By C. Peter Wagner

Pastors and other Christian leaders who are open to receive personal intercession and who ask God for it should soon find that intercession makes a measurable difference in their ministries. I fully recognize there are also many benefits of intercession that defy measurement, and sometimes they can be the most important. But the tangible benefits will also raise both our faith and our spirits.

God provides intercession in a variety of forms. Most of this chapter will deal with three kinds of personal intercessors committed to pray on a regular basis for a certain pastor, but we need to recognize that God moves in other ways as well.

D.L. Moody’s Invalid Intercessor

In the previous chapter, we were introduced to the two intercessors God used to open Dwight L. Moody to personal intercession. He was later involved in a dramatic incident that shows how God can touch an intercessor specifically for one event. At times God will assign what I have called a crisis intercessor to a particular task, rather than a personal intercessor.

This incident happened when Moody visited England in 1872 on a kind of sabbatical while his new church was being built in Chicago. His main purpose was to listen to and learn from some of England’s great preachers. But one Sunday he broke his routine and agreed to minister in a church in London.

The Sunday morning turned out to be a disastrous experience. He confessed afterward that he never had such a hard time preaching in his life. Everything was perfectly dead. Then the horrible thought came to him that he had to preach there again that night. He only went through with it because he had given his word he would do so.

But what a difference! That evening the church was packed and there was a new and vital spiritual atmosphere. Moody said, “The powers of an unseen world seemed to have fallen upon the audience.” Although he had not premeditated it, he decided to give an invitation for people to accept Jesus Christ as their personal Savior and was astounded when 500 people stood up. He repeated the invitation twice more to attempt to filter out the insincere, but all 500 went to the vestry to pray to receive Christ. A major revival started in that church and neighborhood that night!

And the intercession?

A woman who had attended the morning service returned home and told her invalid sister that a certain Mr. Moody from Chicago had preached. The invalid sister turned pale. “Mr. Moody from Chicago?” she asked in astonishment. “I read about him some time ago in an American paper and I have been praying to God to send him to London and to our church. If I had known he was going to preach this morning, I would have eaten no breakfast and spent the whole time he was preaching in prayer for him. Now, sister, go out of the room, lock the door, send me no dinner; no matter who comes don’t let them see me. I am going to spend the whole afternoon and evening in prayer!”

This story is told by E.M. Bounds, who comments, “So while Mr. Moody stood in the pulpit that had been like an ice chamber in the morning, the bedridden saint was holding him up before God, and in the evening God, who ever delights to answer prayer, poured out His Spirit in mighty power.&”

Gary Greenwald’s Team

God frequently empowers ministry through a team of intercessors. Gary Greenwald, pastor of the Eagle’s Nest church in Irvine, California, had been conducting annual evangelistic crusades in Hawaii. Attendance had grown to 2,000 after several years. As they prayed about it they decided to step out in faith one year and rent the Hilton Hawaiian ballroom, which seats 4,000. It cost thousands of dollars, and they would need large crowds to pay their bill.

They sent a team of intercessors from their church in Irvine to stay in the Hilton Hawaiian one week before the crusade for fasting and prayer. The spiritual warfare was intense that week. The leader of the team suffered so much anxiety during the nights that he almost capitulated and returned home. Several of the team were afflicted with sickness of one kind or another. But they persisted and felt they were winning the battle. A big question was: Would they ever fill the ballroom?

The first 3 nights of the crusade they drew 3,000 people. The final 2 nights saw the ballroom packed out at 4,000. It was one of the most powerful crusades they had ever conducted. Many conversions and healing miracles took place, such as a severed Achilles tendon being completely healed. The spiritual warfare had been done and the crusade itself was easy.

They rented the ballroom again the following year. But sending the intercessory team for that week had been very expensive so they decided not to do it again. Hawaii usually has an open atmosphere for preaching, but this year the crusade was a disaster! The highest attendance was only 1,800. Divisions occurred among the leadership. Serious problems occurred over the worship leaders. It was a financial wipeout.

Gary Greenwald learned about the value of teams of intercessors the hard way that year.

Personal Intercessors

God uses crisis intercessors as we saw with D.L. Moody and teams of intercessors as with Gary Greenwald. He also uses personal intercessors, those who make a commitment to pray over an extended period of time for a particular pastor or other Christian leader.

As I have studied the phenomenon of personal intercession for several years in the role of a participant observer, I have found it useful to separate personal intercessors into three approximate categories. I like to think of personal intercession as operating in three concentric circles around the leader. (See top of next page)

• The inner circle. Here we picture the pastor along with what I will call I-1 intercessors.
• The middle circle. This contains I-2 intercessors.
• The outer circle. This contains I-3 intercessors.

Think of the I-1 intercessors as having a close relationship to the pastor, the I-2 intercessors as having a casual relationship, and the I-3 intercessors as having a remote relationship to the pastor. I will describe them from the outside in.

