All right, turn in your Bibles to Revelation 1 tonight. Revelation 1, we are continuing our series on identity. And last week we talked about our bridal identity in Jesus, who was here last week for the message on our bridal identity in the Lord. And over this next month, we're taking each week and talking about one of our eternal identities that Jesus purchased for us.
And the first week was our bridal identity. This week I wanna talk about our priestly identity. And then next week we're gonna talk about our sonship, our familial identity that we have as sons and daughters in the Lord. And all of these identities are wrapped up into our royal identity.
We are royal bride, we are the royal bride, we're the royal priest, and we're royal sons and daughters. And so this week we're gonna dive in the priest identity. Many of you, if you've been around for a while, you were here for a whole priest series, right? So we literally took months on this topic, but as I look back, we really didn't hit too much on the identity of the priest as it relates to intercession.
And what I wanna do is I wanna talk about God's heart of intercession that he wants to give to us. And you know, when we look at heaven, and we look at Revelation 4, we look at Revelation 5, we look at Revelation 7, and we see these pictures of the throne room of heaven. Do you know what's one common theme about the throne room in heaven? That in every scene, the throne is surrounded by worship and prayer.
Have you ever noticed that? That the governmental center of the entire universe, where the king makes his decisions, is actually in a worship and prayer room. It's in a temple, that's what temples are, is places of worship and prayer. And God says, I'm actually gonna be seated on what the praise is of my people.
I'm gonna be enthroned upon the praises of my people. So he's gonna build his kingdom through prayer and intercession and worship. And I believe that God does nothing apart from partnership with his bride. Some of us are going, I don't know how it happened, but all of a sudden God stepped into my story.
With the enemy meant for evil, he all of a sudden turned to good. And I believe there's so many praying grandmas and praying mamas, we're out late at night, Friday night, mamas still up. And she's warring in the spirit, praying in tongues. And I believe that there's some praying mamas in the house, even if you're a 15 year old boy in the room, I believe that you're gonna get a praying, anointing mama, spirit on you, I don't know what it is.
But that mama praying, a grandma praying spirit on you, that just doesn't let up, it's like the persistent widow that God's giving us this persistence and intercession as a people. And I believe he's gonna birth that in us as a community. But you know when I think about that, I think of man, the throne room of heaven. Do you know what the throne room is?
It's like the oval office of heaven. It's like the situation room. I don't know if you know what the situation room is in the white house, it's in the basement of the white house, and it's where the military leaders and the president, the vice president, they go into that room and they make decisions where life and death happens in the situation room. Oval office, the supreme court, all of these rooms in our government, you jam them into the holy of holies, the throne room of heaven.
And that's what Jesus, where he's in throne. I'm talking about the situation room, cabinet rooms, supreme court, oval office, and it's the throne room of heaven and it's a temple, it's a prayer room. It's a worship room. And I believe that God is taking prayer and worship.
And he's actually removing it out of the church's mindset, that it's just a 15 minute warm up before the message. And he's actually pushing the church into becoming a praying church. I believe God's actually calling us as priests of the Lord that the main event is him. The main event is what's happening around the throne and we start becoming aware of our position in the heavenlies.
I don't think we get it. I don't think we get it because a lot of the time we're just thinking about how we don't like the song. Or it's like, five man, I don't know this song. And I'm a little annoyed that I don't know the song that we're singing tonight.
And then we go, man, why are they still singing that chorus? And it's been five minutes and I'm getting bored. And the chair of them in heaven are looking down at us. And they've been saying, holy, holy again and again and again and again, thousands of years.
And we're getting bored after five minutes. Oh, I don't think I get it. Man, just going through the motions, worship was a little long tonight. We say these things.
We just, something's happening. Something's wrong. And we write on the Facebook message. Well wishes, prayers and blessings and prayers.
What do we usually say? Thoughts and prayers? Thoughts and prayers for you? I'm going to think about you.
And I'm going to throw something up. It's going to hit the ceiling. But I'm just going to move on. And that's mostly what the culture of church is in America.
