TRAVAILING

INTERCESSION

Birthing the Purposes of Heaven

by

Natasha Grbich

© 2013 Ariel Gate International Kingdom Communications

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All Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.

FOREWORD

The reason we have ‘church growth’ instead of revival is because there is not enough true travailing of the Spirit. The church is giving ‘dry birth’ to stillborn babies. There is no life in them. They have not been truly born again. They are ‘stillborn’. There is no sound in them, no motion, no feeling coming from them because they are without life, and all our efforts are in vain. We need revival.

We need to cry out to God from the depths of our souls that the Father will call sinners to Jesus and the Jews to their Yeshua. It will take a miracle. We have lived so long without miracles in the church that we are used to it. We have managed so well to ‘produce fire on the altar’ without praying it down that we think we can also manipulate, advertise and manufacture a revival. But we are deceiving ourselves.

It is time to fall on our faces and cry aloud and spare not, like a woman in travail.

So many women, when they are in labour, are given pain killers and anesthetics to ease the pain. The intercessors of the church are the same. They do not want to suffer the pangs of spiritual childbirth. They want their revival without feelingany agony of the soul for the lost. We are so accustomed to pain-killing drugs that we refuse to suffer in spiritual warfare. God help us!

Jesus is coming soon! And we are not ready! So many are still lost! If we do not cry out to God and allow His Holy Spirit to use us in travail, we will lose this harvest.

Then, how can we stand before God when all we have to bring Him is our hours of work for the church?

It is not work for the church God needs now, it is travail in the Spirit. Let it not be said of thischurchgeneration,the children are come to birth, and there isnotstrength to bring forth (Isaiah 37:3). Nor may the church have to confess, when the time to give birth comes, thatWe have been with child, we have been in pain, (but) we have brought forth wind; we have not wrought any deliverance in the earth; neither have the inhabitants (the evil spiritswho are in control) fallen (Isaiah 26:18).

Remember the words of Jesus one more time …No man can come to me, except the Father, the one who sent me draw him (John 6:44). Maybe you have never travailed through for that husband, that wife, that son or that daughter!

It is possible that while you have been praying all these years for that loved one’s conversion and you have, in grief, seen him run from God, that you yourself have sought to escape the ‘delivery room’ where all births take place, even the altar of travail for souls.

Think about it! Be honest with your soul today! It is time to travail for our children! Too many are lost!

Excerpt from:

The Heart of Jesus

by Dr Gwen Shaw

(Page 377)

INTRODUCTION

Travailing intercession is one of the most powerful things you can do in the spirit realm. It is a strategy that many cannot deploy – because they simply have never had the opportunity to learn, or asked for the revelation.

For years, there has been a stigma attached to travail, mostly due to lack of understanding. Many intercessors have been scorned, ridiculed and even asked to leave churches because they travail in intercession. I have written this book to bring scriptural understanding to this type of prayer. Travailing intercession is seen all through the bible and is something that the early prophets did, the apostles, creation, the enemy and even God Himself!

I believe that we have entered a season of great spiritual war and advancement for the body of Christ. It is incumbent upon us to know how to engage the enemy in the spirit realm and take territory back from him. Travailing intercession is key.

This book provides practical guidelines and protocols for travailing intercession. The writings are drawn from my many years of praying and releasing travail all across the nations. It looks the same for every race, tribe, tongue and culture!

I first published this book in 2006 and there was such a huge demand that we re-printed the book three times. I received many comments and questions about travail and body intercession and realised that I needed to update the book. God always expands on original revelation and we grow in our understanding of it from season to season.

Thank you to all those intercessors who found the last book useful and were instrumental in helping to form this new one.

Natasha Grbich

2013

CHAPTER ONE

Thy Kingdom Come

When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, He answered:

“When ye pray, say:

Our Father which art in heaven,

Hallowed be Thy name

Thy kingdom come

Thy will be done

As in heaven, so in earth”. (Luke 11:2)

I’ll stop right there! We are to pray to the Father who is in heaven. He is not on the earth. He is seated in heaven. We are to ask forHisKingdom to come andHiswill to be done. Prayer is first aboutGod’s will being done on earth. Jesus is saying that our first priority in prayer is to pray that God’s will and purposes be manifest on the earth. Prayer is about bringing something from heaven to earth. It is about birthing something spiritual into the natural.

“Thy kingdom come” (verse 2). When we pray, we should call for the kingdom to come to earth. We are calling for the will of God to manifest on earth as it is in heaven. The Greek word for ‘come’ is ‘eltheto’(root word: erchomai).

This word means to call, as if calling for a child. (Where are you? Are you coming?). In my mother’s home, when dinner is on the table, she wants the family to come and sit down immediately, before the food gets cold. She would typically go to the door and call ‘Natasha!! Come and eat… NOW!’ She would keep calling louder and louder until I arrived at the table. This is the feel of this verse.

When we call for the kingdom – it sounds like ‘Kingdom!!! Come! Where are you Kingdom? Come here, now!’ We need to develop the urgency and the desperation of this call. If we really want to see His kingdom come on earth, we have to begin to pray and call for it to come. The kingdom of heaven is NOT coming until we call for it. The verse implies that heaven is waiting to answer our call.

“Thy will be done” (verse 2). ‘Your will’ is ‘thelema’ in Greek. It is the perfect will of God. Before the foundation of the earth, the Trinity sat in counsel and decrees were made about the future on earth. We note that books were written regarding the destiny and purpose of people and nations.  A book was written for every person that would be born (Psalm 139:16), books were written about each nation and people group (Daniel 7:10). These books contain the perfect will of God for every living thing and situation. When we pray, ‘Your willbe done’, we refer to something that alreadyexists.

“...Your willbe done...” The Greek word for ‘be done’ is ‘ginomai’. It comes from the root word ‘genesis’, where we get the word gene from and our understanding of God’s design or blueprint (DNA). ‘Ginomai’ means to be made or formed or created from nothing.  We are asking for God’s perfect will to come into a situation. His will is not thereyet, so we are asking for it to begin to form, to take shape, in the situation. A picture of this word ‘ginomai’ is like the microscopic seed that lands in a woman’s womb. It becomes an embryo and slowly starts to take the shape and form of a human being. After nine months, the embryo is fully formed and in its season, it is birthed.

When we pray as Jesus taught us“Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” – we are asking God to send His perfect will to earth so that it can begin to take shape and form. But where is it to come to? How does it come?

It is a kingdom principle that everything from heaven comes to earth in seed form. As we begin to call, heaven will hear us and will begin to look for the place that will receive the seed called ‘God’s perfect will’. This seed needs to be planted in soil or earth in order to grow. We pray “let it be done onearthas it is in heaven”. What is this earth? We are earth - we are made from dust. “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground.” (Genesis 2:7) We are the earth and it is to us that God is looking to send His seed.

Legal entry to earth from the spirit realm is through the womb of a woman. This is why Jesus had to be born of the womb of Mary. If He came any other way – it would have been illegal. All human beings MUST be born through the womb of a woman. As in the natural, so in the spirit. When God wants to bring His will to the earth – he looks for a spiritual womb that he can impregnate with a seed from heaven! Satan also looks for a womb – which we will discuss later.

This seed lands in the ‘earth’ of our spiritual womb. This womb can carry and nurture the seed until it can be birthed into the world. In the spirit, we all have a womb. Jesus says “…out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water...”(John 7:38). The word for belly is ’koilia’ in the Greek and means abdomen, matrix orwomb! Jesus is declaring that living waters symbolic of ‘living words’ will flow from your womb! Men – you have a womb in the spirit and you too can be impregnated with a seed, carry the baby to full term, and birth it!! All through the Bible there are examples of men who birthed and we will look at this in more detail.

What we need to know is that God wants to bring His purposes to earth. In order to do this, he needs a womb that will carry the seed and bring it to birth. The purposes of heaven will not manifest in the earth until we learn first how tocall for them and then how to receive and carry the seed to full birth.

CHAPTER TWO

First Things First

In the natural before you reproduce, God has the protocol of marriage in place. According to God, you should be in a covenantal marriage relationship before you have any children. It is the same in the spirit. Before you can travail and birth the purposes of heaven you need to be in a covenantal marriage relationship with God.

When God called Israel to be a nation and He led them out of Egypt, the first thing He did was to establish a marriage covenant with them at Mount Sinai. When Jesus instituted the Last Supper - it was a betrothal ceremony. In order to better understand this, let us look at the process of engagement and marriage in Jewish culture.

When a young man found a lady he wished to marry, he needed to go and see the father of the bride and enter into a negotiation. He would present himself to the father with a contract called a ketubah. In this ketubah he promises to be married to this woman according to the laws of Moses and of Israel. The ketubah also details all that he promises to provide and do for her. Together with this ketubah, he must bring wine and a bride price - which has to be substantial or the father will be insulted. The bride price is usually gold, jewellry and/or money. Remember the story of Isaac and Rebekah - Abraham sends his servant with gifts of jewellry and gold when he is looking for a wife for his son.  (Genesis 24:53)

The father and the prospective bridegroom will discuss the marriage contract (ketubah) and once the father is satisfied, he will call his daughter and present her with a cup of the wine. If she drinks the wine, she is saying ‘Yes, I choose to marry this man”. In Isaac’s story, Rebekah’s parents give their assent to the marriage in verse 51 and then Rebekah is asked if she wants to marry Isaac.“So they said, "We will call the young woman andask her personally. Then they called Rebekah and said to her, "Will you go with this man?" And she said, "I will go."(Genesis 24:57 - 58)

Once the woman has accepted the man’s proposal, they are officially engaged and under Jewish law, they are considered man and wife in all aspects except sexual relations. The man will then go away to build a house for his bride. When he has completed the home, the father will inspect it and if he is happy, the bridegroom will then come and fetch his bride.

Can you see the imagery here? Let’s take a closer look. When Israel leaves Egypt, they leave with lots of gold and precious jewellry.(Exodus 12:35-36) God is paying a bride price. Then He brings them to Mount Sinai.'Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be aspecial treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be to Mea kingdom of priests and a holy nation.' These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel."(Exodus 19:5-6)

God the Father is declaring His intentions to Israel. He wants to make her a nation that is set aside for Himself. Moses then goes back and tells this to the elders in Exodus 19:7 “So Moses came and called for the elders of the people, and laid before them all these words which the LORD commanded him.” He speaks to the elders of Israel because they represent Israel - He is speaking to the ‘father of the Bride”.

Then the people respond in Exodus 19:8“Then all the people answered together and said, "All that the LORD has spoken we will do." So Moses brought back the words of the people to the LORD.”

Something of an agreement has been reached between God and the people of Israel. They have agreed to be God’s special people. Now the negotiation can begin… God tells Moses that He wants to come down and talk to the people. He explains how they are to prepare themselves and set boundaries around the mountain. (Read Exodus 19:9-25)

Picture the scene. All Israel is camped at the foot of Mount Sinai. The base of the mountain is cordoned off so that no man or animal can accidentally touch the mountain. Everyone has prepared themselves for this meeting with God. Then there is thunder and lightening and a huge cloud and the sound of a trumpet. It says the people trembled and I bet they did. They had never seen a Steven Spielberg movie with special effects - this must have been right out of their comfort zone!

Scripture says that when God descended on the top of the mountain, “Mount Sinai [was] completely in smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire. Its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly.”  (Exodus 19:18)

The Rabbis believe that the whole mountain was actually lifted up and hung in the air over the camp of the Israelites. Imagine a whole mountain just hanging over your head - I’d be trembling too!

It is in this setting that God presented His ketubah (or marriage covenant) to Israel. The ten commandments are a marriage covenant. God is asking that His Bride have no other gods/boyfriends. He is asking that they do not murder, steal or covet and so on. He is presenting His conditions for the marriage. Each man had to answer the Lord and tell Him whether they accept these conditions as their part in the marriage covenant. The rabbis teach that each man stood in front of his tent and the Word of the Lord came in fire before them and the fiery letters spoke to them saying, “I am the Lord your God… you shall have no other gods before me”. They saw and heard His Word! Each man then had to respond on behalf of his house as to whether they would honour this contract.

