recall an aged British missionary called me for urgent prayer needs but this particular day was not for her nor for the important aspect of her mission works but for another British missionary, Shylon.

According to her, Shylon’s husband came from England as a missionary to a town in the middle belt of Nigeria and he died and was buried in his mission field.

Then his wife, Shylon came to see the fruit of her husband’s labour but she was struck by the devil with a stroke, she could not walk, not talk anymore, while they were planning how to take him back to England for medical treatment, another missionary called her to tell her about Shylon’s issue back and she asked me to Intercede for her, immediately I heard this a great burden came upon my heart to pray, I canceled other important things I was doing and I prayed earnestly. A few hours after, I received a call from this aged missionary that Shylon has been healed, I asked her was she walking and talking, and she answered me, that she was the one that called her to share her testimony.

There are thousands of missionaries across the world that need encouragement and strength for their labour to be fruitful in their various fields if there are many more intercessors.

There are millions of Christians who are afflicted and sick, who need Intercessors to stand in the gap for them before they can experience Christ’s touch for their healing and deliverance. There are many churches and mission agencies, and evangelists that are labouring sacrificially with sweat and tears but with little or no fruits because there are no Intercessors to stand in the gap for them.

There are full-time Intercessors that have been placed by God at the forefront of the battle against the hosts of darkness for the Gospel’s advance in the nations, other Christians, and for the needs of the Church.

They are labouring fervently in prayers on their knees secretly in their closets 24/7. They are most often faced with great trials, hardships, and loneliness because there are no encouragement, financial support from the church, and backup prayers from other Intercessors.

How communism was stopped in Mexico

A number of years ago it seemed that communism was going to take over Mexico. Education was based on atheism. Night after night radio stations poured blasphemy over the land. Tension gripped hearts.

Then a group of Christian leaders met together to seek God’s answer. They decided to meet each morning at 6:30 for prayer and to hold on until deliverance came. For months this group of prayer warriors prayed every morning. They found themselves in a mighty conflict with the powers of darkness.” They wrestle with principalities and powers”.

They represented many denominations but all were united for months they prayed with strong crying and tears. Then one morning while they were praying, a pastor came into the room with a newspaper. Its headlines told that the president of the country had dismissed the cabinet – the nation was being turned right about-face. God has changed the course of a nation by united prayer (Extract, from the book: Mighty prevailing prayer by Wesley L. Duewel).

Where are our priests, pastors, and Christian leaders like the Mexican Christians, that will gather together to seek God’s intervention, day and night, 24/7 until God pours His mercy to stop the killings, kidnappings, rituals, jihadists, bandits, and armed Fulani herdsmen?

These sects have been ravaging the West African nations, most especially in Nigeria; they have been sending millions of Christians to their early graves every year. Nigeria is now the headquarters of world Islamic Jihadists. Check this link for details:https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2022/april/nigeria-surpasses-iraq-syria-as-country-with-highest-number-of-attacks-by-islamic-state.

Consequences to postpone Intercessions:

African great Intercessor, Zacharias Tanee Fomum wrote in his books, The Art of Intercession and the ministry of fasting which I will like to share in this revival article,

“A young man is walking along life’s way, wondering if he should experiment with sex and find out what pleasure might be found in it. The Lord sees the impending danger and lays a burden in the heart of someone to stand in the gap for this young man so that he should not go the way of sin, shame, and disgrace that is occasioned by sexual immorality.

The intercessor receives the burden but would not do anything about it at once. All he said is, I will pray about it this evening, in the evening he is busy with other things and says, I will pray about it in the morning, in the morning people come to see him and he says to himself, I ought to intercede but because these people have come, I will meet their needs first. He ministers to them and by the evening he is too tired and says, I will intercede when I go on the weekend since my days are too charged and I do not want to intercede superficially.

The weekend is again full of activities and he says, I know what to do; I will wait for my vacation time. During that time, there will be nothing on my hands and I will truly take time and settle this matter with God because it is very important.

However, before vacation time the young man falls into sexual immorality, a child is conceived and later born into the world outside the perfect will of God. In addition, that initial sexual act set the young man aflame so much that from then on, he went from one girl to another, causing untold harm and ending up with AIDS. Soon he is on his death bed and all this is because an intercessor received God’s call to intercede, but he postponed it and failed completely.

How delayed intercession kills God’s servant

A man of God with an important ministry of national and international importance to God is driving on the highway. The devil has been looking for possible ways to destroy him but could not. He tried to use the love of money but it did not work.

Then he tried to use the love of fame but it did not work either, finally, he decided to destroy his life completely. So, as the man of God is driving along the highway to go and minister to the people of God, the devil says to himself, this is my one opportunity. I must act at once. He finds a truck driver who loves alcoholic drinks ready to drive the opposite way.

He encouraged him to take the first bottle of beer, and then he moves him to take the second and the third bottles. As the truck driver is about to move to his truck, the devil immediately sends an old friend to him who says to him, I have not seen you for a long time, much has happened to me and since I do not know when we shall next meet, I want to tell you all at once. Can we talk over a glass of beer? The two enter a pub, the conversation lasted for three hours, during which six bottles of beer were polished off by the two of them, the truck driver drinking five and his friend one.

At the end of the conversations, the truck driver enters his truck and in his drunken condition begins to drive at top speed. He is driving in the right lane on the same road on which the man of God is driving in the other lane in the opposite direction. As his truck comes within a distance of the car of the man of God, he suddenly gets excited, turns left, and crashed into the car of the man of God and killed him.

Six hours before the man of God was killed, the Lord saw what the devil was planning and laid a burden on a sister to pray very specifically for the man of God. She knows him and has often ministered to him through intercession and through other practical ways.