When we think about prayer and intercession, we think about boring prayer meeting. How many of you have ever been to a boring prayer meeting? I've been a lot of boring prayer meetings, all right? And this is what usually looks like.
Jennifer is over here and she starts praying for her cousin. Then Larry's over here and Larry starts praying for South Africa. And then Eunice is over here. And she starts praying for the vice president.
And everybody comes with their prayer. Their special thing that they want to pray for. Nobody's unified. And everybody's just waiting for the other person to be finished, for them to start praying.
And Jesus is in the garden sweating drops of blood. And he's saying, make them one, make them unified. And we show up to prayer meetings thinking about what I want to pray for. And we're bored.
Because we're not even thinking about what the other person is praying. It's just like, have you ever had a conversation with someone? And you can tell they're waiting for you to be done talking. So they can say what they want to say.
That's usually what prayer is like in the church. I'm waiting for them to be done so I can have my time to shine. And then we pray for 10 minutes. And everybody really gets bored because it was our time to shine.
And nobody's even listening. And I don't know what the Lord's thinking about that. But Jesus in the Sermonon Mount says, hey, keep your prayer short. Because he's thinking about unity.
But we're thinking about ourselves. Worship and prayer is not about you. Intercession is not about you. The prayer meeting is not about you.
Your priestly identity is not primarily about you. And God wants to actually get us out of self-focus, naval gazing, naval gazing, naval gazing. Where I look at myself and I'm thinking about myself the whole time. And he wants to lift up our chins to start seeing what he sees.
Start seeing what the bridegroom is seeing, what he's feeling, what he's seeing. And we start stepping in to the place of intercession. I want to talk about Jesus as the high priest. I want to start talking about Jesus as the priest.
But I want to, before we get there, I just want to draw our attention to the kingdom of heaven. There's a combination of church and state in the kingdom of heaven. There's health in America that there's some separation between church and state. Some of you are mad about that, okay?
And I understand. But listen, do you want to know what Constantine did to the church in the 300s? He combined the church and state and leveraged the church to manipulate a whole people. And he combined the church with military action and it completely castrated the church.
The kingdom of heaven is different though. The kingdom of heaven that Jesus leads, there's no separation. The king is also the priest. Jesus is the priest and we get to follow in his footsteps.
You can turn in your bibles to Hebrews 10. Let's turn to Hebrews 10. Jesus comes in on the scene and says, my house will be called a house of prayer. Hebrews 10, verse 11 and 12.
Do you know what priests do is priests 10 to the overlap of heaven and earth. So in the Old Testament, some of you guys remember this from the pre-series and the Old Testament what would happen is the priest were in charge of stewarding the temple. And the temple was the place where God dwells in heaven, man dwells on earth, but the temple was the place where the manifest presence of God would dwell. And so it was actually the overlap of heaven and earth and they were called to steward it.
Steward the space. Then Jesus, what does he do? Oh my goodness. Jesus dies, pays the price, is the sacrificial lamb, we're going to read about it as the priest.
And then what he does is the veil is torn and we all become overlaps of heaven and earth. We become temples. And he says, your body is a temple. So now as the priest, I'm supposed to care for my body as a temple the same way that the priest cared for the temple.
There's mystery in that, I don't understand it. But there's something having to do with our identity and our body that we could dive into if you want to go into that you can't. But listen, Hebrews 10, verse 11 through 12. Let's look at it.
Hebrews 10, 11 through 12 it says this and every priest stands daily at his service offering repeatedly the same sacrifices which can never take away sins. But when the Messiah, the king, had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins as the priest, he sat down at the right hand of God. Jesus finished the work and he fulfilled the role of the priest of the Old Testament. What would happen is that the priest would take offerings and sacrifices and would present them before God, right?
And so aren't you glad that Jesus once and for all paid the price and was the sacrifice for our sins? I didn't see anybody bringing heifers to church tonight. I didn't see any of you guys bringing some animals from your hobby farms to make sacrifices. I didn't see any turtle doves walk through the building, praise God, right?