This so frightened the Israelites (as you can imagine) that they then told Moses that he must just go and speak to God for them as they could not handle this close contact. (Exodus 20:19)

Moses therefore goes up into the cloud and continues to hear instruction from the Lord regarding the marriage covenant. In chapter 24 he returns to the Israelites and reads the whole book of the covenant to them and the people agree to it. “Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read in the hearing of the people. And they said, ‘All that the LORD has said we will do, and be obedient.’ And Moses took the blood, sprinkled it on the people, and said, ‘This is the blood of the covenant which the LORD has made with you according to all these words.’"(Exodus 24:8 )

Israel had agreed to be married to God according to the ketubah that he had given to Moses. To finalise the contract, God calls Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and 70 of the elders of Israel up the mountain again.

“And they saw the God of Israel. And there was under His feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone, and it was like the very heavens in its clarity. But on the nobles of the children of Israel He did not lay His hand. So they saw God, and they ate and drank.”(Exodus 24:10-11)

I believe they were actually taken on to the sea of glass and there they ate and drank with God. They had a covenant meal to seal the deal! And what they ate would have changed their DNA forever. Israel was betrothed to God - they were His special treasure, a nation set apart for God. Thereafter Moses goes up the mountain again to receive the tablets of stone upon which this contract is written. While he is away, the people already break their marriage covenant, which is why the worshipping of the golden calf was such a serious offence before the Lord.

The bottom line is that God wants to be in a covenant relationship with us. He does not want us to be married to other gods. He wants to be our one and only husband. In order to birth His plans and purposes into the earth, He needs a people in covenant relationship with Him.

CHAPTER THREE

Preparing to Travail

This type of prayer is costly. When you decide in the natural to have a child, you need to consider the cost of bearing and raising a child. Your life is never the same after you have had children – your physical body changes, your day-to-day life changes, your responsibilities change. As in the natural, so in the spirit. We have to come to the place where we have agreed with heaven that we will pay the price to birth His purposes in the earth. Once we begin, we will never be the same again.

We need capacity for this type of prayer. Firstly, we have to have capacity to carry weight. Think about a heavily pregnant woman. Her physical body has to be able to carry the weight of the child. This is why doctors recommend that women exercise and strengthen their bodies in preparation for pregnancy as the weight of the child, particularly in the last trimester, takes a tremendous toll on the body. In the spirit realm, carrying weight relates to carrying glory. The Hebrew word for glory is ‘kabod’. It means heavy, fat or rich. When the glory comes down, it feels heavy. We must have the spiritual strength to carry what is coming from heaven.

And just think about the strength a woman needs to go through labour and the actual birth. Many ladies have testified that it is like running a long distance marathon! Spiritual travail has a similar effect on the body. When you have travailed in the spirit, your body will feel tired and drained. Your muscles will be sore and you will feel like you have pushed a car from here to there. If you do not feel this, you have not pushed or travailed in prayer. When you push in the spirit, your body will register that you have pushed something – your muscles will be stressed. You are tired afterwards. When you have travailed – it is tiring, draining and straining. You must MOVE the mountain. You move the mountain with your travailing prayer muscles.

God’s Gym

In order to develop prayer muscles you need to enroll in God’s gym. There are different weights in the gym. If you have not been to gym before, you cannot just start pushing massive weights because you will damage your back and tear your muscles and tendons. You have to start small. You do those weights for a couple of weeks and then you progress to the next level and then on to the next one. You may find that you need to change your diet in order to help you push heavier weights.

When we begin to pray – we pray ‘small prayers’. Prayers just for ‘me and my big toe’ as I put it! It is all about me and my needs, just like a child. That is fine, if you are a child, but we need to mature. We need to begin to pray more mature prayers. For our family, children or the friend down the road. Once we do that enough, we begin to think about our community or town. We need to start praying the prayers of God’s heart - not just our own thoughts and desires. These are ‘bigger’ prayers, heavier weights we are lifting. This is a new level of praying. It requires more muscle in the spirit to ‘move’ something for your town or community. The prayer needs to be different. The war is different.

Tools for Developing Spiritual Muscle

Fasting

Fasting is not so much about not eating food as it is about not ‘feeding’ spiritually from the last place you were at. We fast to kill old appetites and develop the right appetite for the season that is ahead of us.  If you want to push something that you couldn’t push at the last level – you need new food, you need to fast!

If you want to go to a new level in God, You cannot pray as you have always done. You cannot act the same or be the same. You cannot war in the same way. Your repentance has to be deeper, your prayer life has to be wider and broader. Everything needs to go to the next level. So you have to fast the last level. It will require that you do not eat the way you did in the last level. That is what fasting means. It is not just about ‘do not eat’, but also that; we are looking for another level. It is important for us to understand this.

You have been eating a specific diet in order to maintain your present weight. Now to get to a new level and to achieve a new weight, you need a new diet! Your metabolism and body chemistry has been used to your present diet and it has maintained your present shape. Fasting introduces a new diet which will change your present capacity to a future dimension.

Trials and Tribulations

Trials are God’s number 1 tool for maturing the saints on earth. In the natural, we are forced to grow up when we have to struggle through some difficult situations and overcome serious challenges. Think of a child who is learning to walk. They do not just stand up and walk. They have to learn to pull themselves up on a piece of furniture, and then they take one step and fall over. They have to stand again and then hit their head on the furniture and cry and then start the whole procedure again. There is pain and tears involved in learning to walk, but once they get the hang of it - the pain stops and a whole new world opens to the child because he can now maneuver to places on his own, that he could not reach unaided before. However, the change required a commitment to the process no matter the level of pain and discomfort.

In the same way, if we want to experience a new place in God or a new level of authority, we are going to experience some pain and tears. Every struggle that you find yourself in is an opportunity to grow and mature into the person God has called you to be. As you struggle to overcome that hardship, you grow spiritual muscle. We need to change how we view difficulties! Scripture tells us:

“For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”(2 Corinthians 4:17)

This is Paul speaking - the apostle who was whipped and shipwrecked, arrested and locked in prison. He regards these things as light afflictions and we think the world is ending when we have no electricity or cannot pay our rent! It is time to face reality, you will never have a carefree life if you belong to Jesus! If you want to grow from glory to glory… it costs! Trials, tribulations and persecutions are muscle-building exercises that God provides for us. If you are asking for more of God, asking for a greater weight of glory in your life, asking for more authority in Christ - then you are asking for more trials and tribulations! One of the best ways to build spiritual muscles is to come into agreement with God’s word regarding trials.

“My brethren, count itall joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience (endurance), But let patience have its perfect work that you may be perfect(mature) and complete, lacking nothing.”(James 1:2 - 4)

We need continually to be at work in God’s gym – moving from level to level and glory to glory. In the glory there is lightweight, medium-weight and heavyweight. You decide your own category by the way you embrace the trials in your life. Some people are just featherweight - they do not overcome much. Every time they face a challenge, they sit and whine about how unfair it is and how God does not love them. Featherweights! Unable to really move anything for God. Unable to change nations with their prayers. It takes spiritual muscles to make decrees for nations. Think about the heavyweight champion you see on television – it has taken years of practise and pushing weights to get where he is. When he lifts that barbell, every muscle is bulging and veins are sticking out because of the weight he is lifting. He is sweating and concentrating to pick up the weight, yet he is able to do what few others can.

God is looking for heavyweight pray-ers! When you start to pray for a nation, you have to come out of juvenile prayers like ‘God can you bless me today’. This sounds just like a small child whining, ‘Mommy, I want an ice-cream!’ We need people who will pay the price to move to a new level of prayer so we can BECOME spiritual heavyweights for some SERIOUS mountain moving!

CHAPTER FOUR

The Practical Process of Travail and Birthing

Everywhere I go, I hear stories of discouraged and despairing people who are not seeing the fullness of God’s plan in their lives. They share with me the many prophetic words they have been given and the promises they have from God, but yet, nothing seems to change in their lives. I believe this is because we have not understood the process of how a word sent from heaven must be birthed in the earth.

It seems as if God chooses not to move until someone on earth begins to pray. As soon as prayer ascends to heaven, He responds by sending a word. A word for our situation, our family or city. We receive it as a prophetic word or as a dream or a vision. This is the word sent, the word coming from heaven. We make a mistake when we think that this is the answer and that is all there is to it! We think that God has spoken it and it will happen, we can just sit back, relax and wait. That is not exactly true.

This word or vision is the answer, but it is in seed form. The Bible says that the word must become flesh. So this word needs to grow, take shape and become flesh. In short it needs to be birthed. We know that everything that God does must be birthed in order to legally enter the domain of earth.

So when the prophetic word comes, it is the time of conception. It is the Holy Spirit overshadowing you. Our response needs to be like Mary,“Be it unto me, according to Thy word”. (Luke 1:38) This is you saying to God – yes, I will carry this word to maturity and see it birthed into reality.

Once you have said yes to the Lord, the seed has landed in your spiritual womb and you are pregnant in the spirit. You are carrying a new word. You will begin to feel different. You may find that your appetite changes. In the first three months of a natural pregnancy, women sometimes eat the strangest things!

Their bodies are calling for a different taste. In the spirit, you may find this too. You may find that you cannot get enough of the Word. You may start reading books on a certain subject and that is all you want to read. You are feeding this baby. This seed in your womb needs to be fed in order to grow. It needs the Word, it needs the Spirit and it will also demand certain things of you.

For example, you may be carrying a seed for China. So suddenly you will want to read testimonies about people from China, every time there is a program with China on the TV, you are ready to cry. You see a Chinese person and you want to cry. This is the ‘baby’ starting to take shape in you.

This seed will grow. And as it does, the shape and form will change. The seed never looks like the final baby. The seed carries the DNA. So as you ‘feed’ the baby, it will grow. You may know nothing about the seed except that it is about China. Start to pray, start to fast, read up on China. Read about what God is doing there. As you do this, you may have an idea. Pray into that, research it. As you do these things, the baby takes shape. You will know the baby is growing, you will feel it move on the inside of you. One day you will go to a meeting and someone will say something about being a missionary to China and everything in your spirit leaps and gets excited. That is the baby kicking. It hears its name being called!

Eventually you will reach a place of being heavily pregnant with this word. I always enjoy meeting with heavily pregnant intercessors and explaining themselves to themselves! People who are eight to nine months pregnant can be very vicious - especially if you sit in their chair at church! Usually they are sweet as pie, but suddenly – you do not want to be in their way. They want what they want and they want it NOW! They are tired of carrying this weight around, it takes so much energy to get anything done and they are frustrated, ready to hit out at anyone.  They cannot sleep so well at night and all they want is to get this baby OUT! Ladies, does this sound familiar? Well it is exactly the same in the spirit. You get to a place of frustration and desperation to push.

When you start feeling like this – it is your due season. It is your day to groan and travail and push. When a woman goes into labour, she feels birth pangs or contractions to signal that her time is near. The closer the contractions, the more she pushes and then the baby is pushed out with much sweating and screaming and tears. As in the natural, so in the spirit.

Very often when I minister this word, I pray for intercessors who are feeling ready to birth. As they come forward, I just place my hand on the small of their back and yell, ‘PUSH’. They will almost always begin to groan and moan and scream. Some have even felt actual contractions across their abdomen. They then scream and push in the spirit until they feel a release and the baby is birthed. It ends up looking like a labour ward. But it pleases God because His purposes are being birthed.

Once everyone has prayed through and birthed in the spirit, we offer these spiritual babies back to the Lord and dedicate them to Him. We pray that these words will grow to full maturity and accomplish the purpose for which they have been sent.

This is the PRACTICAL process of birthing a word from heaven. This is how the Word becomes flesh. If we want to see a manifestation of the prophetic words over our lives or in our nations, we will be required to birth them ourselves. The word does not arrive one day and manifest the next. It truly is a PROCESS!

Let’s look at this process in more detail.

CHAPTER FIVE

Conceiving God’s Word

God’s Word is the Seed of Heaven

In chapter one I explained that prayer is primarily about getting God’s plans and purposes from heaven to earth.“Let Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”.The will of God is all His plans and purposes for man and the earth. The challenge is for us to discover what these plans are.

