The Building Blocks of Intercession

We started taking about "Destiny, Faith, and Covenant" in our last lesson. We discussed two important points about this:

1. God has a dream (destiny) for you.
2. God's dreams require a lifetime commitment.

Now we follow those two points to their inevitable conclusion... We need to establish our Dream-Covenant With God. To put it another way, God may want you to establish a visible covenant of faith before Him.

Hernan Cortez, an early Spanish explorer to the New World (1485-1547), was reported to have burned his ships once he reached the Americas. He wanted to make retreat impossible for himself and his men. While I'm not justifying the atrocities committed by Cortez on the indigenous people of the New World, we can learn something from his commitment to his vision.

Covenant faith occurs when you dedicate your acts of faith. Observe how sacrifices sealed the covenant between Abraham and God:

"And He said, 'I am the LORD who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it.' He said, 'O Lord God, how may I know that I will possess it?' So He said to him, 'Bring Me a three year old heifer, and a three year old female goat, and a three year old ram, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon.' Then he brought all these to Him and cut them in two, and laid each half opposite the other; but he did not cut the birds. The birds of prey came down upon the carcasses, and Abram drove them away.

Now, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, terror and great darkness fell upon him. God said to Abram, 'Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years. But I will judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you will be buried at a good old age. Then in the fourth generation they will return here."

When the sun had set ,it was very dark and there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, 'To your descendants I have given this land, From the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates'" (Genesis 15:7-21).

As we noted earlier, in contrast to prevailing wisdom, the going can get tough when you follow God's destiny. In the past, when the Lord had a big plan for a person, He often established a covenant with that individual. God knew it would take covenant thinking for His person to survive the rigors of following His path. Think about it. Often, covenant symbols were the only visible tokens of the invisible promised future.

In closing, let's examine Abraham's covenant rite with God. Without spiritualizing the passage, you'll observe a couple of things that may parallel your own covenant-building experience with God.

First, when you make a covenant with God over following His dream, it may involve sacrifices. Abraham had to kill part of his herd. Often, the first complaint you hear when you follow God's dream is, "What a waste of time," or "What a waste of money." The next thing you'll hear (after awhile) is, "When are you going to give it up?"

You wouldn't be the first person to hear such critical remarks when you follow God. Think about the harlot that broke the expensive vial of perfume to anoint Jesus for his burial. Despite the devotion involved in this act, what did members of Jesus' inner circle say: "Some were indignantly remarking to one another, "Why has this perfume been wasted?" (Mark 14:4).

And what of Joseph? He dreamed big, God-given dreams. What was the response of his brothers? They said, "Look, this dreamer is coming!... let us...kill him." People who aren't pursuing their own dreams are usually the first to criticize people who are. So, who are you listening to (Bob Gass, 2007 The Word For You Today and Celebration, Inc.)? Therefore, don't be surprised when some of the leading people who should be supporting you while you follow God don't.

Second, you have to contend for the dream when nothing seems to be happening. Notice how Abraham had to beat the birds of the air off his sacrifices. Likewise, satanic circumstances often try to spoil our sacrifices. Remember what I mentioned earlier, about God giving us raw gifts that need refining? Satan can fill our schedule with obligations that grow to crowd out the time needed to develop God' s gifts.

Most of those responsibilities aren't evil. If they were, the disciple of Jesus would seek freedom from them. No, doing good isn't always doing God's best. When church leaders find an obedient Christian, they load them up with as many tasks and committee memberships bas possible. Those obligations can steal the time meant for the pursuit of God's dream. In those instances, church business may not be God's business.

Another modern time-robber is television and the Internet. Both routines have all the unconscious features of other addictive habits. For example, when some people get a cup of coffee, they automatically light up a cigarette. In the same vein, how often have you sat down in a chair, and the next thing, you pick up the controller to turn on the TV. It's hard to say, "no." And, it takes a real act of willpower to interrupt the autopilot that governs many aspects of our lives. As your passion for the dream grows, and your move from an idea to concrete manifestations of the vision, the ability to tear yourself away from "idle-pursuits" grows.

Or, the enemy tries to rob the seeds of the dreams God planted in us (Luke 8:5, 11-12). When you see your best efforts rotting away, and the only angelic attention they get is satanic, discouragement isn't far behind. You'll see that, besides having to fend the birds off the sacrifices, terror and a deep darkness fell on Abraham. During those times, you can lose sight of the value of God's dream. History is filled with people who stopped short of attaining their dreams, right before they were about to achieve them. The Children Of Israel failed to enter the promised land, when their faith faltered.

In such circumstances, how do you shore up your faith? If possible, listen again to the prophetic promises said over you that are related to the dream. Or, if you transcribed the words, read them aloud repeatedly to yourself. That action activates our faith (Romans 10:17). We need to repeat the application of God's Rhema word, until it seeps into our heart and our emotions. The words and sounds are visible reminders of our covenant with God.

Why would God keep bringing up a dream, if He didn't want us to pursue it? Let me insert a personal example here. I've written a couple of books, one fiction, and one non-fiction. I pursued the publication of the non-fiction very intensely for a couple of years, before deciding that the market for books on that subject had passed for now.

With the fiction book, after a long-period of revising and rehashing the manuscript, and running into some publications roadblocks, I set the thing down. That was about a year ago. Then recently during a prophetic conference, one that focused more on teaching than giving prophetic words, the speaker said: "There's somebody here tonight that's started writing a book, and you've stopped, you've put it away. And, I want to find out who that is." He later said, "And, you've judged yourself John, you said, 'I didn't ever go study this, no one ever showed me how to do creative writing.'" The emphasis of the word on, "creative writing," indicated to me, that God wanted me to renew my work on the fiction book. So, God's renewed word to me indicated that, while He recognized my feelings over the setbacks, He still expected me to go after the dream, represented by the book.

My prayer in sharing is that God re-ignites the spark of His own dream in you. Ask God to renew your faith to follow His calling on your life.