He's God that I'm not a priest that I'm not getting paid in my vocation to make sacrifices all the time. Nobody would want to be a pastor and nobody wants to be a pastor right now, but how many of you know nobody wants to do that, right? And I'm so grateful for the Lord that he paid the sacrifice once and for all and that we don't have to offer any sacrifices for our sins. Now he says we're priests and the only sacrifice that's left is a sacrifice of praise and worship.
And that's our role as priests. Look at Hebrews 7, Hebrews 7, 23. Praise God for Hebrews 10 that we just read because now I come into the presence of God and I don't have to be sin focused as a priest. I don't have to try to come up with a bunch of sacrifices to appease God.
I don't have to try to make things right with God as so many preachers have deceived us to believe. I don't have to make things right with God because Jesus made me right with God when he paid the single offering of sacrifice so that I could be coming into the presence of God boldly, right? Hebrews 7, 23. Man, that's good news.
Okay. Verse 23 says the former priests were many in number because they kept on dying. But he holds his priesthood. This is Jesus.
He holds his priesthood permanently because he continues forever. He never dies, right? Verse 25, look at this. Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him since he always lives to make intercession for them.
Wow. Jesus before the Father always makes intercession. Do you know what he does? Him being him, the sacrificial lamb, is a constant representation of our sins being removed from us as far as the East is from the West.
So he's in the throne room and it's this constant reminder to the Father. They're pure. They're clean. They're holy.
I've mentioned to this that Jesus is an eternal intercessor, that he's in constant connection with the Father. And I just wonder what his intercession life looks like for me. Have you ever thought about that? Jesus praying for you.
I never thought about that. I don't know if you've thought about that, that Jesus has a prayer life for you. What is Jesus praying for you? Holy Spirit searches the deep things of God.
How many of you know that when we go to the Lord in prayer, we actually have the gift that we talked about, the gift of the bridegroom that we talked about last week and this gift of the bridegroom, the Holy Spirit actually searches the deep things of God and the deep thoughts, the deep emotions, the deep ideas. And I just wonder what has he been praying about? What has he been praying for me? What are the emotions that he has?
And eternity passes, he thinks about me and prays for me. Jesus is the eternal intercessor and then Hebrew 6. Let's look at Hebrew 6. This is what he wants for us.
Hebrew 6, verse 19. Hebrew 6, 19. You don't even have to turn a page probably. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul.
A hope, Jesus, that enters into the inner place behind the curtain where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, the king and priest. This is what's being said. Jesus is the high priest. There's been a division where there's a curtain and this curtain is like a four inch thick curtain that keeps the presence of God isolated in one space and there's only one man per year that can go into behind the curtain.
One man and he's not a Gentile, which means I don't think there's any Jews in the house. There might be some of us that are of Jewish descent, but for the most part we're all Gentiles. There's only one Jew and it was the high priest that could go in once a year into the very presence of God, the holy of holy is the most holy place. Jesus comes on the scene as the high priest forever.
He pays the price between heaven and earth and then he applies his blood on the mercy seat and a four inch thick curtain that's dividing the presence of God that's dangerous. I'm talking about the presence of God. There was a big curtain around the presence of God where that's the spirit dwelled because it was a scary thing every time that priest went in. Do you know that they would put literally, there's a story of Zechariah, John the Baptist dad, they actually put a string that has bells on it attached to the priest as he would go in to the holy of holies because there's people that literally get struck dead as priests when they went into his presence because he's so perfect, so holy.
Because if they didn't hear any of the jingling of the bells, they knew something happened bad. Oh no, Jesus pays the price and all of a sudden the holy spirit is on the loose. Oh no, dynamite power is on the loose. We literally see Jesus die at 3 p.m.
There's an earthquake, holy spirit gets out, what happens? Resurrection power breaks out and all of a sudden dead people start walking in the city of Jerusalem. Oh my goodness, great, great grandpa Larry. There he is walking in the street, hanging out at Passover, what is happening?
Holy spirit got out and then Jesus says you just wait and teary. I'm going to baptize you in the spirit that was only reserved behind closed doors. Now you're going to be clothed in it. I don't understand.