Before God made the earth, He sat in counsel with Jesus and the Holy Spirit and they wrote many volumes about the earth and all the people, tribes and tongues that would inhabit the earth. They documented the destinies and callings of each and carefully recorded them in books that are kept in heaven. These books represent the perfect will of God for every life and nation and situation!

If I want to pray God’s will for a situation or person, I need to access the appropriate book and read what God wrote. This is prophecy in its simplest form - prophets access the book of your life and read a few pages to you. It follows that when we wish to pray for a nation, we need to access God’s book for the nation, read what His will is and then pray that. We are then asking Him to do what He has already planned to do.

But how do you read the books in heaven practically? Well, the truth is that we do not read the book so much as it is read to us. God speaks the words that He has written, to us. This is therhema word of God. The New Testament has two translations for the word ‘Word’. There is the logosWord which refers to the Word of God, the Bible. The other Word is translated asrhemafrom a root word,rhéō, meaning, ‘to speak’. According to the Strong’s concordance,rhemameans ‘an utterance’ and therefore refers to thespoken word of God. These rhema words can be likened to sperm - they carry life and DNA and the potential of God. Every time you hear God speak a ‘rhema’ word, He is sending a seed into your spirit man.

It is our responsibility to receive that word. This sounds basic, but it is a key point. Many times we hear arhema word and we do not receive it because we do not really understand it. Or we do not like the sound of it -so we dismiss the word. This is the same as a miscarriage or an abortion. God sends a plan/idea in seed form and we reject it for whatever reason. The seed has no place to land and grow and become flesh, so that idea or plan of God never comes to fruition and destiny is missed by a person or nation! How sad is that!

When we hear arhema, life-giving word of God, we should tell God that we receive His word. Mary is our example,“Be it done unto me according to Thy word”. (Luke 1:38).

Being Positioned to Receive the Seed of Heaven

God has a clock in heaven. It does not work in 24/12-hour cycles but in heavenly time for earthly purposes and destinies. God has created time as a womb to bring forth His purposes. God has a plan for everything that He wants done on the earth and He does it in different times and seasons.

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven”.(Ecclesiastes. 3:1)

God appointed times and seasons to do certain things. At a specified ‘time’ He wants to achieve a certain purpose. These purposes must be birthed in the earth, but in order for that to happen, we need to be correctlypositioned to receive them.

If you heard about a store that was giving away free gifts on a certain day at a certain time, as a promotion, and you wanted to receive this gift, you would ensure that youpositionedyourself to receive it. This positioning involves knowing the day and the time and the venue where the gifts are being given away. Then you ensure that you are at that particular store on the specified day, at the specified time in order to receive the free gift.

In the same way, when God is getting ready to send a new word or purpose to earth, we need topositionourselves to receive it. In order to position ourselves, we need to understand the times and the seasons.

Understand the season

“To everything there is aseason…” God is in charge of the seasons. He created them so that we can understand the time we are in. A season is a period of time where certain circumstances change and become normal for that time. Its exact timing is unspecified. Spiritually, a season could last from days to weeks or even, years. The seasons are given to help us understand that different activities need to take place at different times in the year.

In the natural,the season dictates the clothes we will wear and how we behave.We would look really silly if we wore a swimming costume in Minneapolis, USA in December where temperatures reach –15° Celsius in the northern hemisphere winter. This is a time to dress warmly and most activities take place indoors. We would show our ignorance of the season by organising a swimming party in this season.

Similarly, when we are invited to a wedding, we would not wear black, funeral clothing and be in mourning – that would be inappropriate dress and behaviour for a wedding. It would indicate to people that we do not understand the season or the time. In the same way, we need to understand the season we are in spiritually so we can dress and behave accordingly.

The spirit realm does not look at what you are wearing on your physical body. The latest fashions do not impress them - they are looking at what you are wearing on your spirit man and whether it is appropriate for the spiritual season.

I loved this excerpt from Rabbi Freeman:

Live Clothes

There is a suit we wear that has a life of its own.

It is knitted of the fabric of words, images and sounds, mischievous characters that no one else can see—or would care to know.

You, however, hear them day and night, chattering, buzzing, playing their games in the courtyard of your mind. They are all the threads of the garment of thought that envelops you.

Leave your thoughts to play on their own, and they will take you for a ride to places you never wanted to see.

Grab the reins, master them, direct them, flex your mind, and they will follow. Provide them a script, and they will play along.

Do something quick, because you, after all, are dressed up within them.

You are dressed in what you are thinking. You look like what is going on in your heart.  “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.”(Proverbs 23:7)The sounds, the images, the characters, the pictures. That little smile you have on the inside when you think that someone else looks terrible or they have their petticoat sticking out. That feeling of self-righteousness we get when someone suffers a misfortune and we think they are ‘getting what they deserve’. Every time we have a private conversation about someone in our heart - we are wearing that conversation.

There is no privacy in the spirit realm. We cannot have our own private conversation and be all nasty on the inside and think that no one else sees or hears it. What do you think angels and demons see when they look at you? They must see something. They cannot tell the future. But they understand a lot about you and what is happening to you by what you look like in the spirit.

They do not look at your flesh, they look at your spirit man and it is dressed a certain way. The garment has been woven from the thoughts and intents of your heart. If you are only thinking evil and selfish thoughts, that is what you are dressed in. No matter what your mouth confesses, the demons and the angels know what you truly believe in your heart. We can look impressive to everyone around us, say all the right things and look as if we are in tune and on time with God, but the spirit realm knows,by the garment we are wearing, if that is really true.

According to the testimonies of former witches and satanists, Christians who are on-fire for Jesus and have a vibrant prayer life are dressed in white garments and are shining in the spirit. They admitted that they are in fear of such people. Garments depict our standing in the spirit realm.  Once you are saved, you wear a garment that depicts your salvation. “I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me withthe garments of salvation”.(Isaiah 61:10) When you carry the praises of the Lord in your heart, a spirit of heaviness cannot rest on you because you are clothed with praise.“...to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, thegarment of praisefor the spirit of heaviness;” (Isaiah 31:3)

The things we are praying and thinking and meditating on in our hearts weave the spiritual garment we wear in any particular season. This garment then testifies of our positioning in God. Have we discerned the new season? Have our prayers and thoughts been adjusted to what God is speaking now? Are we wearing the appropriate garment for the season? Or are we still wearing the clothes of the last season? Our thoughts and prayers out of sync with Heaven? The fashion industry is created on a spiritual concept - each new season requires a different garments and fashions!

The spiritual season will dictate how you pray, how you fast and how to behave. God says in Ecclesiastes 3:1 that“to everything there is a season”and kingdom people MUST be able to discern the season so we know how to pray and what we should be doing. If you are still praying the same way that you prayed six months ago, there is a problem. The season has probably changed since then and we should have adjusted too. The season changes because God is doing something new and different, our spirits discern this and we begin to inquire of the Lord how to dress and how to behave in this new season. In every season, God wants to do something. There is a reason forevery season.

Discern the Time

Then within that season, there will be a time to release God’s purpose for that season. “To everything there is a season, anda timeto every purpose under the heaven”.

There is atime for every purpose – the word fortimeis ‘kairos’. This is the Greek word for ‘open window’ or ‘set time’. It is like a window opening in heaven and we have a limited amount of time to do or speak something before the window closes again. Compare this ‘kairos’ time to ‘chronos’ time. ‘Chronos’ denotesactual time – for example it is 2pm right now or we agree to meet at 5pm.

The Hebrew word for ‘kairos’ time that is used in Ecclesiastes 3:1 is ‘eth’. In the Hebrew understanding, it is a female word for time. I believe that God uses the female form of time because he wants to emphasize that this time is for a set period only. Female also speaks of having a womb and an ability to carry something to full birth. The Hebrew male word for time is ‘olam’ and it denotes eternal time – God is God forever and ever and ever. This is ‘male’ time in Hebrew. It is very significant that God uses the female form of time ‘eth’ (kairos time) in this scripture, because this ‘eth’ time must be able to birth heaven’s purpose. So when God is saying that there is “a time for every purpose under heaven”, He is saying that there is a WOMB for every purpose under heaven.

We must begin to recognise when the season changes. When summer gives way to Autumn, we feel the difference. The mornings are colder, darkness falls earlier in the evening. We know the season is changing and that winter is on the way. It is the same in the spirit. In a general sense we feel that everything is not as it was last week or last month. Our prayers are not the same, we do not get the same thrill when we play our favourite worship song. All these are signs that the season has changed! When we enter a new season, we do not know how long it will last. But we do know that God has changed the season because he wants to do something different. He has a purpose He wants to achieve.

Once we have discerned a new season, we must start to look for the kairos time (eth) window to open so that the purpose can be poured out and into us. If we have not discerned that the season has changed, we will keep on living as we have been doing. We will not be inquiring of the Lord about the new season and ‘changing our clothes’. We will not be positioning ourselves under the window. So when the window opens and God speaks or pours out a new thing, we will not be under the window and will miss the purpose of God for the season. We will have to wait for that season to come around again and we could wait forty years, like the Israelites in the wilderness!

But we are not as the Israelites in the wilderness, we have discerned that the season has changed in the earth and we are positioning ourselves under the ‘eth’ window. Remember, this window is a womb – it births something. In the natural, the womb receives a seed and after nine months a baby is born. God created time to be a womb for His purposes. When we come into a new season, our job is to ask God what is the purpose in the midst of this season. We must then listen for the rhema word (seed) and receive it so that we can conceive and bring to birth His purpose for that specific season.

Let us look at the example of Mary. Jesus’ birth is prophesied right throughout the scriptures, but God was waiting for a certain season for Jesus to be conceived. “To everything there is a season, a time to every purpose under the heaven”.When the season comes for Jesus to be born, God looks for someone who is willing to carry His seed. He finds Mary.

Mary is a virgin betrothed to Joseph. This is a prophetic picture for us. God looks for those who have kept themselves pure - on a physical and a spiritual level. In the physical, we have kept our body as the temple of the Holy Spirit and not defiled it according to 1 Corinthians 6:19. Spiritually we have not defiled ourselves by worshipping other gods, but have set ourselves apart to serve the One, True God. God looks for those walking in His marriage covenant!

He then sends the Angel Gabriel to tell her that she will bear a child. When she asks how this will be (Luke 1:34), the angel explains that the Holy Spirit will overshadow her and she will conceive.

Mary, herself, is in an ‘eth’ window of time. It is the season for Jesus to be born. At the ‘kairos’ time, Mary has positioned herself under the window and it has opened over her. The Holy Spirit is ready to send a seed to earth. She needs to respond or the window will close and Jesus’ birth may be delayed until the window opens again at another time. Although she does not fully understand everything, she says in faith,“Be it done unto me according to thy word”. (Luke 1:38).

For each of us, God has windows of time in which He needs to birth things into the earth through our lives. This is part of our destiny. We need to be like Mary - living prepared for that window to open at any time. And when it does, even if we do not understand everything, we should be ready to receive what God is depositing into our womb.

The word for ‘overshadow’ in Greek is ‘episkiazo’. ‘Epi’ meaning ‘over’ and ‘skiazo’ meaning ‘shade’ (tent). When God overshadows you, a tent of meeting forms over you. It is like a light shining down over you and could look like a tent. In this tent, the Holy Spirit meets you and from a place of intimacy, you conceive the purpose of God – which, in this case, was Jesus. Mary’s willingness to carry Heaven’s purpose and her attitude of faith causes her to conceive. In the right season, Mary positioned herself under the window and she received by faith the Word poured out. Nine months later the fruit of her womb, Jesus, is born into the earth.

God has not changed His pattern. He still births the purposes of heaven in the same way today.

I need to emphasise that it was not a light thing for Mary to do what she did. She became pregnant outside of marriage. Imagine the shame. Imagine having to explain to your husband to be that you will bear a child and he is not the father but God is! There is a price to pay for birthing God’s purposes. We have to decide up front that we will do it. We cannot change our mind halfway through the process.

