What is Intercessory Worship?
Intercessory Worship is the blending of prayer and worship for the purpose of advancing God’s will for individuals, or a region. There are many biblical examples of IW. One of the most striking is in the time of King David(1Chronicles 13-16). When King David was inaugurated as King in place of Saul one of the first actions he took was to bring the Ark of the Covenant, which used to reside in the Tabernacle of Moses, to Jerusalem and he placed it in a tent on Mt. Zion. This was called the Tabernacle(or tent) of David. King David then appointed musicians, singers, levites, and priests to minister before the Ark 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. The singers were engaging in Intercessory Worship around the clock. This practice enabled King David to conquer many enemy armies because David understood the role and purpose of continual intercession and worship, and the effect it would have upon a people, a nation, and his rule.
Another biblical example of the integration of prayer and worship in the scriptures is simply found within the themes of the Book of Psalms. The Psalms were the Hymnals of their time. They contained the musical lyrics which the Israelites sang during their worship times before the Lord. You will often notice that their themes migrated from praise to prayer, to adoration, to the renouncing of their enemies, to repentance, and to various other themes all weaved together within the same psalm. (see Psalm 149 for example)
And even in the New Testament we find examples of this integration of intercession and worship. Within the well known topical prayer that Jesus taught the disciples Jesus says, “Our Father Who art in heaven, hallowed be Your name(PRAISE), Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on the earth as it is in heaven(Prayer).
Another New Testament example is found in the book of Revelation 5:8 “And when He(Jesus) had taken it(The Scroll), the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.” Here you see in heavenly adoration the blending again of worship, represented in the “harps”, and prayer, represented in the bowls of incense.
Today there is a global prayer movement which is restoring Intercessory Worship in the church for the purpose of worldwide revival.
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What You Can Expect to See When You Visit One of Our IW Sessions.
Intercessory Worship is the seamless integration of prayer with worship. Therefore our style or format reflects this integration. The musicians on the platform create a continuum of music, or worship. The congregation contributes by either worshipping along with us, or more importantly, by adding the intercession that lays over the top of the music. This is different than what most people are familiar with. Most people have experienced more of a segregated or compartmentalized approach to their worship services where the worship is separate from the prayer, which is separate from the sermon, which is separate from the offering, etc. IW is different in that it seamlessly integrates the prayer with the worship. The two work together overlapping one another, or alternating back and forth from one to the other.
You will notice a microphone at the front of the room just in front of the platform. That is for the intercessors to use when they are contributing their prayers. You will also notice that often the musicians on the platform will “echo” a spoken prayer and begin singing scriptural prayers, or spontaneously constructing a musical chorus that they will repeat over and over. The intercessor will then respond back antiphonally, and there will be an exchange that takes place between the worship and the intercession. This is what I meant by a seamless integration, or a continuum.
The microphone at the front of the room is not meant for people to give personal testimonies, or for “mini-sermons“. It is not meant to be used by someone to speak to the congregation, but rather the focus of IW is almost exclusively directed upward toward God.
Again modeling from the multi-thematic examples of the Psalms, our expressions will include prayer, proclamation, and prophecy. By proclamation I mean that God will lead us to “proclaim” a theme that is on His heart, thereby we are actually using the power of our spoken or sung declarations to create a God ordained circumstance or event. By prophecy I mean that God will use us as His mouthpieces to communicate His heart or will for any number of issues. We are simply messengers used by God for this purpose. In 1st Corinthians 14:3 it says that prophecy is for the strengthening and comforting of the church. So within IW, God can and does speak to and through us for the benefit of all.
IW also often involves conducting spiritual warfare. The bible is replete with examples of how God uses worship as a weapon to defeat spiritual enemies, i.e. Satan and his demons.(2Chronicles20 1Samuel16:14-23)
IW also often includes singing and speaking in our heavenly language, or in tongues. This expression is also mentioned in 1Corinthians13-14. It is a biblical and natural expression that the Holy Spirit leads us into as a way to more purely communicate our worship, and as a way to be strengthened in our inner man(Jude:20)
The Anatomy of an Intercessory Worship Session
The purpose of this play by play recall of an IW session is to provide a novice this commentary to hopefully provide better understanding of the workings of the Spirit within corporate prayer.
We are all assembled once again. Some small talk is going on. Some have come prepared to dive right in, some are excited and are talking about a cool prayer meeting they were at the night before, some are simply tired because after all it is 7:00am on a Sunday morning. Some may be wondering, is God going show up again this morning, although with our group that would be highly unlikely because our intercessors are truly expectant people. Some may have had a bad week and are wondering if they are even worthy to come into God's presence. I can only imagine the myriad of mental gymnastics going on at the start of any given prayer meeting. I go through them myself. I'm feeling pretty good today. Yesterday was a Saturday and my family was all gone visiting relatives in northern Wisconsin. I was home alone and was able to pray a lot in the house throughout the day and felt a strong presence of the Lord most of the day. When that happens, I just know something very special will happen at IW tomorrow.
I always seek the Lord for which songs I am to plan to sing. I do this because I have a simple theology that believes that the Spirit anoints the songs that God is singing and not the songs I may want to sing. Assuming I heard from the Lord accurately, there will almost always be an accompanying anointing on the music very quickly.