I don't get it. We don't get it. We don't get it because we've been thinking about how we didn't like the song at worship on Sunday. We don't get it because we've been thinking thoughts and prayers and well wishes and blessings for you.
And the Lord is going, you are a priest of the Lord. You have the very divine spirit of God that raised Jesus from the dead. And he got out and then wanted to come inside of you. And now you're a temple.
Now you're an overlap of heaven and earth and you walk into work. Oh my goodness. You walk into your retail job and you're folding clothes in the men's department. And all of a sudden the overlap of heaven and earth is in the men's department folding jeans.
And you become, I feel the Lord on that. Oh man, I feel the Lord on you folding clothes with him. All of a sudden what is happening in this department that I walk in and I feel the very presence of the Lord because somebody was becoming aware of what's actually on the inside. Someone began to step into their priestly identity and they started knowing who they were, the overlap of heaven and earth stewarding literally atmospheres of the presence of God.
I don't know what happened. I was at MOA. I was at Mall of America and then I walked in. I don't know what happened.
But there is someone in there. And they, I looked at them and it felt like love. They were just folding clothes and something happened. And then they said, how many of you know that God moves at the sound of our voice?
I just remember, I remember a group of my friends. We just got addicted to praying and worshiping. Molot Joe leading worship, he was the hockey captain. I mean if you know, Molot's our big thing in hockey culture, right?
Molot Joe, playing Lord, I lift your name on high. We are hungry. You know, we're just singing. And we just start partnering with God's heart for our friend Alan.
Didn't we? We were just more of a acquaintance with Alan, popular kid, but kind of the worst of the worst of our high school. And we just started praying for him. We just started going to this room, room 106 at this building in Colorado Springs where I grew up.
And we could see from the windows, we could see our public high school and we just started praying for Alan. Week after week, every Sunday we pray for three hours on Sunday afternoons. Oh, Sunday afternoon, let's go. And we just started praying for Alan and his friends.
I could even still, I forgot so many names, but I didn't forget any of the names that we were praying for. I forgot all my high school friends mostly, but the ones I prayed with, listen, the ones I prayed with and the ones I prayed for, I remember their names. And I remember praying for Alan, January 2nd, 2000, I don't know what, and we were, and we have been praying for him for months and all of a sudden he had been binge drinking from New Year's and he got into his room after binge drinking for a couple days. And for some reason, he started talking to God.
I know why. Unbeknownst to him, a bunch of 15, 16-year-olds started praying for him. We started persistent whittling Alan in the spirit and all of a sudden he just out of nowhere starts talking to the Lord. If you're real, would you reveal yourself to me?
And all of a sudden God starts talking back to Alan and he starts, he gets converted in the spirit, gives his life to Jesus. Nobody around because God starts talking back to him. Listen, the Lord loves doing partnership with us. He wants to do everything in partnership.
There's little grannies in the house, little intercessor grannies. We're going to get that spirit on us. I believe that. That's going to be part of us.
I want to get to the rocking chair with love in my heart and that fierceness that you walk into the room and you're like God's here. Some of us, I know at Minns prayer, I was talking to one of the deacons and he was saying he cut his teeth with a bunch of old women in a prayer room in the place of prayer and Lord do it. Bring us the grannies of our city that are hungry for revival. Come on, let's go.
The priest has special access to the presence of God behind the curtain. Jesus, he comes in and the disciples say, would you teach us how to pray? And then he teaches them how to pray. Because they're starting to see all these things that Jesus is doing and they're trying to draw conclusions of how is this happening.
And they ask him, how do we pray? Because we're seeing that there's something about you and we think that the thing that's really special about you is your prayer life. And they ask him that question and he gives them a poem. How many of you know the poem, right?
It's the Lord's prayer. He says, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom comes. This is the first part.
Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So he begins by saying, our Father who's in heaven, hallowed be your name. In other words, I want your name to be honored. And when we're talking about somebody's name, we're talking about them as a person.
I want you and your personality, what you're like. I want you to be seen for who you are. Jesus is introducing prayer starts with knowing him. And I want to honor you for who you are.