Warfare exists because in the spirit realm there is recognition that you have conceived. Mary and Joseph had to flee because Herod understood that something that would challenge his rulership had been conceived. Warfare is about what you are carrying. The only reason you have warfare is because you are carrying something in the spirit, and that something will challenge the prevailing spiritual climate. The more you carry, the more warfare you experience because you have become a pregnant time bomb. In the right season when you give birth you explode - the ultimate weapon of God.

CHAPTER SIX

Groaning in the Spirit

Travailing intercession is about groaning and labouring in the spirit in order to see God’s purposes birthed. Again, as in the natural, so in the spirit. When a woman comes to the time of birth – she goes into labour. During this time, it is hard work for her to deliver the baby. She sweats, cries, groans, screams and pushes to see the baby come out of the womb. In the spirit, we will also groan with labour pains and sweat and push to deliver heaven’s purpose. When a woman first goes into labour, she begins by groaning. And we see this in the spirit as well. There is a groaning prayer! Let us look at the scriptural basis for this.

“For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God”. (Romans 8:19)

Creation is waiting (groaning) to see us come into our ‘sonship’. Creation is waiting to see you handle the level of glory that God measured to you before the foundation of the earth. But if you are not going to exercise in God’s gym, if you are not going to decide to push for a new level, then creation will have to keep waiting.

We, the church, need to understand that creation is waiting for us to push for a new level. Today is the day to get it! The nations are waiting for you to get it. Whole people groups are waiting for you to get it. We need prayer muscles to push back the gates of hell in our cities and nations. We need a new level of pushing power to overturn principalities and powers and usher in the kingdom! Creation is waiting.

“For the creature (creation) was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of Him who hath subjected the same in hope; because the creature (creation) itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creationgroanethandtravailethin pain together until now”. (Romans 8:20 – 22) [Emphasis mine] Creation is groaning. This sounds like a new age book. If you talk to a member of the New Age movement they will tell you that when you cut a flower, it cries. Now you can tell them that it is true. It is in the Bible. You might actually win a ‘new-ager’ to Christ because they thought they had a new philosophy and it has been in the Bible all along!

When Adam was in the garden, everything knew he was in charge! The trees knew that and the rocks knew that and everything in creation was happy because there was order in the garden. Adam was the steward, he was talking to God, God came and walked with him and there was nothing that died. Then Adam sells creation to Satan and death comes into Eden. Suddenly there is a fight for who lives and who dies. This state of sin and death continues until now. Creation is groaning to be free of this state. Creation wants to go back to how it looked in the beginning. Creation is groaning.

“Not only they, but ourselves also which have the first fruits of the Spirit, evenwe ourselves groan withinourselves, waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body”. (Romans 8:23) [Emphasis mine] Did you know that you were supposed to groan? When last did you groan? The Bible says here that we groan within ourselves. It is a statement of fact – not a theory. Our spirit knows that we are waiting to be clothed from on high. It knows that this tent (our body) is just temporary and so it is groaning to look like a glorious body! Just as creation is groaning for a return to its original pattern, according to the Bible, we should be groaning also!

“Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we not what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit itselfmaketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Romans 8:26) [Emphasis mine]

Most Pentecostals will tell you that this scripture refers to speaking in tongues. I disagree. What is ‘cannot be uttered’? It means that it cannot be spoken or come out of your mouth. Utterance must come from your mouth, using your tongue to utter or speak. If something cannot be uttered, the sound is originating in a deeper place than your mouth. ‘Tongues’ is a language which uses the tongue to form words. These groanings that the Bible talks about ‘cannot be uttered’. So they do not come from the mouth area. It must come from somewhere deeper. The sound must come from the belly area in order to not ‘be uttered’. The Holy Spirit is here to help you groan from a deeper place than your mouth. If your prayer is only in your mouth, you are not pushing yet.

This scripture explains that the Holy Spirit is groaning and He is present to help us groan. You might not think that you need to groan. Well, when you have prayed everything you know to pray, in every way you know to pray, using all the language you have and you have still not seen an answer – then you go to unutterable words. In this place the Holy Spirit will help you groan. We are called to groan “with groanings which cannot be uttered” in order to see a restoration. It is not just the ‘select few intercessors’ who are called to groan and travail!

Groaning is about Spiritual Pushing and Wrestling

Whenever we are pushing something heavy, we groan. I liken this type of groaning prayer to wrestling. How do you wrestle? Wrestling is close combat. Imagine an arm-wrestling match between yourself and Arnold Schwarzenegger. You grab his arm and you enter into combat to see who will push the other person’s arm down. In a contest like this, you do not have a conversation about the weather. You are focused, looking straight into the eyes of your opponent, muscles are bulging, you are pushing, you are sweating. You are NOT going to lose this fight! Your opponent is pushing and sweating. It is a clash of wills – who is more determined and who is stronger. Who is better prepared for this moment?

This is a type of spiritual wrestling. Wrestling is putting pressure on a person to move them into a position, where one will win and the other will end up in submission to his strength.  But“we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers…”(Ephesians 6:12). When we engage in spiritual wrestling, we push back demons and powers from our lives and cities.

There will be groanings that cannot be uttered. You are not having a light conversation. Imagine yourself pushing a car up a mountain with the help of a friend. What would you do? Would you enter into a discussion with your friend about their day? NO! This is strenuous work. You are groaning and making unutterable sounds. It sounds like ‘Uuuuuhhhh’. And it sounds the same in just about every language. Now I know that you thought you did not make a sound when you pushed things, but I want you to try and pick up your car and see what noise you make!

When we wrestle or push something heavy – we groan and make unutterable sounds. These sounds will come from your belly – try it! People who understand martial arts know about the ‘Qi’. This word describes the concentration that you are taught to focus your strength in the stomach area (abdomen). Then when you shout ‘Qi’ before attacking your opponent, you release this energy from your abdomen. Now I am not saying that I agree with karate and eastern mysticism, all I am saying is that the eastern religions understand in spiritual terms that we have to push from our belly region!

The principle is that when you lift or move heavy things, the point of strength originates in your abdomen. It is expressed as a groan.

Jesus Wrestled

Jesus knew how to wrestle spirits and push back oppression in the spirit. We have all read the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead in John 11. I want us to look at it with new eyes, now that we understand spiritual pushing and wrestling.

Lazarus has died and he has been buried. It is four days later and Jesus comes to Bethany. When he arrives and sees Mary and her companions weeping, ‘he groaned in the spirit and was troubled’ (verse 33).  He is beginning to groan with unutterable words. He is beginning to travail. He asks where Lazarus has been laid and he begins to walk towards the tomb. Then the Word says that Jesus wept.

The Jews see that he is weeping and assume that this is an emotional reaction – they say,‘Behold how He loved him’ (verse 36). Jesus is not having an emotional reaction, he is beginning to travail. As he walks closer to the tomb, He is beginning to wrestle. He is engaging the spirit of death in a wrestling match. He is sweating and pushing. Tears are coming out of His eyes because it is strenuous to push back death!

When you are serious about engaging heaven and wrestling down some principalities, many people will not understand and will talk about you. They will try to understand with their logical mind what you are doing. Everybody is discussing Jesus, everybody has an opinion about what He is doing. ‘This is the guy who thinks he has a ministry. Look at how he is crying, look at this, look at that…’ Is Jesus answering these people? Is he carrying on this conversation? No!  He is not talking to anybody, He is busy, He is wrestling. He is walking towards the tomb and he is making a noise that sounds like ‘Uuuuhhnn’. Groaning within himself with a sound that cannot be uttered. He is in combat, he is pushing something, he is pushing back the gates of hell and he is saying ‘you cannot have Lazarus because here I am. I know how to wrestle this spirit down, “spirit of death, you have no sting”.

By the time He gets to the tomb, He has groaned and pushed and defeated the spirit.  He can declare, “Take ye away the stone”! Then of course the crowd have another conversation –“..by this time there is a stench for he has been dead four days”.  Now Jesus talks,“Said I not unto thee, that if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God” (verse 40).  After you have pushed spiritual weights, you will see the glory.

“Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard Me…” (verse 41). What did Jesus say? What did the Father hear him say? He heard him groaning. Groaning is a prayer! God is listening to you – sometimes he is not so impressed with what your mouth is doing. Sometimes your mouth is saying stuff your heart is not involved in. There are people in church that come in and raise their hands during the worship singing ‘Glory, hallelujah, bless the Lord O my soul’ and yet in their hearts, they want to hit the lady next to them. I want you to know that heaven sees our hearts. The angels take note of what we say with our mouths, but they also take note of what we ‘think’ in our hearts. The spirit realm is not confused!

The Father heard Jesus’ groans and was ready to move on his behalf. Heaven and earth were in agreement so that when Jesus cried, “Lazarus, come forth”, Lazarus could be resurrected and walk out of death (the tomb).

Jesus knew how to wrestle with wickedness in high places. Paul knew that ‘we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers…’. We quote that verse so much, but need to begin to grow some muscles and actually wrestle! The earth will not see God’s hand move until someone will groan, push, wrestle and birth!

CHAPTER SEVEN

Travail and Birthing

The time will come when we will actually have to birth the purpose that God has given us to carry. And as in the natural, this can often be an uncomfortable and stretching experience!

You will know your time to birth is coming closer when your times of groaning and wrestling prayer become more frequent. You find you can no longer just pray ‘nice’ prayers. You seem to be more violent in the spirit and you want to shout and push, almost instinctively. Some intercessors actually feel contractions across their abdomen when they begin to travail and birth. It REALLY looks and feels like the real thing!

When you feel this type of travail on you, find a private, safe place to pray. A woman would not give birth in a public place with a whole lot of people watching her. In the same way, we do not need to birth spiritually in front of a whole congregation who do not understand what is happening. So find a prayer room and pray with other intercessors who are familiar with travail. Join in prayer with them and begin to push with your spirit from your abdomen. You may need to shout or scream and you will find it easier if you push in a rhythm, exactly as you would in the natural. Take short breaks between each push.

You will have prayed through when you feel something release / lift off you. Some intercessors actually feel something come through their legs. You will feel lighter, a release of the pressure. This is the indication that the spiritual baby has been born.

Then we present this spiritual baby to the Father and dedicate it back to Him. It is His word and purpose that was sent to earth, we have faithfully birthed it and now we commit it into His hands to keep and watch over, until it comes to fruition. That purpose is now in the earth and can take shape and from as intended by God.

Scriptural Examples of Travailing Prayer

The church has held the view that intercessors are there to groan and travail and ‘pray through’ for leaders. It has been believed that this type of prayer is the exclusive domain of intercessors and is not for everyone. That is, however, not what my Bible says. I see that creation groans, we groan and Holy Spirit groans. Jesus pushes and travails in the spirit. We will see that God the Father, Elijah, Paul the Apostle and many others are engaged in this type of groaning prayer.

Apostles must birth!

Pastors, ministry leaders, apostles… if you want to have intercessors groan and travail for your ministry – it will be their baby! Someone else cannot birth your ministry for you because they then have the authority over the baby. Paul was an apostle because he could give birth in the spirit. One of the hallmarks of being an apostle is that you know how to push in the spirit. You know how to birth people and spiritual issues in prayer. Apostles – it is part of our job, NOT just for the intercessors!

“For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers; for in Christ JesusI have begotten youthrough the gospel”. (1 Corinthians 4:15) [Emphasis mine]

To be a father, you must have had an intimate relationship at some time. You did not just stand up and say ‘I am your father’ and suddenly there was a child. There was a process.

When you begin to translate someone from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light, there is a birthing process involved. In order to have a birthing process, there must first be a place of intimacy and conception. Then a process of carrying the baby to full term and finally you will birth the child. When Paul states that he has “..begotten you through the gospel”, he is saying that he conceived, carried and birthed the Corinthian church. He is the father. He groaned with labour pains to give birth to these people. You cannot really be a parent without having given birth because then the baby will not have your DNA.

