Have you ever met someone and just known God put them in your path for a specific purpose? But maybe you didn’t realize that, until later. That has happened to me on more than one occasion, and it is nice to know I have a little divine help guiding me along. I had never heard of intercessory prayer before, until someone was telling me a story about their experience with it. It was such a strange thing, and I honestly didn’t know what to think about it. That is until it happened to me.
My prayer life was growing much deeper. I had purposed to try to spend one on one time with Jesus when I could. Unfortunately it wasn’t every day, but when I did, it was intense. I would make certain to spend this time focused on Jesus alone, and not my prayers or thoughts. It is often hard to reign in thoughts and clear your mind, so I will often start this time off with just praising and worshiping Him. The more I did this, the easier it became to really come into His presence. And the connection I felt with my Lord and Savior was becoming so much more real. I didn’t even know it was possible to truly experience the presence of Jesus before.
So I can only guess that my work to become closer to the One I love opened up new possibilities for me. I had read about what a rich and victorious life I could have as a Christian, but I had not seen it at my church. Which is really the only place I was around other Christians. What I was experiencing I dared not even talk about to others for fear it was too strange. But if what I was experiencing was strange, then my life was about to get a whole lot stranger.
Sometimes I got impressions of feelings of things that seemed to come out of nowhere. I might feel the need to tell someone something that I felt God was feeling. I didn’t exactly know what to make of this, but I usually just went with it when it did come, because it didn’t happen often. Then one Sunday I was talking to someone and we prayed together. During the time of prayer I got a vision of sorts paired with a feeling. I didn’t know what to make of it, because it was incomplete. I told the person about it anyway, because it seemed important.
Later that day as I was sitting at home reading, I felt a sudden urge to pray for this same person. I didn’t know what to pray though, so I just said a quick prayer for the person so I could go back to my book. Then I felt strongly that I needed to pray for protection from spiritual attack for this person. I didn’t even know much about what spiritual attack was. But I was compelled to pray for this person and the urge was so strong I could not resist. So I began to pray out loud for protection. It was kind of freaking me out because I had no idea what was going on with this person and why the need for prayer. But if I tried to stop praying I just felt uncomfortable.
I started to speak a verse from the Bible that I had read before, but was not that familiar with. I didn’t know the whole verse or where it was in the Bible, but it came to me and I went with it. “Jesus is Lord”, was all I could remember at first. I kept repeating it over and over again. Then it became, “Every knee shall bow, every tongue shall confess, that Jesus is Lord”. I envisioned a breaking away of a darkness around this person.
I can’t say how long this prayer went on for, but probably not more than 5-10 minutes Finally I went into my room to find my Bible and find this passage.
Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor
and gave him the name above all other names,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:8-11
When I read it, I was blown away. Every knee shall bow … under the earth. Under the earth? Who was under the earth. Satan and his demons of course. Whoa…the prayer was for protection from spiritual attack. And this verse just came to me. I was amazed and scared all at once. I wanted so badly to talk to this person and ask them if they knew they were under spiritual attack or if something had happened to them or just to tell them what happened! I was excited! I was doing work for the Kingdom of God! It was like something our of the Bible. Well, kind of anyway.
I felt very strongly that I was not supposed to talk to this person though. As a matter of fact, I did not even see this person at church over the course of the next few weeks, even though I normally saw them. To me this was a clear sign that God did not want me to tell this person about what happened, for whatever reason. So I had to eventually put it out of my mind.
Maybe this prayer experience was to prepare me to become a real prayer warrior, or maybe it was to prepare me for my own spiritual attack. Either way, it was a mark of many more spiritual experiences that were to come. It would have been easy to brush off my initial feeling to pray for this person. If I had I would never had been led to pray for protection from spiritual attack. And even if I had, I could have just ignored that too. 
How many times have you felt a calling of God to do something and you just didn’t feel like doing it? Or maybe it just sounded to weird. The Lord has asked me to do many things I found to be uncomfortable and completely out of my element. And that is when you know if is God asking you to do it, and not you. You will not likely ever get a feeling to do something that is totally out of your nature like that on your own. God is ready to partner with you to do amazing things. You do not have to be someone special, or do something special to hear a calling from God. All you have to do is obey.
When you are faithful to Him, when you obey Him and give yourself to Him, you are opening yourself to a whole new world and a new way to experience God. He is almighty and all-powerful and can do anything – including using someone like you who has no experience. God can and will use anyone who makes themselves available to Him. Remember, even Jesus had a moment of weakness in the Garden of Gethsemane, when He prayed and asked God to take His cup of suffering away. Because it was more than He could bear alone. He had to partner with His Father to accomplish something that no ordinary man could have ever done. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
Jesus gave us a perfect example of how we should live our lives in partnership with our Creator, our Father. To give to Him our obedience, to follow His will, and to let Him lead us in our flesh with His strength, because we cannot do it on our own. And no matter how difficult or how strange it may seem to follow Him in obedience, we will be blessed for it. Jesus ascended into heaven to the right hand of the Father because of His obedience. Are you ready to step out in faith and trust and follow Him in the same way?