Prayer Burdens and Alerts, Part 1

Intercessors are those who pray for the needs of others. Most often, we pray for other people because they ask us to. But the Holy Spirit knows when people need prayer — even if they don’t request it. Sometimes people don’t ask for prayer, and sometimes they don’t know when they need prayer. But the Holy Spirit knows and He can tell His intercessors to pray for particular people at particular times, even without any external evidence of a need. I call such promptings of the Spirit prayer burdens or prayer alerts. In the following blogs entries over the next few weeks, I am going to look at the specific types of prayer alerts we can receive so that we will recognize them when they happen and pray in partnership with God’s will.

The first and most common type of prayer alert is an inner knowing. This happens when we just know in our hearts that something isn’t right. It’s a steady, consistent knowing that seems to come out of nowhere. You weren’t thinking about this person, but suddenly they come to mind and you feel the need to pray. This knowing and urgency to pray comes from the Holy Spirit who lives inside of us. When someone or something in our sphere of influence or prayer assignment needs urgent prayer, the Spirit will communicate that to our spirits (see John 16:13).

Years ago, when Ronald Reagan was president, I felt a strong alert in my spirit that something bad was going to happen to him. This was just months before an attempted assassination happened. I didn’t know factually that it was going to happen but I felt in my spirit that we needed to pray for his safety. So everywhere I went in that season, I would lead people in praying for the president. And I believe our intercession stopped the assassination attempt from succeeding. Our prayers opened the door for God to step in. The enemy always has a plan for destruction (see John 10:10) but as intercessors, we can abort the plan of the enemy by agreeing with the Lord in prayer.

That is the power of listening to the prayer alerts that we receive in the Spirit. Most often we won’t know precisely what is wrong or what exactly to pray. I didn’t hear God tell me someone was going to attempt to assassinate the president. I just had a sense that I needed to pray. But we don’t need to know all the details to be able to pray. We can pray in tongues, allowing the Holy Spirit to pray through us. And we can pray the general will of God over the person or situation (for example — safety, healing, protection, righteousness, wisdom, provision and so forth). Sometimes we will see evidence that our prayers worked, but sometimes we won’t know what our prayers accomplished. Either way, what is important is to obey when the prayer alert comes. {eoa}