If you preach to people and they get saved, you are not automatically the father. For people to actually get saved, somebody birthed them through in intercession. If it wasn’t you then you were just the person who came and watered after the seed was planted. You are not the father. To be a spiritual father, you must be able to give birth in the spirit.

“My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you”. (Galatians 4:19)

If you are a parent, your job is never finished, even when your child is a teenager, you are still praying. When you see rebellious attitudes, you have to keep praying AGAIN until Christ is fully formed. Paul the apostle understood this concept. He continually laboured in birth until Christ was formed. The most dangerous thing for God’s enemies is someone who knows how to prayagain.

I submit that in order to be an authentic apostle, we need to be able to birth!

God the Father Travails

“The Lord shall go forth like a mighty man; He shall stir up His zeal like a man of war. He shall cry out, yes, shout aloud; He shall prevail against His enemies. I have held My peace a long time, I have been still and restrained Myself. NowI will cry like a woman in labour, I will pant and gasp at once.I will lay waste the mountains and hills and dry up all their vegetation.” (Isaiah 42:13 – 15) [Emphasis mine]

I love this picture of God the Father – the mighty man of war – about to subdue His enemies. He does not go into battle with ten thousand men with spears and arrows. Instead, He begins to travail like a woman! He ‘cries like a women in labour’ and He ‘pants and gasps at once’! This is not our typical idea of warfare, but it seems to be God’s. He says that when He does this, He will lay waste the mountains and hills – He is going to change the landscape when He travails. God literally changes geography just because He is like a woman in labour!

Jesus Travails

“And being in an agony, He prayed more earnestly: and His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground”. (Luke 22:44)

Jesus, in the garden of Gethsemane, was engaged in travailing intercession. He was praying intensely. The Bible says He was in great agony and he was sweating. This speaks to me of the pain of birthing. Very often when a women is in labour, as she pushes to deliver her baby, pressure builds up around her eyes and forehead. When she pushes extremely hard, the blood capillaries in her eyes and around her forehead burst. This is the same type of pressure that Jesus experienced in the garden. He was in so much agony that the capillaries around his eyes and forehead must have burst, causing his sweat to mingle with blood. Thus He was ‘sweating’ blood! Jesus was travailing! He knew His time had come to birth a purpose of heaven.

“He shall see the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied”. (Isaiah 53:11)

When Jesus hung on the cross, He was travailing. He was labouring to birth the church. Scripture tells us that He laboured and cried aloud. He was sweating and in great pain to bring forth ‘the church of Jesus Christ’. The church needed to be birthed in the earth and only Jesus could birth His church! This is why Jesus is looking for His Bride, He laboured for her on the cross and He wants to see the fruit of this labour.

A City Can Travail

“Before she travailed, she brought forth; Before her pain came, she delivered of a man child…. Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? Or shall a nation be born at once? For as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children”. (Isaiah 66:7-8)

Zion is a city that travails and brings forth a child. So we deduce that cities can also birth.

Elijah Travailed

When a prophet declares a word, he does not just get up and give the word God has given. The word must also be conceived, carried and birthed. If you look at the prophet Elijah, he had to birth each word that the Lord sent.

There has been no rain in Israel and there was a severe famine in the land. Elijah has spent forty days at the Brook Cherith and then stayed with the widow of Zarepath. Then in 1 Kings 18:1 the word of the Lord comes to Elijah. A word is sent from heaven that lands in his womb.“Go, show yourself unto Ahab, and I will send rain upon the earth”.  So the ‘seed of rain’ is planted in Elijah’s womb. He now has to carry it. Elijah goes to King Ahab and ends up confronting the prophets of Baal, and we all know the story of his victory on Mount Carmel and the ensuing execution of the prophets. Then Elijah tells King Ahab to“Go thee up, eat and drink; for there is a sound of abundance of rain”.(1 Kings 18:41) The word that has been in his womb has been carried to the time of birth. Now Elijah knows it is time to birth this word of “rain”. How does he do this?

“And Elijah went up to the top of Carmel, then he cast himself down upon the earth, and put his face between his knees, and said to his servant,’ Go up now, look toward the sea.’ And he went up and looked and said, ‘There is nothing’. And he said, ‘Go again’ seven times. And it came to pass at the seventh time that he said, ‘Behold, there ariseth a little cloud’….”

(1 Kings 18:42). We all know the rest of the story. It became dark with rain clouds and it began to rain. Elijah was not just sitting on the top of Mount Carmel, he was in the traditional birthing position of that time. Women would sit on their knees with their face between their legs to give birth. So when Elijah goes to birth this word in prayer, he takes up a birthing position and begins to push in the spirit. Elijah keeps pushing and his servant keeps running back and forth to check on the progress of the birth.

After Elijah has prayed seven times, the servant finally sees the evidence that this word is arriving on earth – a small cloud, the size of a man’s hand. When Elijah hears that – he knows the baby is coming out! It is about to rain.

I always think of a woman who is in labour and the midwife keeps coming back to check how many centimetres the womb is dilated. When the head crowns, the mid-wife knows that the baby is on its way out. She is about to see the fruit of the womb.

Prophets know how to carry the word that is sent to them and birth them into the earth. Prophets know how to travail and understand that they are required to bring heaven’s purposes to earth!

The Church in Victory

The most vicious sign with which God can confront the enemy is seen in Revelation 12:1-2“And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. And she being with child cried, travailing in birth and pained to be delivered”. This is the GREAT sign that He gives in the heavens. A pregnant women. This is God’s idea of a vicious, overcoming warrior. A mature Bride, clothed with glory and apostolic headship with the devil under her feet. She is heavily pregnant. She understands the process of bringing the purposes of heaven to earth. She knows how to conceive the plans of God, she knows how to travail and bring them to birth. It is incumbent upon us to understand the process of travailing and birthing as it is through this Bride that God’s kingdom will be manifested in the earth.

The devil knows this and He does everything in his power to stop people becoming pregnant with heaven’s purposes. If he can stop travailing intercession, he can delay or stop God’s plan.  So he attaches a stigma to travailing intercession and spiritual birthing in order to stop people learning about it. If he cannot stop us getting pregnant, he will cause us to become weary in carrying the word and thus abort it. If he cannot do that, he will kill the child at the time of birth. We saw this at the births of both Moses and Jesus. Also In Revelation 12:3 – we see that the red dragon is present to devour what the Bride is birthing.

Yet in this hour – many people are identifying with this type of intercession.  Many intercessors have already prayed this way and have not been able to explain this to anyone.  Some speak of having seen their parents or grandparents praying through. This is what they mean!

CHAPTER EIGHT

Satanic Wombs and Altars

“Behold, hetravaileth with iniquity, and hast conceived mischief, and brought forth falsehood”. (Psalm 7:14) [Emphasis mine]

To ‘travail with iniquity’ literally means to ‘birth with wickedness, sin, evil’.

The allusion here is to the pains and throes of child-birth; and the idea is that the wicked man labours or struggles, even with great pain, to accomplish his purposes of iniquity. All his efforts, purposes and plans are for the promotion of sin.

(Barnes’ notes on the Bible)

Just as we can become pregnant with God’s purposes, hell also knows how to carry and birth satanic purposes. Witches and agents of Satan are birthing Satan’s purposes in the earth.

God the Father understands this. Let us have a look at how He deals with satanic wombs and birthing.

“… but they went to Baal Peor, and separated themselves unto that shame; and their abominations were according as they loved”. (Hosea 9:10 – 11)

God is speaking about His people Israel. This is during a time when they were in idolatry. They have gone to Baal Peor to worship. Baal Peor is a pagan god and the Israelites have worshipped at his altar.

What is an altar?

In the broadest sense, an altar is a place of sacrifice to a supernatural god. It is a contact point or place of transaction with the spirit realm. The thing that you offer at the altar is your worship – whether that is prayer, fasting, food, time or incense. Whether you can see it or not, you are serving an altar when you worship. An altar is established when prayer, worship, giving and fasting is offered to someone (usually a god).

The first time that worship is mentioned in the Bible is in Genesis 22:5. Abraham is taking Isaac to sacrifice him on an altar. He tells his servants to stay behind and “the lad and I will go yonder and worship…”. They are not going to have a time of praise and worship. He is going to an altar to sacrifice and spill blood. Worship is about sacrificing something on an altar.

When you pray in your home, you begin to establish an altar to the Lord on that ground. When there is a revival and the presence of God comes down in a place, an altar is established in the spirit realm. It will remain there until someone removes or displaces it. If you are sensitive in the spirit and you go to places like Azusa Street and John G Lake’s healing rooms today, you will sense the glory and presence of God, even though it was decades ago that God visited there. Those altars of prayer are still tangible - there is an ‘afterglow’ of the glory there.

Altars are places of spiritual transaction. Something is offered and something given in return. In the Old Testament, God instructed His people to offer a blood sacrifice to cover their sins. They brought goats and oxen to the temple to be offered on the altar. The priests killed these animals and offered the blood on behalf of the people to God. The people brought the sacrifice, the priest transacted on their behalf and God covered their sins.

Satanic altars are established in a similar way. Whenever a god or deity is worshipped, an altar is established. When you go to offer worship at this altar, you will transact with the god of the altar. You have given something and you will receive something. In Africa, if you visit a sangoma (witchdoctor), you are not going to the man/woman alone, you are going to his altar. When you give him money to heal you, you are worshipping his god (by offering money). The witchdoctor, who is the priest, will call on the supernatural power of his god to heal you. This god is not seated in heaven!

Everywhere on the earth, there are altars. Altars for houses, cities, nations and even continents.

False altars and real ones. False altars include the altar of self, materialism and pride. This is why we are commanded in Exodus 20:3 to have ‘no other gods before Me’. This is also why God told the Israelites not to make carved images and worship them. God understands the spiritual transactions that occur at altars and we need to do so too.

Back to our story in Hosea. God is very upset with His people that they are serving at the altar of Baal Peor. They know that God has commanded them not to serve any other God but Him, yet they still do it. They do not see the danger in what they are doing. But God understands that they are transacting with hell.

They think they are just worshipping another god and giving gifts to another god. They are actually being impregnated by a seed from hell. When we are in a place of worship at the altar of the Lord, we receive seed from heaven into our wombs. Hell sends its seed to earth in a similar way. When you go to an altar (heaven’s or hell’s) – you become pregnant. You leave with something inside of you that you will carry whether you are aware of it or not.

God knows this and so He knows that his people have conceived a purpose of hell as they have worshipped at Baal Peor. How does He respond?

“…their glory shall fly away like a bird, from the birth, from the womb and from the conception. Though they bring up their children, Yet I will bereave them that there shall not be a man left... Give them O Lord – what wilt Thou give? Give them miscarrying wombs and dry breasts”! (Hosea 9:11 – 14)

God is telling the Israelites through Hosea that He has seen them worship at a false altar and He declares “no birth, no pregnancy, no conception”.  He declares that if they become pregnant, they will miscarry. If they actually bring that satanic seed to birth, their breasts will be dry and they will not be able to feed that baby and it will die. He even goes further to say that if the baby lives, “I will bereave them to the last man, yes woe to them when I depart from them”! God deals very seriously with false worship at false altars.

Although God is speaking to Israel here, He is also talking to us, His people. We need to take note that God is going to be opposed to whatever we birth at a foreign altar. God has a destiny for each of us and he is committed to seeing us fulfil that destiny. He sent Jesus to die on earth to make sure that what He planned before the foundation of the earth for our lives would come into being.

When we start to mess with destiny – our own or someone else’s – we are in witchcraft. When we pray our own opinions and thoughts instead of God’s, we are serving the altar of self and not God’s altar. We will birth satanic plans instead of God plans. For example, Susan really believes that God wants to send me to China. So she begins to pray that I will go to China. She fasts for me, prays every day asking God to open a door and release me to China. She thinks she is praying in God’s will and is very sincere. But actually, she heard incorrectly. She just thinks I should be in China. I am meant to be in Africa. Her prayers, which are actually her own opinion, are birthing me to China which is totally out of the will of God for my life. Although Susan is born-again, spirit-filled, loves the Lord and me, she is in witchcraft! Be careful about what altar you are serving!

