If God has placed this person on your heart and has given you a sense of “knowing” in your spirit that you need to pray for them, then it is likely that they have never received salvation before. They are unaware of how to pray for themselves or even of that possibility. Holy Spirit is definitely pursuing them because they do not have any sort of relationship with Him. When a person accepts the truth about Jesus Christ and believes in that truth, they have the opportunity to receive His spirit who then begins to revive their own spirit. Holy Spirit’s function in our lives is to teach us as we study scripture, convict us of sin, and convincing us of the truth. He leads us in our decisions and provides solutions to problems. He also works in us to transform us from the desire to satisfy all our fleshly cravings and to not be led by them. His domain is our spirit, and as we allow Him to change our lives, He slowly and gently begins to change our minds, wills, and emotions. This part of our being is known as our “soul”. Once change has taken place in our minds and emotions, He naturally changes our behaviors and actions. A person will continue to sin (actions) until their thoughts and emotions (soul) is healed and brought into alignment with what God has said about us. Right now, you are praying for someone who is completely led by their natural desires and bends truth around a lifestyle that they have already decided to live. Truth is whatever they want it to be and whatever is convenient for them, as long as they get what they want.

The first thing that we must pray is for the eyes of our loved ones to be opened to the knowledge of where they are at and that there is something better. When they know that there is an alternative to their downward spiral, they will want to know more about that. You might not physically be in their sphere to be able to tell them, so you can pray for God to send His workers into the harvest field to speak the truth to them and show them the answers they are hungry for. This is the primary goal of intercession, because once they have accepted the truth of Jesus, the rest will be up to them and Holy Spirit. Together, they will begin their own journey of growth and maturity. Holy Spirit has the only right to choose the correct methods and strategies and timing for bringing your loved one out of bondage, and it will most likely not look like anything that happened with you. Only Holy Spirit knows everything that has taken place in their life, and only He knows how to get them into the plan of God for their lives.

God’s will is carried out on the earth by people because God is a spirit and spirits don’t have authority to manipulate the physical world. In the beginning, God gave dominion to mankind, Adam forfeited that dominion, and Jesus secured it once again. When God wants to bless you, He will send a person. When the enemy wants to curse you, he will also send a person, because spirits can only work through people. “Well yeah, Mr. Riddle, but I know the house I lived in had evil spirits in it.” That might be true, and it’s because a physical person gave it admittance into that physical house. (And a physical person can revoke that admittance as well.)

As I stated earlier in this series, we are not the warriors of heaven. We are not soldiers of God’s army. We are citizens, and citizens don’t go to war in the kingdom. The angels are heaven’s army and they are the warriors who go to war. When a citizen has a dispute, they got to court, not war. Now, that is not to say that this won’t feel like a fight. Your emotions will naturally be fried by the stress and tension of this season. You have a weight on your spirit because you know the truth and there is tension until you believe that the truth will manifest itself into reality. When a woman is about to give birth, she can’t see the baby, but she knows it is there and that it is quickly coming. The same is true with a promise from God. There will be the tension of delivery until you experience a physical change in your reality.

Psalm 139:16 says that God has a plan for their life, and He has had that plan in place since before the earth was even formed. The tension is tangible because He has given you glimpses of that plan, and you physically see that they are obviously not in that plan. God needs us to intercede because we believe in that truth that we cannot see, and we are going to take the King’s word back to Him so that He will fulfill it. That is intercession and He needs us to do it because that is why we are here on this earth. To discover the plan and will of God, and to cause it to manifest on the earth. He has chosen you to reveal His plan to, and to bring it to pass. And there will be generations after we are long gone that will be changed forever because we have said “yes” to standing in the gap and being the bridges between heaven and earth.