I want to like you and I want to love you for who you are. Jesus is giving them the download of it's about knowing him. And then he says, your kingdom come. Your kingdom, what he's saying is how you rule and how you lead.
Your kingdom is literally like a kingdom culture, right? He's of a different kingdom, a different culture. A lot of us are thinking that America is like God's special nation. I don't know.
And we look at the Old Testament, there's a story with a prophet where they're going into battle with an enemy. I don't know. And they're on the eve of a battle and the angel of the Lord shows up. And this leader says, are you with us?
Are you for us or are you against us? And do you know what the angel of the Lord says? He says, neither. Listen, if we went to war with China, do you know what the church of America would be saying?
God's on our side. Do you know if we asked the angel of the Lord what he would say? Neither. We think, oh, God's on the side of Ukraine.
But we have to get a revelation that there's a kingdom that we swear allegiance. And I'm telling you what, we need to get it into our brains. We need to have the revelation land in our souls that I'm of a different kingdom. I'm of a different kingdom.
And my allegiance is to one man. He's the king of a kingdom, a culture, a society. Listen, we go in and we think you're on our side. And what I want to draw us to, I remember at prayer room over the last month, we were praying for Ukraine and Russia.
What we did is we went into, I want to know you in your heart. And then we started meditating on his heart. And then what we did is we asked the Lord, who's on your heart? And do you know what he said?
He said, Russian soldiers in tanks in Kiev. And we as a whole people started asking the Lord, Lord, what's on your heart for these Russian soldiers? And I believe that eight Russian soldiers woke up in a tank that they were sleeping in a couple weeks ago and they all had the same dream. And the man in white doesn't just show up to Muslims in the Middle East.
He shows up to Russian soldiers in Kiev. And I got gripped with the heart of the Lord and we're weeping and we finished out the prayer room and set praying for Putin. Love in our hearts for the man because we get a picture from the heart of God of Putin as a four-year-old boy. The emotions of God pouring love out on this man.
And I believe God's giving us a higher vision that is greater than the political spirit of this age. And he's going, you'll be about my business. You'll be about my kingdom. You'll be about my way, carrying my heart, carrying my zeal, my love, my kindness, my zeal and passion.
He's going, I'm clearing out all of the obstacles that have kept the nations from the place of prayer. He's going, I'm throwing over tables for Putin. He's going, I want Putin to know me. I want us as a people to carry the ache of the Lord.
What does he carry in his heart when he looks at these Russian soldiers? Then we went into praying for Ukraine the week before that. And we're not praying from Earth into heaven. We're praying from the heavenly place.
We're praying from where we're seated as the priests of the Lord, as intercessors. And all of a sudden we start standing in the gap for all of these refugees, the millions of refugees. And we start getting a vision. God starts giving us a vision of a worship movement happening in refugee camps.
And all of a sudden there's a sound rising up to the Lord. And in the camp of despair, all of a sudden there's a joyful noise. There's a joyful noise rising. And all of a sudden worship and prayer is billowing out of that refugee camp.
The remnant of Ukrainian believers making a joyful noise before the Lord against the backdrop of hopelessness. God's giving us a different vision of intercession. It's not now I lay me down to sleep. It's not well wishes and thoughts and prayers.
I am a priest in a kingdom in a throne room, in the Oval Office in the situation room of heaven. I've been seated on a throne with the Lord and he's happy in his heart. And he's not a mad sad angry God. He actually carries joy in his heart.
And there I am with him. And I lean over and I say, what do you think about this? What are you feeling? Father, what do you think?
What do you see? I begin to partner with the heart of the Lord. And this is what happens. Jesus then introduces another element to prayer.
Your will be done. Hm, man. Do you know what your will means? What you want?
What you desire? See, we've made the sovereignty of God so confusing. And it's like the will of the Lord has gotten so confusing and we can just simplify it too. What do you want to do?
What do you want? What do you desire? And the Lord is going, get connected with who I am, get connected with how I reign and get connected to what I desire and what I want. And then what you're going to do is you're going to stand in the gap between heaven and earth.