When the burden was put on her, she became restless and her spirit told her to go at once and pray for him. On the other hand, she reasoned with herself and said, I must finish the work that I have planned to do today. When I go on my six hours of prayer retreat tomorrow I will pray for him and cover him under the blood of the Lord Jesus.

I have this burden and I am sure others have it. I believe that someone who is not as busy as I am now is responding to the burden and praying now. I will take my turn tomorrow and everything will fit in orderly and perfectly. Before tomorrow, she received the message of the man’s death. It was too late to intercede for him on no other heart but hers, and since she did not respond, the devil had his way!

This woman made a number of mistakes. She decided that it was better to stick to programmes and timetables made by herself than to respond to God’s timetable that demanded that she should leave her own timetable and intercede at once. She also convinced herself that the burden that God had placed on her heart to intercede at that moment had also been placed by the Lord on other hearts to intercede then, this again was an error.

There is no guarantee that God lays one burden on time. It is safest that anyone who received a burden from the Lord should consider himself the sole recipient of that burden and consequently the only person on whom intercession depends. He should then act accordingly.

Her third error was that she decided that others who received the burden would not have their timetables to follow and leave things, the man of God was killed and that was the end of his ministry, nationally and internationally. God had waited for fifty years for a man of His Spiritual calibre to rise up on the Spiritual horizons in His body.

He might have to wait for another fifty, one hundred, and even five hundred years before He can find another vessel that He can use in the same way! How sad and how far-reaching was that decision taken to postpone intercession that day! The one thing in this life that a believer should not postpone is the call to intercede. The one thing for which all timetables should be put aside in order that it is done is intercession.

The only thing that cannot be left for tomorrow is intercession. The intercessors of this day must see the urgency with which they must carry out their duties. The intercessor for an individual, a family, a city, a nation, a continent must know that one day or an hour of delay could be fatal. There are decisions being made by individuals, families, cities, nations, continents, the planet earth that could be altered by the intercessor

Many Christian leaders are not able to finish the cause given to them by God because they are not strengthened by adequate prayer coverage. The enemy presses them, distractions hit, and pastors chopping out of the ministry like flies.

Whatever your service to God, you need someone who will help you and pray to God on your behalf. Another reason that Christian leaders need personal intercession is that the warfare of the enemy has become sophisticated. His people are engaged in unholy intercession.

Below is an excerpt from a letter written to Peter Wagner by a Baptist Christian leader:

“During the flight from Detroit, I had a man sitting next to me who seemed to have little interest in the conversation. As we crossed the halfway point in the trip, he bowed his head as though he was praying. After his lips stopped moving and he rose his head, I inquired Are you a Christian? I had given him no indication that I was a Baptist Pastor and a University Professor.

He looked shocked at my question and commented. Oh, no you have me all wrong. I’m not a Christian -I’m actually a Satanist. He answered. Do you really want to know? Assuring him that I did, he said My primary attention is directed toward the fall of Christian Pastors and their families living in New England. He was serious about his mission and didn’t care to discuss it further.

Do these satanic prayers and unholy fasts have any real power? The Bible indicates that they do. Jezebel called an unholy fast against the righteous Naboth (1 Kings 21:9 10).

Billions of demons were released to the Earth by Satanists:

Some years ago, the Satanists of Southern Africa fasted for forty days. During those forty days, they made only one request to their father Who art in hell. That request was, ‘destroy the marriage of Christian leaders’. So mighty was the power released by that fast and the corresponding answer to their prayer that billions of demons were released to attack the marriages of Christian leaders in all corners of planet earth.

The spouses of some leaders died suddenly, with divesting effects on the ministry. Other ministers divorced their wives and married others and continued shamelessly preaching the gospel. Some committed fornication and adultery hopelessly. In some cases, preachers committed adultery and then led their partners in sin to commit abortion. In some cases, preachers were found to be involved in homosexual sin.

Besides these obvious disasters, there was no harmony. Marriages were managing to stay together under one roof because of the ministry. The effects of the destruction of the homes of the Christian leaders have also extended to the children of these people. Very many do not turn to Christ. Others are thieves, prostitutes, etc. One Church leader sadly advised visitors to his home to ensure that they should not keep money in the house or leave their doors open because his son was a notorious thief.

A young Christian leader once wrote to me to say that he was at his wit’s end. The love he had for his wife had died completely. They had been married for two years! Many leaders in Christian circles confessed that they were bound by sexual lust.

One confessed that he felt that he had a demon of lust. It was also reported that one Church in Southern Africa on hearing about the fast of the Satanists went on a three-days partial fast to try to counter a forty-day complete fast by the Satanists.

The global consequences of the Satanists’ fast remind us that there is tremendous power locked up in man waiting to be released through fasting. The power released could be of the Holy Spirit, if one fasting belongs to the Lord Jesus or it could be satanic if the person belongs to the enemy. No one given to fasting is quite the same afterward. The Lord Jesus fasted for forty days, Elijah fasted for forty days, and Paul fasted often.

Men who have made an impact on the world for God since Bible times all had fasting as part of their Spiritual programme. John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, John Sang, Watchman Nee, Pastor TSI, George Whitefield, Tom Rees, and Charles Studd, to name but a few.

Even in our days, the men who are truly speaking forth with the voice of God amidst violent opposition, like Leonard and Ravenhil, David Wilkerson, and Arthur Blessit are men who were given to fasting. It was the desire for food that opened the way for sin to enter the world. It will be through the over-comers saying no to the desire for food for some time and seeking God through fasting, that there will be a global outpouring of the Holy Spirit that will check the tide of sin that now permeates the world and the Church.