I began writing this guide about 18 months after I had been called to intercede for an individual who I loved dearly. The call came in January 2017, and I ran from it until a few months later in March. This person had hurt me and my family very deeply and I did not immediately respond to the assignment until God had showed me very clearly through dreams and confirmations that this was indeed something that He had begun. I knew that she had been a part of the Father’s house at one time and had walked away after incredibly traumatic events took place in her life. These events lead to a lifestyle of medicating herself with any and everything that could be used to numb the pain that she had experienced. By the time I had met her, the cycles of sin and addiction had covered her soul with many layers of bondage, and I am aware now that I did not really know her; I knew her representative. I knew the “person” that she had become to protect the person that she was deep on the inside.

At the time of this draft, it is December 2023, nearly seven years since I was first called to pray for her. It has been the most exhausting and confusing season of my life, by far. This task has placed me on the most intense roller coaster ride of emotional and spiritual highs and lows, and I am not the same person I was when He gave me this assignment. My flesh had to be killed daily. But I can say that there has never been a more powerful catalyst for change in my life than this assignment.

I’m not sure where you are in this process with the Prodigal that you are waiting for, but I am here to tell you that you cannot give up. Generational eternities are at stake and future lives are tied to your faithfulness to this calling. This individual might be a son or daughter, a spouse that walked away, a loved one in prison, or maybe even someone you have never met. If God has placed them on your heart, it is only because He has an assignment for them as well and your prayer are instrumental for helping them achieve the fullness of their purpose. In addition, this calling will also be an accelerant that launches you into yours.

Imagine a baby is born into the arms of a loving father. A child with a bright future and a soul that has not been touched by this world. But one day the baby is kidnapped and raised in captivity, unaware of its natural father and treated as a slave as he grows older. The child grows into an adult all while the natural father searches endlessly to bring his son back home. For years the son is convinced that there is no other way of life, not even aware that he could leave the cruel master at any time. But deep inside there has always been a gentle tug that leads his mind to wonder if there could be more.

By now, the cruel master has a firm hold on the son he has enslaved and is unwilling to ever allow the son to discover the truth about where he really came from. The natural father and the cruel master both recognize the gifts that this son has. These gifts have the capacity to light up and expose the dark places where the cruel master operates in secret, and he will do anything to suppress and extinguish that light.

But the natural father will never stop searching, and he has a secret weapon: a former slave who has been set free. So the father speaks to the freed one and gives him the opportunity to be a part of another slave becoming set free.

If God has placed it in your heart to pray for another person who is in deep bondage, you will be essentially walking into the enemy’s camp and taking property that he has worked very long to acquire and keep. The enemy knows that if this slave is set free, he will return and take even more territory and set other slaves free as well. Be sure, when you begin this battle you are disrupting an organized and regimented plan of the enemy. And when you understand your identity as the child of the Father and King, no plan of the enemy can succeed against you because the enemy was already made a public spectacle for the world to see. He has already been defeated. (Colossians 2:15)

This book is not about spiritual warfare as we have been taught. We don’t have to fight demons because we are not God’s soldiers, despite the songs and amped-up preaching. We are citizens of the Kingdom, and citizens don’t go to war. The angels are the armies of heaven, not us. No, citizens go to court. That is the basis of our identity and the mode that we use to “fight” our battles. We are citizens, and our father is the King. The rest of this guide will be the protocols that are laid out in scripture for how we approach our battles, and how we are to petition our King.