Between heaven and earth. You're going to stand in the gap just like Jesus did as the high priest on the cross. He paved a way so that he could pay that sacrifice so that we could stand in the gap and we can follow in the footsteps of Jesus the high priest that's the sympathetic high priest. That's the other thing.
Oh, he's a sympathizer. He has compassion. Man, some of us, we just try to whitewash the thing. It's like pain is happening.
Everything is not right. And we try to stuff it. And the Lord is going, would you be like David? Have the Psalms are lament, you know, sitting in the tension with the people of God sit in the pain just long enough to get his heart of sympathy.
Heart of sympathy for your spouse. Heart of sympathy for your co-worker. Heart of sympathy for your child. For your neighbor.
Heart of sympathy for the Afghani believers and the Afghani young ladies that just this week couldn't go to school. Showed up to the first day of school and was rejected at the door. In the heart of the Father and the sympathizer, the high priest for our city. As Jesus looks at our city and sees George on the streets, sees a mirror in an apartment, sees Philando in St.
Anthony Village in our backyard, in his car, seeing Dante right. What moves in your heart? What are you feeling? I have to know.
See, Jesus is the intercessor. Do you know what he does? He accepts responsibility for a problem that isn't his. He's not responsible for it.
He accepts responsibility for something as a priest and as an intercessor, saying this is my problem. I'm going to step in and this is, yeah, I don't have to think about it because I'm a white man on the top of the totem pole in our culture. I don't have to, but I step into it in his heart. And then on a in secret in our community on our worship leader, she gets the heart of the Lord and she's meditating on God's heart and she gets a vision of Jesus.
Wounded bloodied walking the streets of Brooklyn Center after Dante right was killed. And she sees him walking on the sidewalks of our city. Jesus, the wounded healers, the phrase that the Lord gave her. I remember that night at the prayer room.
She begins to release the heart of the Lord, wounded healer. And we begin to fill our minds with your the wounded healer. And then what does the Lord do? We ask him, who are you highlighting?
He says, I'm highlighting young black boys, young boys of color in our city. And we start interceding for seven to 14 year old boys, the ones we know by name and the ones that we don't know. And we start praying for him. What's your heart?
I want to know, I want to partner with your heart, Lord. So many of us have been spectators and worship and I believe God's raising and branding us with a call of intercession. We've been altogether focused on us. We've been altogether self-consumed and the Lord's going, I have my heart.
You minister to it. You encounter it. And then you partner with it. That's the call of the priest.
Minister to the heart of the Lord. Encounter the heart of the Lord. And then you partner with his heart and release what he wants to do. I remember when I was in seventh grade and I started praying, I was this 12 year old boy.
I grew up watching my mom and dad pray. My dad woke up at like 4.30 every morning, spend time with Jesus, pray and read his Bible. General contractor worked all the way up until last year, worked on job sites, shoveling and ditches, doing excavation. And he wake up at 4.30 in the morning, pray, reading his Bible.
Then he, after he was done with that, then he'd pray with my mom for an hour. Walk into the office every single morning, my mom and dad praying for me, praying for my siblings. They still do it. And unbeknownst to them, they're not aware, I'm 12 years old.
And I start praying for my friend Sean at night. They're praying in the morning. And all of a sudden, their son is 12 starts praying in the night. And I start praying for my friend Sean.
And I start writing down my prayers for Sean. I pray for him for a year and a half. I remember having a dream in the night, God giving me a 12 year old boy. And seeing Sean in this valley of decision.
And the fires of hell. And God's compassion for Sean. And I remember waking up in the middle of the night, turning on the light and pacing back and forth in my bedroom as a 12 year old boy praying for Sean. I remember on the last day of school of 8th grade, he was going to go to the Air Force Academy School and I was going to go to Pine Creek.
We're going to go to different high schools. And I remember handing him over a journal of prayers for a year and a half that I pray for him. I don't know if he ever opened it up. It'd probably be uncomfortable.
But I believe the Lord that whatever goes up must come down. And I believe God is going to multiply. My dad had at 4.30 in the morning for 15 years, 20, 30 years. He's going to multiply it in us.