Hosea 9 gives us a biblical pattern for dealing with these satanic conceptions. In our times of war we need to declare to the devil and all his agents ‘no birth, no pregnancy, no conception!’ We need to decree miscarrying wombs and dry breasts to the enemy. Reverse the curse of barrenness!

Let us not be ignorant of the enemies plans and schemes, but destroy them before they land on earth!

CONCLUSION

We have attempted to explain the process of birthing, travailing intercession, how to groan and push – now we have to ask the Holy Spirit to help us in our weakness to actually do the groaning and wrestling required in this hour.

If you can trust the Holy Spirit He will take you further into this kind of prayer – it can look messy and noisy and not particularly decorous. But “…the Master has need of THEE…”

Let us trust the Holy Spirit for the impartation to truly pray travailing prayers. Remember we are not alone and actually our prayers are not even original!

In fact, the first decrees were made in the counsels of heaven before the foundation of the earth. They were then prayed by the saints of old – Abraham, David, Elijah and Paul. Now it is OUR turn to pray the prayers measured to us. The saints of old have finished their course, they have run their race and they are looking to us to bring our measure of the travail and prayer so that God’s original decrees can be manifest in the earth. The prayers of people like Martin Luther and John Huss started a reformation that our prayers (and those of the generations after us) MUST bring to fulfillment. Our prayers and our travail is not about us, we are simply taking our place in a long line of saints who have each been assigned a portion of responsibility to see God’s kingdom established on earth. Our travail must line up and build upon what has been prayed before us.“…seeing we are also compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses…”(Hebrews 12:1) and we are now“…entered into their labours (travail) …” (John 4:38).

God’s family is the church in heaven and on earth at the same time (Ephesians 3:14). This family carries the Fathers DNA and Name. I encourage you to research the saints who have gone before us. Read their life stories - their sacrifice, their passion and their burdens from the Lord. As you do this, God can connect your heart with His original plans and position you to receive a baton of prayer and intercession from the church in heaven. Then, when the church (in heaven and earth) pray, they will all be praying exactly the same things over nations, tribes and cities!

God has a plan for planet earth. For this plan to be translated from the spirit realm to the natural realm, it needs to be birthed through spiritual wombs of willing people. He wants“…the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ…”(Revelation 11:15).

Are you ready to pray?

Father, let Thy kingdom come on earth. Let Your will be done unto me according to your Word already written in heaven. For Thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever…

Amen

BODY INTERCESSION

This section is specifically aimed at intercessors. My prayer is that you will find this helpful in understanding how to pray. This teaching on body intercession is something that I have learnt through my years of leading intercessory groups and found helpful to discern what God is saying.

Your Body as a Barometer

Intercessors – the biggest lesson we have to learn is that our lives are not about us. We have surrendered our lives to the Lord Jesus Christ and it is all about Him. Our gifts are given for everyone except ourselves. The very nature of intercession is that we stand on behalf of someone else. Our prayers should be more about others than ourselves! The hour that we live in demands that we become mature and think and pray beyond just me and mine!

For example, you wake up in the morning with extreme chest pains. When you pray, nothing happens, they stay there. So you go to the doctor and he examines you, does an ECG (electro-cardiograph) and pronounces that he cannot find anything wrong with you. But the chest pains continue. We are so wrapped up in ourselves, we begin to think that we are dying, we feel sorry for ourselves, we go and find another doctor, we get ourselves on every prayer chain we can and get every person with a healing anointing to lay hands on us. I want to suggest, that it is not about us! God may be trying to tell us to pray for someone else’s heart!

I believe that many times when you get pains in your body, it is for ‘the Body of Christ’ and not your physical body.I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ,for the sake of His body,which is the church.  (Colossians 1:24)

This scripture tells us that we are going to experience suffering in our flesh for the sake of His body. I believe that part of this is fulfilled in travailing intercession. God has destinies, plans and purposes for every person, tribe, nation and people group in the earth. Not all of them have been fulfilled yet and the heart of the Father is grieved as He sees what is happening in the nations. He longs to save them, He longs to heal their wounds, He longs to bring them into their destinies and callings, but He cannot achieve this on His own. He needs people on earth who have laid down their lives to serve His purposes in order to effect change.

God is looking for people that want to KNOW HIM. They do not just want to know about Him or the good things He can do for them, but they long to know Him as Paul says in Philippians 3:10“that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death”. A great part of knowing God is the fellowship of His sufferings. When God finds a person like this, He can share His profound grief and sadness with them. He can share His burden of pain and sorrow that He feels for lost nations and souls, the broken-hearted, the widow and the orphan. When He finds a person who wants to KNOW Him, He begins to allow them to FEEL a little of His heart. When you enter this place with God, you will begin to experience pain and suffering in your body because you are sharing in His pain and suffering.

But the pain is not so you can just be in pain your whole life. No! God wants the pain to drive you to a place of intense prayer and travail. Pain and suffering in your flesh should cause you to cry out to the Lord for deliverance. It should lead you into a travail that you carry until you can bring to birth the deliverance that God is wanting to send into the earth. God is looking for those who are prepared, like Paul, to rejoice in in their sufferings for the sake of the Body.

What does that look like on a practical level? One of my intercessors had a migraine for three days. She had taken ‘Disprin’, ‘Tylenol’ and every other headache tablet she could find. She had rested, drank rooibos tea, taken communion and everything she could think of, but the headache remained. When I spoke with her on the third day, I suggested to her that her pain was not about her and she should go and pray for the headship and leadership in her life. Lift them before the Lord, bless them and pray for them. As soon as she did that, the pain lifted!

Everything that happens to you is NOT always about you! If you have laid your life down for Jesus, He is going to give you assignments that will be part of bringing His Kingdom to earth. Preaching is not the only thing that will get it done! God needs intercessors who can birth the answers of God into the earth and thereby deliver nations and people from the clutches of the enemy. And it starts with FEELING some pain, carrying a burden, suffering in the flesh or even simple contractions in your belly!

Have you ever lain awake in bed at night, just unable to sleep? You toss and turn, but cannot get to sleep. Then you feel hungry and you head for the refrigerator. You are not looking for food, you are looking for what God is trying to tell you. Your spirit knows God is speaking and it wants to respond but the body is not understanding. It is not about food – it is about manna. Next time you get that feeling, ask God what you should be praying about.

When God speaks to your spirit, or you engage the spirit realm, your body will react. In the book of Daniel chapter 8, Daniel has a long vision and receives instruction from an angel. Then in verse 27 it says “and I, Daniel, fainted and was sick certain days..”.  His physical body was weak after engaging the spirit realm. Your body is a barometer of what is happening in the spirit realm.

This ‘body barometer’ concept works really well for getting a grip on what God is saying to your church or group. Ask your people how they are feeling. How many have headaches, leg aches or who is not sleeping well at night? I often do this at conferences to see what the majority of the people are feeling. If most people have been experiencing headaches, I know there is a fight on for their minds - the way the people are thinking and they are having difficulty receiving what I am saying.

Body pains speak to us prophetically about what God is saying corporately. Learning to read and interpret ‘body signs’ will help us to hit the target in prayer and warfare with greater accuracy and speed.

How it works

When you have a sudden or growing pain in your body, it may be that God is trying to give you a prayer assignment. God can be giving you the pain to draw your attention to something you need to pray for OR the enemy can be attacking your leader or church and God is allowing you to feel it so that you can pray for the situation.

The pain will be in your body until you have prayed the assignment to completion. You will know that you have completed the prayer assignment when the pain lifts. Often, as you begin to pray and you have correctly discerned the assignment, the pain will begin to lift. This is a sign that you are on the correct path. Keep praying until the pain is completely gone. If the pain is not lifting, then you are not yet praying correctly. Try different issues in prayer and keep going until you hit the target.

The following guidelines will help you focus in on what God could be saying. It is not a ‘thus sayeth the Lord’ but rather a help to find God’s purpose in how to pray.

HEAD

Pains include headaches, migraine and blows to the head.

A head speaks about the headship or leadership of a home, church, group or nation. When dealing with ‘heads’ I deal specifically with the way a leader is thinking. The brain or mind of a person is found in the head. Romans 12:2 says“Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind”. Intense headaches can mean that the person is having a difficult time receiving revelation or a new pattern of thinking. The enemy may be exercising mind control to stop new ideas and thought patterns coming to a leader.

SAMPLE PRAYERS

Mind Control

Father God, in the name of Jesus, we want to break through any forms of mind control. We want to break it off in Jesus name. We pull it off our eyes and we pull the vice-grip around our head off. We call for fire and we reject any headship or authority over our head that is not from Jesus Christ, right now. We reject any person’s opinions and their prayers - physic or soulish- over our lives, in Jesus name.

Any person mentioning my name right now on email, sms, speaking about me in conversation, in slander, in gossip, in any form of agreement, decreeing things over my life. I break it right now, if it does not agree with what God has said about me in heavenly places.

I reject it completely. I say it will not come to fruition in my life. There is no place in me for that to be planted or to land, in the name of Jesus. I cut myself off from every word, I reverse those curses and I send them straight back in the name of Jesus. I will not be dictated to. I will not be decreed over and I will not be prophesied over by some people who are not even in alignment with my spiritual authority and who have nothing to do with me and have no relationship with me, but they think they can just use their tongue. We say Father God, let the fire of God come and demolish those structures right now in the name of Jesus. Let it come off my head right now, right now, right now!

I say to every pressure point on the head that you will come off. I say to every satanic finger and nail, we break your fingers and we take out your nails and every place of poison that is on their head, we say that the poison will now come out. The fangs of the snake will be retracted in the name of Jesus. Come off in Jesus name.

Dishonour of Headship

I repent for every place of dishonour towards our headship authority. Father we want to stand with our spiritual fathers and mothers. We say that we honour them, we say that we do not reject them. We will disconnect from disrespect right now. Anyone speaking against our spiritual mothers and fathers (and the people we are aligned with), we say that we will not continue the conversation or the fellowship. So we break off from every person who is gossiping about them and has nothing good to say about them.

You know that Jesus could not do miracles in Nazareth because of disrespect and dishonour.

Father in the name of Jesus, I want to have a life of miracles and I refuse to live in disrespect and dishonour in the name of Jesus. No weapon formed against us will prosper. No weapon formed against our leadership or our headship will prosper. No weapon formed against the direction that you are giving us will prosper. In the name of Jesus.

We speak to the brain right now and we say to all the pressure points in the brain right now that you will release. I speak to arteries and veins right now and say that you will normalise. We speak to the linings of the brain, the water on the brain and the chemistry in the brain. We speak to synapses and neurons and brain passages and we say that you will come into alignment with God right now. In the name of Jesus.

Father we bless every person in their rank and order. We bless every person in their sphere of influence. We acknowledge their rank. We acknowledge their calling. We acknowledge that they have been set apart by God to stand in a particular place. And Father everybody and anybody that comes against what you have already said and decreed, father we will not stand and agree with them, but we will agree with you. In the name of Jesus.

Incorrect / Absent Headship

Father God, all personal headship that is out of alignment, we pull it into alignment. We call all personal headship into alignment over this life right now. In the name of Jesus. We speak covering over every place that is uncovered right now. Every place where the headship is not there, is absent, is not doing its job, does not know how to do its job, has been ignorant - in the name of Jesus.

We say that all snakes come off the neck right now. Every false spirit of python that wants to come up in the head. We are going to cut your head off in the name of Jesus. We do not accept any false prophetic headship over our lives. We do not accept any false headship over our lives in the name of Jesus. Right now, we say you will come off.

We will not accept ignorant people speaking over our lives in the name of Jesus.  We say no. We know who our head is, His name is Jesus Christ and Father God we understand that we are in alignment with spiritual fathers and mothers and right now we align ourselves with apostolic authority.

Memory Problems

The hippocampus is a key organ in the making and storing of memories. All new experiences are first processed in the hippocampus and kept here for several weeks before they are transferred to the cerebral cortex for permanent storage. The hippocampus ‘decides’ what you will remember and what you will forget. It is also responsible for spatial memory of layouts and landmarks - that is why Alzheimer patients experience navigation problems as they progress in their illness.