So I begin to sing and focus on the Lord. As I recite the lyrics, I begin to sense the Lord's presence moving. An image may come to my mind off of a particular lyric or a phrase within the lyric. The worship begins to become a communication vehicle between the Lord and me. I begin to get a sense that He is drawing near, and that He is speaking. There is a process that has begun and it usually begins at a specific point in response to our sung prayers. The Spirit "rides" in on our words and our hearts' desires, and He ushers us into an intimate place with Himself, where now His presence is tangible. It reminds me of the descriptions of God's glory from the OT times, particularly for example at the dedication of Solomon's temple, where the glory of God was so prevalent that the priests could do nothing but fall to the floor and simply bask in God's glory.
I begin to get swept away in revelation as I sense, discern, and follow the Spirit's voice. It's as though He has taken control (and He has) of the worship now, and we are just followers along for the ride, accomplishing His will for this session. I think of Psalm 37 where it says, "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart". We began the meeting delighting in God through our worship, and suddenly He breaks in and gives us His heart, and our hearts are intertwined with His now through revelation and His Spirit, and we have become conduits of His presence to bring about His purposes today. I live for this. There is no better place to be.
So now I'm airborne, and it's amazing. Suddenly my guitar is easier to play, I'm not forgetting any of the lyrics. I've entered into another level of creativity. Most importantly, the anointing is so strong that I feel that whatever comes to my mind is the Lord's thoughts, and as I simply express those thoughts, there is an immediate and powerful effect. It's as though we are climbing a ladder and progressing further and further upward toward His throne room. All sorts of "unplanned" things begin to happen. This I believe is the most powerful place in worship and prayer that anyone can come to.
So we are about 10 minutes into this morning's session and I sense that a "theme of repentance" is on the Lord's heart. So I start leading out a spontaneous song of personal and corporate repentance, inviting everyone to personalize this, and sing out on their own behalf. Humility is a powerful entrance point into His glory and presence. God responds to our brokenness big time. Again, His glory is swelling all around us.
Something happened this morning that I will never forget. An occasional visitor from our congregation was with us this morning. Well as I was singing a prophetic spontaneous song that was very honest about the depths of our sin , I looked over at him, and to my amazement, he is smiling at me and he gestures with his fist and his thumb sticking up in the air, as if to say, "Sing it Bro! That blessed my socks off. It moved me into yet another level of devotion in what we were all doing and sensing. Just then a sister chimes in and prays an anointed prayer of repentance. Here we go again, climbing the ladder to another level. The Lord has created music and intercession to be mingled together. So I follow up with another spontaneous lyric that echoes her prayer, and the session continues to progress toward deeper and deeper levels of His presence. I believe many worship leaders do not have a sensitivity to discern and follow the Holy Spirit in worship, and that is why the worship is dry and void of His presence.
Anyway, so we continue further on. Now that we are engaged, and following the Lord, the Spirit who gives gifts liberally and corporately, begins to move on the intercessors, and they begin adding their Spirit directed prayers to the music, and I continue to respond musically and undergird those prayers. I then receive a spontaneous chorus from the Lord out of Isaiah 61, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon you and me", and I start singing that over and over. People don't realize the power of worship in shaping a life, or in shaping our spirits. God’s power to change us within is often present as a result of His glory and presence in this kind of setting. In other words, you are in character to a large degree, what you have allowed the Lord to "work" in you through either your personal prayer times or corporate prayer times.
I understand this dynamic of the Spirit. In Psalm 32 it says, "Seek the Lord, while He may be found". There is a reason for His presence at any given point and it is paramount that we discern His purpose for His presence in order to go deeper with the Lord and experience the fullness of what He wants to do. So I begin to lead out this spontaneous chorus from Isaiah, and I sense the Lord wants us to "prophesy "and "pray and sing" this chorus over one another (Ephesians 5:19) for the purpose of downloading into our spirits the reality of this verse. So now we have engaged into an environment of edification and equipping like no other. We are creating or engineering, because of and through His presence, the very character of God's divine nature into one another’s soul and spirit. This dynamic is without substitute my friends in terms of becoming who God wants us to become, and performing what God wants to perform through our lives. This to me is what it means, to "live, and move, and have our being" in HIM.
So we are now singing this over one another over and over, and I began laying over the top of this chorus another set of spontaneous lyrics that enhance and augment what God is speaking and forming in us. So we have kind of a "singing in the round" kind of thing going on. Again, we are prophesying, so there is power being released into our spirits, and we can tangibly feel this is in the room and in our whole being. This is another reason God has joined together Worship with Prayer. The prayer becomes a lot more anointed, and is anything but "boring". We are getting so full of God, that we are feeling His unspeakable joy, His unlimited strength, and there is a confidence from the Lord that we experience that echoes what David said in Psalm 18:29, " With my God I can scale a wall".
So you can see the progression here where I start out with a plan that I sought from the Lord. He breaks in at some point and takes over leading us into a deeper theme of personal and corporate repentance. He then begins to prophesy over us and through us for our strengthening and equipping. We are full of His presence and have a renewed confidence to "seize the day"! And that's just the first half hour folks.
When this stuff happens in each and every session, to then move ahead and to begin to intercede for sicknesses, salvations, citywide, countywide, and national transformations, becomes an easy transition to make because we are in this place of true power and anointing. Suddenly it becomes practical and simply natural, to pray for the impossible and to pray for God's kingdom to come and His will to be done upon the earth as it is heaven. After all, we're in heaven, in a figurative sense, because of His manifest presence, and therefore we take on the agenda of heaven, which is what we were born again to do.
I won't describe what happened for the rest of the session, but we did progress into more intercession for our target region for that day, which was Nashotah, Wisconsin.
My intent here again was to detail and document the anatomy of an IW session for the benefit of those of you who may never have seen or experienced this before.