This is a survival guide for anyone who has been called and anointed to intercede for another person in prayer. Intercession is not just prayer, however. It is a heavy weight and sense of urgency that is placed in your spirit for two reasons: First, the heaviness you feel inside is a portion of the weight Jesus felt on the cross for those He is drawing close to Him because they do not know Him. Secondly, this weight is also meant to strengthen you while you are on your own journey, not unlike how a body builder uses iron weights to build his physical body. As you intercede for someone, your own soul will be exposed to the healing light of Holy Spirit, preparing you for your earthly assignment as well as for the one you are praying for.

Right now, there is a gap between God and the one whom He has placed on your heart. He has an assignment for their lives also, and the enemy of our souls has worked diligently to keep them separated from God and that assignment. He does this by

orchestrating events that wound our inner man through our own decisions and others who choose to hurt us. Over time our minds, wills, and emotions develop layers of wounds, or bondage. These wounds are like garbage on the street in a city. Garbage attracts rats, and the only way you can be free from those rats is from removing the garbage once and for all. In our souls, this can only be done by the healing power of Holy Spirit. As long as these wounds remain, demonic spirits will keep coming back, like rats to the garbage.

The process of the inner man being healed is “deliverance”. This is the process of allowing the garbage to be removed so that the rats have nothing to come back to.

The person that you sense this heaviness for is most likely so wounded that they do not know how to pray for themselves, or they do not believe that they could ever be free from their pain. They might even be so numb to the possibility of healing that they don’t believe they deserve to experience any sort of freedom. And you have been called to this because you love them, or you could be related to them, or you are completely surrendered to His call on your life that you are submitted to His leading.

The simple fact is, interceding for someone who is on a journey of deliverance is probably one of the messiest assignments there is in The Kingdom. I have personally walked this road and it is so intensely narrow that it will squeeze every ounce of religion out of you and scrape off everything you thought you knew about God and His Kingdom. You will experience more valleys and mountain tops than all this planet’s geography. You will be visited by agents of darkness and at other times be overcome by the shekinah Glory of God. Your hopes and dreams will die, and they will rise again. And the only ones who will ever know what you are going through is you and your King who called you to this. And when the King calls you to a thing, it will affect generations and your reward on earth will be that all you have left behind will be a legacy that lives to the end. James 1:12 says that there will be a crown for the one that endures to the end.