Father I want to present the hippocampus to you - this is the horseshoe shaped region of the sub-cortical brain and the limbic system in the temporal lobe. Father every place that I am struggling with memory problems and ability to recall names, faces, events and even the Word of God - I give this to You.

The hippocampus looks like a seahorse, and Father I want to say in the name of Jesus that I give my Hippocampus to the Lord. It belongs to Him as does the rest of my body. I declare that water spirits will not control my hippocampus. Poseidon and Neptune will not ride on my brain, water spirits will not use my brain as a chariot for their purposes. No demonic hand will steer this chariot. No demon will decide what will be retained as memory and what will be forgotten. No one is going to ride on my brain and use me as a zombie in the name of Jesus. I cancel that right now and I call my hippocampus back to God’s original design and purpose.

I give the reins of my hippocampus to the Lord. I give all my new experiences and the memories being processed in my hippocampus to the Lord. All the memories that are being sent to my cerebral cortex to become part of who I am, to hardwire me, I say that they will align with heaven.

Father I thank you for a 3D mental map of my surroundings. I thank you for place cells that are able to record where I am located in space and time. I declare that I know where I am. I speak to my hippocampus and I say that in the name of Jesus you will recall and process landmarks and layouts. I know where I am positioned and I know where I am going. I am not lost in the name of Jesus. “My life is hidden with Christ in God.”  Colossians 3:3

Now Father I want to present every place of trauma that caused damage to my hippocampus. All rape, sexual abuse, accidents, extreme terrors, combat experiences and frightening events that caused my hippocampus to shrink and stop processing memories - I present it to the Lord. I ask that the Holy Spirit would minister healing to me in this area. I want my hippocampus to be restored to its original size and operate as God intended it to with the blessing of God and no curses!

NECK

“I have seen this people and behold it is a stiff-necked people”.

(Deuteronomy 9:13)

On several occasions God refers to His people as stiff-necked. This means that they refuse to bow their heads to authority. They always believe that they are right. It speaks of stubbornness, rebellion, idolatry and lack of submission to headship.

Rebellion

Father God we repent for every person that is in rebellion and will not accept headship or submit to the authority that you have placed over them. We repent for being stubborn and proud and believing that our way is the only way. We repent for being unteachable. Right now, we choose to bow our knee to the Lord Jesus Christ and confess that He is Lord. More than that we choose to submit to His delegated authority in our lives.

Upholding Authority

Necks speak about the ability to hold up the head in leadership, the ability to turn the head, the ability to change direction.

In the name of Jesus we want to cover our necks in the blood of the Lamb and we speak to the skeletal structure and we bless it in the name of Jesus. Now anything that is wrong with the structure, anything that is wrong with the understanding, anything that is wrong in what we are carrying for our area, for our ministry, for our city, for the ability of that city to make the right decision, all the underlying structures. We speak to you in the name of Jesus and call you into order. We speak to discs and cartilage, all the spinal fluid and the spinal column right now. We speak to every nerve and say unpinch and let go. Let go the pressure, let go the spasm. We speak to the muscles and say stop bunching up into knots in the name of Jesus. We say that there will be no confusion, you were made by God to worship Him. You will hold up the head and carry what God has called you to carry.

We repent for every place where have not supported our leaders and helped them carry the vision that god has given to us. We repent for only wanting our own things and turning away from what God was speaking. We are guilty of this and we ask you God to forgive us.

LUNGS

We use our lungs to breathe. The breath of God is the Holy Spirit. If you visit a place and find that you are struggling to breathe or your chest feels tight, possibly the people in that place are resistant to the move of the Holy Spirit. It can also be a python spirit of divination that is operating.

I declare that my lungs and my ribcage are holy unto the Lord. Father right now I speak to the ability to move in the spirit, the ability to breathe, the ability to receive the breath of God. I speak to this python spirit of divination - you snake, I reject you out of my life.

I speak to every person in my family who went to a fortune-teller or who was one, every person who went to witchdoctor, or who was one, every witch or warlock or anyone who moved with the wrong kind of spirit - I repent for what you have done and I reject it all. I want all markings of this out of my DNA and out of my lungs. I want it off me.

I do not want anything to do with this python spirit. Any person I am associating with right now who is constricting me or holding me back - I want nothing to do with you. Anyone who is speaking false prophetic words over my life, I want nothing to do with you and I reject your words. I speak to this python spirit, “Be roasted by fire and die.” Burn off my lungs and die! Come off my chest and die! You will unwind off me. Father, I position myself in the fire of God. I want to stay there until all this stuff burns off me. I want to be too hot for the devil to handle. Anything that doesn’t bow its knee to God cannot live in the fire.

I repent for every word that I have spoken that has been slanderous, critical or judgmental. I repent for every word spoken in fear and doubt. Any time that I have spoken out of my mouth and it has not glorified you, I take responsibility for every word and I confess that I have sinned against You. Now Father release my throat and my chest. Any place where I have been too flippant in the things of God, I repent and I ask for a release for my throat. A release of my voice, my ability to sing and worship.

Every asthma problem - every problem with lack of breath and a paralysis on the chest, we speak to you in the name of Jesus and we tell you to begin to flow with the breath of God. You can now breathe - the ability to breathe is now restored. We speak to every opening in the lungs, open up you gates.

BACK

The back speaks about the ability to carry burdens and the spine is about structure.

Carrying False Burdens

I speak to my back and say that you were created to worship, you have no choice but to worship in Jesus name. You are here to carry the weight of the  glory of God and any other weight that you are carrying, you will now just discharge it. Get rid of it and throw it off in Jesus name. Every false yoke and every false burden, any person putting a false yoke, false expectation, false demand of you or illegally hooked into you. We unhook you in the name of Jesus. Now we take the false yoke off you and we declare that you will not carry anything that the Lord has not given you to carry. You will not carry it, you will not labour under it in the name of Jesus. You will not carry anything that the Lord has not given you. We say right now that you are not a donkey and a workhorse, you are not going to be a slave. Anybody that is enslaving you and using a whip on your back, we say it is enough in Jesus name. We arrest the slave master and we stop the whipping in Jesus name.

Now we pick up the burden that the Lord has assigned to us and we commit to carrying that in Jesus name.

HIGH / HIP / LOINS / WOMB

The word for thigh can be translated as hip, loin or womb.

“And when He saw that He prevailed not against him, He touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint as he wrestled with Him”. (Genesis 32:25)

The thigh speaks of your point of strength. The thigh is the strongest muscle in the body and enables us to walk, run and carry things. The thigh speaks about a specific strength that you have that you rely on. This could be a relationship, skill or a belief. God wants to take your reliance on that thing away, because He wants to be your strength.

Father I repent for every place where I have relied on my own strength to fulfil your will in my life. I repent for thinking that I could this in my own strength. I repent for believing I could deliver myself through my skills and abilities. Today I acknowledge that my strength is in You.

Father God, in Jesus name, I am speaking to the hip and I speak to all the flesh and muscle around the hip - all the weight bearing that you are taking to push things that you have not been able to push up to now. I speak a new strength to you to move those things in your life that you have not been able to move and I say that you are going to do it now, in Jesus name. I say that you now have ability to push. You now have ability to do those things that you have never been able to do. To overcome those things that you have never been able to overcome in the name of Jesus. We speak strength to those muscles now.

A thigh can also refer to the loins.“So Abraham said to the oldest servant of his house…. ‘Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh and I will make thee swear by the Lord…’(Genesis 24:2) The word for thigh here literally means loins. Abraham wants his servant to swear on the generations to come that the servant will do what he asks. Loins speak of your ability to birth and continue the generations after you. Thigh also speaks about the womb of a woman. Her ability to procreate.“… to make thy belly to  swell and thy thigh to rot…” (Numbers 5:22).  This was the curse pronounced by the priest on an unfaithful wife. Her ‘thigh’ would rot. It speaks of her reproductive organs or womb rotting so that she can no longer have children.

Father I speak to hip joints and I speak to the ability to reproduce and I say that where the enemy says that we will not multiply and we will not become many, we disagree and we say, Yes we will. We speak to the hip joints in Jesus name and say that you will be blessed.

STOMACH PAINS / NAUSEA

Nausea is almost always associated with witchcraft, slander and gossip. If you have it combined with pain in the small of your back, you are suffering a witchcraft attack. Always take communion and pray in tongues for the nausea to lift.

Pain in the small of your back is indicative of witchcraft. People hook into you and latch onto your anointing here at the base of the back. People drain you from this place in the spirit realm. Remember, witchcraft stemming from people praying their own opinion is still witchcraft. All gossip and slander will affect you as witchcraft.

In the name of Jesus I break off and cancel all psychic and soulish prayers being said using my name. I unhook myself from all conversations where my name is being mentioned in emails, sms, telephone calls and their words do not line up with what has been written about me in heaven. I refuse for my name to be a trading platform for gossip and slander in the name of Jesus.

Pain in this area could indicate a readiness to give birth in the spirit. This pain will feel more like contractions that a women has when labour begins. Intense pain could indicate a fight for what you are birthing.

ARMS

“So that a bow of steel is broken by mine arms.” (Psalm 18:34) Arms are linked to hands and speak to strength and ability to fight the enemy.

“…and worketh it with the strength of his arms..” (Isaiah 44: 12).

In the name of Jesus, we speak to the elbow and we speak dexterity to it. We say to the elbow that you can move. We speak to the ball and socket joint in the shoulders and we tell you that you are blessed in the name of the Lord.  This arm can swing an axe. This arm can swing a sword, this arm can swing Goliath’s death rock. It is coming our of your hand. We speak an empowering to these hands, we speak an empowering into these arms and these muscles. We say, yes you can, you are stronger than what you think. You look like Goliath in the spirit.

We speak to lymph glands and poison. We speak to any toxins in this body system, right now in the arms and we say that you will begin to release right now and come out of this body right now. Poison out in Jesus name. We speak to arteries and veins and tell them to do their job. Pump that blood and move the toxins and impurities and poisons out of the body.

Now we speak strength to these arms. We say that these arms can bend a bow of bronze in the name of Jesus. You have capacity you are increasing in capacity. We decree capacity over you in Jesus name.

Father anoint these arms and anoint these elbows and fingers. Anoint them by the blood of Jesus and let it cover them. Father we call the vibration on the inside of the cells of these arms to line up with what has been written about them in heaven.  Father we want to confirm with what is written in heaven, in the name of Jesus. Every other blueprint, design or work of the enemy against these arms, we break right now. We want the book (Psalm 139) where every part of our body is registered. It is the manual of what we are supposed to look like and we want that and nothing else. In Jesus name. Now I command these arms to conform to what is written according to your book in heaven. Father send angels and re-calibrate these arms and these fingers, these elbows and joints in the shoulders in Jesus name. We speak a re-setting of the bones, every tendon between the bones, all liquid between the bones, any crystals between the bones begin to dissolve now in Jesus name. Dissolve now and be healed in Jesus name.

HANDS / FINGERS

Hands are used for doing and holding something. Hands speak about the way we handle situations. Are we coping with what God has placed in our hands. If we have pain in our hands, God could be saying that we are not handling something correctly, our ability to perform a task is being impeded or there is an attack on our administration.

“..and the number of them that lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, were three hundred men...”(Judges 7:6).  The ability to use their hands to take measured sips of the water qualifies these three hundred men to fight with Joshua. Their hands have been disciplined and trained for war.“He teacheth my hands to war...” (Psalm 18:34).

Hands also refer to the five-fold gifts and each digit represents one of these gifts.

Thumb – apostolic

Index finger – prophetic

Middle finger – evangelist

Ring finger – pastor

Little finger – teacher

Father in the name of Jesus, I want to declare that my left hand and my right hand are the arms of the Lord. These are your hands, these are your instruments of praise and worship, these are your fingers for war.