I-3 Intercessors

I-3 intercessors can be quite remote from the pastor or leader they pray for. Most I-3 intercession is a one-way relationship. The leader often does not know who the I-3 intercessor is or that he or she is praying for them and their ministry. I think of Billy Graham, for example. Many intercessors have prayed faithfully for Billy Graham and his ministry for years without ever having so much as seen the evangelist in person. However, Billy Graham will be the first to tell you that such intercessors have made all the difference in the world in the effectiveness of his evangelistic ministry.

Of course, a certain amount of visibility beyond the local parish is needed in order to attract these kind of I-3 intercessors. Campus Crusade’s Bill Bright says, “I would assume that there are hundreds, if not thousands, who pray for me daily from grade school through senior citizens.” If it were not for such intercessors, Bright says, “I am sure I would have been dead long ago from physical exhaustion and would have been incapable of doing all that God has enable me to do.”

My friend Omar Cabrera, whose Vision of the Future Church of more than 100,000 in Argentina is one of the world’s largest, has a unique system for recruiting I-3 intercessors. He simply asks his church members and families to pray for him and his wife, Marfa, when they say grace at meals. A recent circulation estimates that they probably receive 20,000 prayers a day through this appeal.

My wife, Doris, and I have a growing list of I-3 intercessors whose names and addresses we know at this moment. Some of them have international reputations such as Dick Eastman, Jack McAlister, Quin Sherrer, Jim Montgomery, Archie Parrish, Gary Bergel and others. Some of them we know only by name since we have never met them personally. Several are members of our 120 Fellowship Sunday School class. Others are old-time friends or former students. Many have the spiritual gift of intercession. Some pray primarily for us. Others have a long list of leaders they also pray for such as Jack McAlister who prays daily for more than 200 leaders and others. And I am sure we have I-3 intercessors whose names are not on the list.

A memorable experience occurred one day when I was standing in the crowded lobby of the Osaka Hilton Hotel in Japan. A perfect stranger, a Caucasian, walked up to me and said, “Are you Peter Wagner?” When I told him I was, he shared that he had prayed for me every morning for the past six years, and was pleased to finally meet me in person. I thanked him, took his name, and wrote him a letter, but I never received a reply. I have no idea where he came from or where he went. He seems like a modern Melchizedek!

My favorite I-3 intercessor is a two-and-a-half-year-old Jess Rainer. His father, Southern Baptist Pastor Thom Rainer, was doing a Ph.D at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and writing his dissertation on Peter Wagner. Needless to say, we kept in close touch during the process. In the midst of it, he wrote me a letter and discussed an academic matter or two. Then he added a paragraph that said, “By the way, my youngest son (two-and-a-half-year-old Jess) has heard your name so much that he concludes all of his prayer as follows: ‘…and thank you God for Peter Wagner, in Jesus’ name, Amen.’” May Jess’s number multiply.

I-2 Intercessor

Typical I-2 intercessors will have a regular, but somewhat casual, contact with the pastor or leader they pray for. Pastors’ I-2 intercessors will see them in the pulpit every Sunday and shake hands when they go out the church door after the service. They may cross paths from time to time in other church-related events. But for many, this is about the extent of the personal contact.

One of the things I am suggesting in this book is that pastors take steps to cultivate contacts with I-2 intercessors. Most pastors I know experience from time to a time a certain person in the line of those leaving the church service gives them an especially warm handshake and says, “Pastor, I pray for you every day!” We often take that as a formality and do not pay any more attention to it than we do to the statement, “I enjoyed the sermon.” But in many cases there might be more to it than simply a formality. At least it is a pathway worth following because it might lead to discovering a personal intercessor truly anointed by God for supporting us in prayer.

A well-developed team of I-2 intercessors enjoys a two-way contact with the pastor. It is therefore essential to know who the I-2 intercessors are. Later on I will discuss the ways and means of identifying, screening, recruiting, servicing and maintaining these prayer partners. They obviously need to be kept better informed than I-3 intercessors. They also need to make themselves available to be called on for special prayer if and when a necessity arises.

The optimum size of a group of I-2 intercessors is not yet know, mainly because we do not have a large enough number of viable examples to work with. John Maxwell likes his group to be 100, although not more. He has a waiting list of those who would like to be enrolled as prayer partners and he lets new ones in only as openings occur. I do think there is an upward limit of I-2 intercessors, but this would not apply to I-3s.

The main principle as I see it is to maintain a reasonably high level of commitment among I-2 intercessors, and that comes through a certain amount of intentional personal contact as I will detail later on. Therefore, the number of I-2 intercessors should not become too large to sustain necessary contact. It will take time. Some time on our schedules needs to be set aside for this contact. How much time is reasonable and appropriate is a question that must be answered in each individual case.

