At this point, you have been able to start structuring your prayers in the manner that is prescribed and acceptable for our King. And I know there are most likely many people who might be put off by the idea that God wouldn’t accept their prayers if they were not offered properly. After all, “God knows our hearts”, right? If I may, please let me just say that in the book of Malachi, God addresses several issues He has with His people in many areas, including their worship and how they handle their finances. I think this is very interesting because He knew that when He spoke to the prophet Malachi, He wouldn’t be speaking to anyone that we have record of again for more than 400 years. This makes me think that the issues He brough up to Malachi might have been important to Him.

The very first issue He speaks about is the fact that His people no longer honor Him. He even goes so far to say that if they would not correct their behavior and follow His procedure, that He wished someone would just go to the temple and shut the doors! He was obviously tired of not being treated in the manner that He had already instructed. And He was telling this to the priests! The very ones who should know better, the very ones who had access to Him. They had begun to act casually towards Him and told them if they would not follow His procedure, just go home because He would not hear their prayers.

“But that was Old Testament”, you might say. Okay, let’s go to the one single place in the New Testament where we have record of Jesus giving instructions to His disciples on how to pray. This is Galilean Aramaic, the common language Jesus would have spoken to his disciples.

Abba, [1]

Father,

Yəṯqadaš šəmaḵ.

May thy name be holy.

Teṯe malḵuṯaḵ.

May thy kingdom come.

Tehəwe raˁuṯaḵ.

May thy will be done.

Pitṯan də-ṣoraḵ [2] hav lan yoməden.

Give us today our needed bread.

wa-Švuq lan ḥovenan. [3]

And forgive us our debts / sins.

Heḵ ‘ənan šəvaqin lə-ḥaivenan.

As we forgive our debtors.

wə-La taˁel lan lə-nisyon.

And lead us not into temptation.

Amen.

Even Jesus began His prayer by recognizing and honoring His Father as a King whose Kingdom is higher than any other kingdom and acknowledges His will above any human will or plans.

My point is, just because this might be a new idea for someone, doesn’t mean it’s actually a new idea. It’s just that some of us were not taught these things. But the fact is that God is ordered and organized, and we are expected to always do things His way. (These are not my rules or preferences, I’m giving it to you right out of the bible.)

Thus far I have done my best to build a foundation for how to pray for the individual that you are standing in the gap for, and how to approach the throne of our King with those prayers. The remainder of this guide will be what you can expect to encounter along the way, both in the life of that person and in your own. I will draw from wisdom that I discovered along my own journey, but I am not one who regularly turns my own experiences into doctrine. Just because we perceive something in a certain way, does not make it truth that can be applied to each and every situation. I did however give myself over to the acquisition of biblical wisdom during the last 7 years of this assignment, and I am comfortable with stating that these principles are truth of the Kingdom and how the Kingdom operates. It would not be wise to glean only from my personal examples, because I am human, and I very well could have made a call about something that happened in my life too quickly or out of my own pain. But truth is truth, and the standard for truth is the word of God, so I hope you will discern between biblical references and references from my own life.