He's going to multiply the story. And he's going to grip us with his heart of the intercessionist priests. And we're going to stand in the gap as moms and dads, as coworkers and neighbors, as the people of Minneapolis and St. Paul in the Greater Metro area.
And he's going to give deposits of his heart. And then he's taking us out of just being a normal local church. And he's going, I'm going to thrust you into being a praying church. And I'm going to actually call the whole bride into the place of prayer.
And that we would be known not for our political agenda and who we agree with and our political convictions and how we're voting. But that we would be people that pray for our enemies. That we'd be standing in the gap for everyone that disagrees with us. That has their agenda that we think is a threat to our lifestyle.
And he's going, would you pray? Would you get my heart? Lord, give us a deposit. Give us the branded, like brand us with the heart of love so that we love from the place of prayer.
It's like we feel like, man, that person's hard to love. Have you prayed for him? You've been talking a lot about him. But have you prayed for him?
Have you actually asked him, Lord, what do you feel about them? What do you look at them? What's the emotions in your heart? This backbiting coworker, what do you feel about him, Lord?
The ones that have been slandering me from behind my back, what are the emotions that you're feeling for him? And all of a sudden, you start getting a different vision. See what the intercessor does is they stand in the gap between the tension of what's happening on Earth and then what they have as a revelation of heaven. We have to get a revelation of heaven so that we can align ourselves to go on Earth as it is in heaven.
We are not going to spend our days in the New Jerusalem just with harps on clouds. It's not an eternal worship service, but life is going to be worship. Daily life on the streets, they're going to be gold, it's going to be beautiful. And all over the Earth, we're going to actually have life and it's going to be unto him.
Our life is going to be worship. We're going to fold clothes and it's going to be worship. You could start now. You could live as a kingdom citizen in this hour, in this day.
Do you think that the New Jerusalem is all about the Sunday experience? It's every day. It's an everyday reality. God's giving us a vision of heaven.
And then we sit in the tension as intercessors, in the disparity that we see, in the tension and in the gap of this is not right. When I look at this, there's nothing right. And the answer isn't political voting to get this over here. The answer is not to get the religion sphere and church is bigger.
I just don't think we get it. There's people that got it though that we can look to. There's people that got it. And when I look at Mary Abethany, she got it.
When I look at King David and he put 4,000 musicians and 288 singers around the presence of God and removed the curtain, there's something that he got. I think Anna, who tarried for six decades in the outer courts, the court of women, she couldn't even go into the inner courts. She had to stay outside in the outer courts and live there and fasten and prayed for 60 years. Intercession for the nation of Israel.
Having her husband die in a battle leading up to that most likely. Pressing in, send us the Messiah. Pressing in the gap of the abuse and standing and going, I know that there's prophecies about this one. And I'm going to stand in the tension and I'm going to be the persistent widow that just doesn't let up.
Like Simeon, like Anna, like Mary, like Joshua who tarried in the tent. When everybody else had so many other things, like Mary, there's so many other things to keep busy with. There's so many other things, so many other things to distract us from the joy of intercession. It's not a mad, sad, angry thing.
It's a joyful privilege. And you encounter his heart for a 12-year-old black boy that you're never going to meet. And you start praying for their dreams in the middle of the night. And you sit in the heart of the Lord for that young man that will never know your name.
There's something about it that you tap into and it's called destiny. We've been so distracted with our callings trying to know, what is my calling? What's my purpose? Why am I here on the earth?
And we're so consumed. What's the prophecy say? What is, well, I have this word and this has to happen. And we've been all distracted by all these other things and it's called self.
And the Lord is like, would you come into the place of prayer, bride? Would you take your rightful seat, son? Would you take your position, priest, in the Oval Office Supreme Court situation room of heaven and partner with my heart? Step into your identity and your calling.
And once you tap into it, you get ruined by it. And then you don't think that prayer is so boring because it's no longer just me guessing. Bless them. And I don't even know.
But Lord, bless them. When you look at this situation, what's the sympathy that you have? When you look at the crowds, what were you seeing? When you look at this situation, what's your type of compassion that you have?