Father God, every place where the enemy has tried to make them something else, we say no to day. We refuse in the Name of Jesus. Father, right now in the name of Jesus, we speak to these fingers and we say that you were created to war for the Living God and so fingers, you will straighten and stop swelling. Fingers you will now release the pain, release the arthritis release the inflammation. You will release and get off these fingers from the thumb to the small finger. We speak to these hands in the name of Jesus and we say that you will be flexible. We say that the oil of the anointing is pouring through these hands in the name of Jesus and you can bend them easily now.

You will be able to grip, you will have a good grip. You will be able to grip the horns of the altar and not let go until the Lord blesses you and your family. And every place where you have been doing this for a long time and the stress is coming into your hands, we speak strength to these hands and tell you to push. Hang on until you are blessed! Do not let go right now because of pain, that is a lie form the devil. In the name of Jesus.

We say that you can make a fist and you can knock the enemy out because you are stronger than what you think in the name of Jesus. Do not look at what you can see, but look at what you cannot see because God  is going to give you the territory and the devil is a liar.

Now every place where you have shaken the hand of someone who has imparted or transferred anything to you. We cut it off in Jesus name. Where you have been hugged and hugged someone and something jumped on you because of whatever reason - Father God, we rip it off. We take it off these hands right now in Jesus name. Our ability will not be hindered in Jesus name.

All chains on the wrists and all hooks into hands from the demonic, we pull it off in the name of Jesus. Come off in Jesus name. You will not be stopped from putting your hand to what the Lord has for you to do. Every place where your ministry or business is being stopped. Where blessing to your family are not being reached, where you can not quite reach that blessing, that you cannot quite get that money, that you cannot quite get that job, you cannot quite get to receive that opportunity. We break it off your hands. We break it off your wrists, we break all chains and constrictions in the name of Jesus. You need to come off these hands.

KNEES

“Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down and the feeble knees, and make straight paths for your feet lest that what is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed”. (Hebrews 12:12 – 13)

Knees speak of our prayer life or lack of prayer life. God may want to take us to a new level of prayer.

It can also speak to issues of submission.“Every knee shall bow…”(Isaiah 45:23). If we, or someone in our group, is in rebellion towards an authority figure, God may be drawing our attention to it by giving us knee pains.  If we are unable to bow the knee, we are inflexible and unable to change. God may be trying to bring a change in your life and you are resisting Him.

LEGS / FEET

“Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly…”(Psalm 1:1).

Legs speak of our daily walk before the Lord, including our attitudes and behaviours. If we suffer from sore legs, God may be drawing our attention to an area of our walk that he is not happy with. Begin to ask Him what he wants to change.

“…and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace”. (Ephesians 6:15)

Sore feet speak to me of being unprepared. If our feet are in pain, we will have difficulty standing or walking and we will struggle to ‘hold’ the ground we are on. We have not prepared in prayer, fasting or research to stand in the place or territory that we are standing in. Preparation means we have understood what the gospel says about the territory we plan to take and we have dealt with all the issues that would hinder us in taking it.

Wrong Steps

Father in the name of Jesus, we want to say that the steps of a righteous man are ordered of the Lord and we declare that  any steps that we have taken that we should not have taken, we want to repent. Any place where we have entered into territory or crossed over boundaries we should not have crossed over, we repent. Any place where we moved into areas which we should not have moved into and we did this by presumption, arrogance or pride, right now I repent in the name of Jesus.

I repent for thinking I can just go where I want, when I want and expect you to bless it. I repent for not preparing myself in fasting and prayer before walking into my assignments. I repent for taking your instruction lightly. Forgive me Father for my presumption.

Father God, any place that these sins have allowed the enemy a legal right to place our feet in chains, we are asking for a release to day in the name of Jesus. As we have repented, we ask in the court of heaven that every hindrance and blockage to the release of the gospel would be removed and destroyed today. We cancel all those curses coming against us when we speak those things you have commanded us to speak. We break these curses off our feet today in the name of Jesus.

Ability to walk

Any place that the enemy has held our feet in one place so that we feel like we never go forward, but  take one step forward and then take 10 steps back. We say that now that thing is  over and we break this backward movement in the name of Jesus. We say that we are going forward and we will accelerate. Every place that the enemy has  delayed our progress and delayed our  ability to go into the promised land. We begin to break this off our feet in the name of Jesus.

Father God - every place that the soles of our feet need to tread and we have been hurt and not had the ability to hold the territory - Father I thank you today for release. Thank you for an anointing right now under the soles of our feet to take the land that we need to take. We thank you Jesus for an anointing oil right now.

EYES

We use our eyes to see and so eyes always speak of our vision. God may be trying to adjust, renew or enlarge our vision.

As I researched this I was astounded to learn that when we wake up every morning and open our eyes an important and immediate reaction begins. As light streams onto the retina in our eyes, electro-chemical signals flow to the nuclear centre in hypothalamus (which is the centre of one of the body’s 2 major biological clocks) and resets over 100 internal body clocks! What we see has everything to do with the times and seasons that we find ourselves in!

Father I want to thank you for the hypothalamus. I want to thank you that when I wake up in the morning and open my eyes, light streams in through my retinas and the important electro-chemical reactions will begin on time. In the same way, Father I want to thank you that as the eyes of my understanding are hit with the light of new revelation, everything on the inside of me comes into alignment. Just as light hitting my physical eyes re-sets my body clocks, revelation re-sets my spiritual clocks in time with heaven. Father, I declare that my spiritual eyes, the eyes of my understanding are set by the light of the  glorious gospel of Jesus Christ.

Father God I thank you that there are 100 biological clocks that they have found that regulate the  rhythms of the body:

Ultradians rhythms (those shorter than a day)

Circadian rhythms (24 hour cycles)

Infradian rythms (greater than 24 hours - heartbeats, body temperature, blink rates, menstrual cycles)

I bless all these rhythms and cycles in my physical body that are governed by hormones released by internal clocks.

Now in the name of Jesus I speak to my seven day week, my calendar year, my 24 hour day all being set by these clocks. As in the natural, so in the spirit. I thank you Father for time pieces that have been set in me for times and seasons of God, in Jesus name. Thank you that I am set by revelation, by the Word,  by words of knowledge and wisdom. I am set by  teaching, set by what I am seeing and understanding and by what God is showing me. Father in the name of Jesus, I want to say right now that I will not sleep, but I will be awake in the day. I will do all that is measured to me to do in the day. My days are  set, I will do the work that is set before me. I thank you for the pineal gland that is allows me to sleep at night through melatonin secretion. Father I want to thank you that I will  work in the day and I will rest in You at night.

I speak to the hypothalamus and I say, according to the spirit realm, receive the revelations of God, receive the light of His presence, receive into the eyes of your heart, the eyes of your understanding what is His inheritance in the saints. Begin to see it, begin to be set by it. Begin to be set by the destiny of God over your life.

I am speaking to my life. Hear the word of the Lord, you must understand and set your season, your time, your hours, your days, your weeks, your months and your years by the revelation of who Jesus Christ is. Behold the Lamb. Begin to see  Him for what He is and who He is and begin to re-set on the inside of me. Reset down to the DNA of every single cell and every single organ. All body clocks hear the word of the Lord, you are re-set. All  clocks in the spirit, you are re-set back to the original pattern. All clocks in the mind, the will and the emotions, you are now re-set in Jesus name.

Father I want to say  that any place where my eyes have looked on the wrong revelation, on the wrong light, on the wrong vision or picture, I repent. Where I have looked at pornography or perverse movies Where I have watched violence and abuse. Whatever I have look upon or discussed or seen in the future that makes me depressed, Father I repent and I refuse to be set by that. All my  clocks will not be set for those things, but my clocks will  be set by the word of the Lord in this season.

Below are other parts of the body with suggested scriptures for praying. As you pray for that body part, let the Holy Spirit give you insight into the problem and repent accordingly.

BONES / SKELETON

Bones give the body shape and form. They speak to the structure or administration of an organisation. God may be trying to blow new life into a structure. (Ezekiel 37:3)

Bones are where the blood is made, they carry DNA and are able to carry a residue of the glory and resurrection power that was on a person. Remember Elisha in 2 Kings 13:21 “And it came to pass, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band [of men]; and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha: and when the man was let down, andtouched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet.”

BREAST / CHEST

‘El-Shaddai’ means “the many-breasted One”. It speaks of provision, nutrition and nurturing. Pain here could refer to young Christians to whom God is drawing your attention.“We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts. What shall we do for our sister”? (Song of Solomon 8:8) Pray for those whom you are discipling.

Chest pain could also be about the heart - what is God’s heart sore about? Ask the Lord what is heavy on his heart.

It could also be‘the breastplate of righteousness’.  (Ephesians 6:14) Ask the Lord where our breastplates have been compromised. Where are our hearts and what are we thinking? Begin to pray Scripture and ask that God would help you discern the thoughts and intents of your heart according to Hebrews 4:12.

SHOULDERS

“…and the government shall be upon His shoulders…” (Isaiah 9:6).  Shoulders also refer to leadership of families, churches and nations. The aspect that is highlighted here is that of corporate leadership or the office of leadership as opposed to an individual. It speaks about the practical work of leadership. How leaders administrate their mandates and delegate responsibility.

JOINTS

“…the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth…” (Ephesians 4:16).

Joints speak about unity and the knitting together of different parts of the body. Pain in your joints would suggest division or lack of co-operation between groups or people. When one part of the body is not supplying what they could or should, it places strain on the joints.

EARS

“..he that hath an ear, let him hear…” (Revelation 2: 7). We hear with our ears. Do we need to change what or who we are listening to? Does God want to adjust how we hear or interpret what we are hearing? We need to learn to ‘incline our ear’ to hear God.

TEETH

We need our teeth to chew our food and they are the first step in the digestive process.

Teeth can be about how you eat your food or your level of fasting. It can also be about how you handle the revelation you are getting. Babies do not have teeth, they are unable to process the meat of the word.

NOSE

“And the Lord smelled a sweet savour…” (Genesis 8:21).

“…the things which were sent from you, a sweet smell, a sacrifice…” (Philippians 4:18).

We use our nose to smell and this helps us identify things. The nose is about discernment. We smell the aroma of the Lord, the atmosphere or demons.  Some people can actually smell these different smells. What you smell gives an understanding of what is happening in the spirit realm. It is a discerning of spirits – good and bad.

MOUTH / TONGUE

Mouths and tongues are used to speak forth something. God will anoint our mouths when He wants us to prophesy or decree His word.“Death and life are in the power of the tongue”.(Proverbs 18:21)  Or it can be a cautioning, He is putting a guard on your mouth and telling you to keep quiet.“Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips”. (Psalm 141:3)

RIGHT SIDE

“Thy right hand, O Lord, is become glorious in power; thy right hand, O Lord, hath dashed in pieces the enemy”.(Exodus 15:6) The right speaks of power, execution, doing something. When something is on the right, it is seen, demonstrable and manifested.

The right hand was always placed on a person’s head when they were to be blessed (Genesis 48:14). Pain in the right side of the body suggests that something is not being executed properly.

LEFT SIDE

“On the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold Him”. (Job 23:9) The left side speaks of secret things and the mysteries of God. These are things that we cannot see. It can also mean plans of the enemy or curses that we are not aware of.

It will be useful to do word searches on different parts of the body as they appear in scripture. This will also help you read your body better!

If you begin to listen to your body and read it, you will be amazed at what is actually going on in the spirit realm around you. You are part of God’s strategy to throw the enemy’s camp into confusion. Intercessors, your first reaction will be that the pain or manifestation is all about you. Now you know to step back and ask the Lord the reason for your pain. Read your body and understand what God is saying. THEN begin to unleash prayer arrows at the specific target. God will give us the victory!

“Through God we shall do valiantly: for he it is that shall tread down our enemies”. (Ps 60:12)

Table of Contents

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE Thy Kingdom Come

CHAPTER TWO First Things First

CHAPTER THREE Preparing to Travail

CHAPTER FOUR The Practical Process of Travail and Birthing

CHAPTER FIVEConceiving God’s Word

CHAPTER SIX Groaning in the Spirit

CHAPTER SEVEN Travail and Birthing

CHAPTER EIGHT Satanic Wombs and Altars

CONCLUSION

BODY INTERCESSION