And then as you ask him that, then you step into faith and you step into the gap. And there's joy in the intercession. And all of a sudden you start aligning yourself into that space and there's a groan that's released. And you start following in the footsteps of Jesus.
It talks about Jesus as the priest. It says that he prayed and that there is groans and tears that he had as a priest. And I believe that God is putting that type of intercession on us as a people. Where all of a sudden we start giving birth to things spiritually and it's messy.
Listen, it starts getting messy. When all of a sudden the emotions of God, you start feeling what he feels and his emotions are infinite. And your body can't hold the emotions that he has for the situation. And now your body is stuck in the middle of the emotions of the throne room.
And you don't know how to give language to his emotions. But all that's there is no more pretty praying. And all that's there is crying and groaning. And it sounds like moans, like someone's giving birth.
We grew up going to boring prayer meetings. But God's escorting us into being a people of prayer. Listen, I've touched just the edge. I remember I went to college and I would pray for an hour every single day for revival.
And then I'd read my Bible for an hour every day when I was in college. And I'm telling you, I'm on the shores. There is so much that we haven't touched. We're not going to get condemned about it.
Listen, it should fascinate our hearts. Don't take it as like, well, how am I ever going to get there? Stop. This is an invitation to go, there's more than what I've tasted and touched.
I thought I was starting to get bored. And now a whole world just got opened up to me. And it's called prayer worship and intercession. And it should excite our hearts.
There's more. The Lord is putting the prayer room at the center. Every day is not going to be known for our good programs and our Sunday services. Every day is going to be built around the place of prayer and worship.
Because we actually believe that God has made that the center of how He rules and reigns in all the universe. And we're going to line ourselves with the way that He wants to lead. Let's all stand. I feel like we don't get it, but there's some people that got it.
I'm reminded of Acts 12, the early church. You've got Peter. We can spread out. You can spread out throughout the room.
We're going to go into time of worship. I remember Peter, he gets arrested by Herod on the heels of James, one of the sons of thunder. He's getting killed by Herod. So literally one of Jesus' best friends is James John Peter.
James is killed by King Herod. And then King Herod says, the Jews like that, I'm going to arrest Peter. So I'm going to execute Peter too. And there Peter is in mourning.
I can't imagine what's going on in Peter's heart. Can't imagine what's going on in the church's heart in Jerusalem. But Peter is heavily guarded with some soldiers and he's asleep sleeping next in between two soldiers. And do you know what the church starts doing?
They start praying. They start having a prayer meeting in secret and they start coming on behalf. They start sitting in the tension. And do you know what?
It probably wasn't now I lay me down to sleep prayers after one of their best friends just got murdered by the king and then their other friend is going to get executed in the morning. They're filled with an urgency. And as they're praying in urgency, all of a sudden angels are moving at the sound of their voices. We are forgetting.
We are forgetting that when I pray, there's actually things that start shifting in the heavenly places. David said it this way. I was in a place of hopelessness and then I called to the Lord and my prayer entered into the ears of God. And as my prayer entered into the ears of God, all of a sudden things began to shift and change in the earth and angels and demons started moving because I started talking in the place of prayer.
And we as the people of God started banding together, unified, coming around one thing, not grandma of this in South Africa that and vice president this, no, there is a unity of spirit and an urgency in their hearts. And they started unifying around this one thing of deliverance for their friend and angels started unlocking the shackles and he started walking out. Peter goes over to their house and knocks on the door in the middle of their prayer meeting. One of the first prophecies I ever received, it was from a mentor of mine.
His name is Lee James. Lee James had mentored us and Lee James prophesied over me, acts 431. First prophecy I ever received. And it says where the place where they were meeting was shaken.
They were having a prayer meeting and all of a sudden there was a shaky, there was an earthquake, the same power that was released, the same power that tore the veil, was the same power that was getting released through the early church in the place of prayer. And there's earthquakes breaking out. There's resurrection power breaking out because of the prayer meetings. God is raising up a people of prayer.
He's raising up a people of worship, raising up a people of intercession. Oh God, give us your heart of intercession. You can just cry out to the Lord. Lord, mark me as an intercessor.
Mark me as an intercessor.