My wife, Doris, and I have 18 I-2 intercessors on our prayer team. Ten of them are members of our 120 Fellowship Sunday School class: Sandra Gilbreath, George and Pam Marhad, Joanna McClure, Dave and Jane Rumph, Erick and Joanna Stone, Lil Walker and Mary Wernle. Two, David and Maureen Anderson, attend another church in the area. Four are from Texas: Elizabeth Alves, Cindy Jacobs, Bobbye Byerly and Jane Anne Pratt. One, Mary Lance Sisk, lives in North Carolina, and one, jean Steffenson, lives in Colorado.

Somewhat predictable, 14 of 18 are women. There again is the approximately 80 percent I mentioned earlier.

The Gift of Intercession

Not all of our intercessors have the gift of intercession, although I think God has chosen to allow us the privilege of a rather high percentage of those with the gift for reasons I will mention later. Of our 18 I-2 intercessors, 10 (Elizabeth Alves, Maureen Anderson, Bobbye Byerly, Cindy Jacobs, Joanna McClure, Jane Anne Pratt, Mary Lance Sisk, Jean Steffenson, Mary Werle and Lil Walker) have been recognized as having the gift of intercession.

Doris and I consider the eight who do not have the gift of intercession as essential and precious to ourselves and our ministry as those who do. Some who do not have the gift are actually more committed to supporting us day in and day out than some who do. The center and guards are no less important on a football team than the running backs and the ends. It takes the whole group as a team to win.

Because of this kind of language is relatively new to our Christian community in general, the process of absorbing its implications takes time. Pam Marhad is a key member of our team. But she had to work through her role as a I-2 intercessor as one who does not have a spiritual gift of intercession. She wrote about her experience in Body Life, our Sunday School class monthly newsletter. She said, “More often than not, when I decide I will pray for certain people or situations, a feeling of frustration and ‘whats the use?’ overcomes my good intentions and defeats me.”

As she prayed about it, Pam felt the Lord took her to the parable of the talents in Matthew 25. There it is clear that God is the One who decides who gets what talents and how many. When she saw that, she confessed, “I’ve been guilty of looking around and saying in my heart, ‘Lord, I’m just a one-talent prayer.’ Others You have made five-talent pray-ers – let them pray. My prayers probably don’t matter.”

Then Pam rightly concludes that all God expects of her is to use the resources He has given her, nothing more, nothing less. “As I am faithful and obedient to use what He’s given,” Pam says, “then He’s free to give me more if He chooses. If I don’t value His gifts to me and neglect them because they don’t measure up to what I see others doing, then I very effectively tie the Lord’s hands in my life and find myself on the outside looking in with envy and resentment.”2 It could not be said better.

When we invite I-2 intercessors to be a part of the prayer partners team, we expect that the relationship will continue for an indefinite period of time. However, we recognize that God will assign us intercessors for a season, then give them other assignments, and we are open to that as well. Since we first formed our team of prayer partners in 1988, several have dropped off and several have been added. We expect this to continue, although we relate to all of them at any time as if our relationship will continue for many years.

Doris and I are the only leaders for whom some of our I-2 intercessors have committed themselves to pray regularly, but others pray on the same level for several leaders. Bobbye Byerly, for example, who is one of the national and international leaders of Women’s Aglow Fellowship, is also committed as a personal intercessor for Jane Hansen, Joy Dawson, Cindy Jacobs and Mary Lance Sisk. Part of Bobbye’s highly developed ministry of personal intercession is a keen sensitivity to the dancing Spirit of God over the people she prays for. For a season she will find God burdening her more for one than the others, then it might change.

As I write this (possibly because I am writing this book), a note just received from Bobbye Byerly says, “Peter, you are coming up No. 1 in my prayer discharge right now. It’s nothing I’ve done or failed to do. Nothing you’ve done. I would guess that God is orchestrating a new realm of prayer support for you at this time.”

Feeling the Wind of the Spirit

A few months ago, Doris and I were making a trip to England to do a pastors’ seminar. Just before we left, one of our prayer partners, Dave Rumph, who is a research engineer at our local Xerox branch, said he sensed that the Lord was arranging something special in England with Roger Forster, whom I had never met personally. My assigned ministry in England had nothing directly to do with Roger or the Ichthus movement he leads.

Bobbye Byerly also phoned with a prophetic word sh had received, and which I asked her to write out for me. In part it said, “Feel the wind of My Spirit. I am lifting you higher and higher. You need no effort on your part for My wind will lift you. Greater days are ahead. Far more than you can yet see are My plans for you.”

Sure enough, the trip to England became a milestone in our ministry. Not so much because of my scheduled pastor’s seminar, but because of an unplanned meeting with Roger Forster and Gerald Coates, two of the leaders of the March for Jesus movement. In that meeting, God began to give direction to Doris and me to take leadership of what we not call “A Day to Change the World” on June 25, 1994, in connection with the United Prayer Track of the A.D. 2000 Movement, which we also coordinate. The plans developing for this are “far more than we could see” before we went to England. It could turn out to be the largest prayer meeting in Christian history.

Here were two I-2 intercessors who were so tuned in to our ministry and God’s plans for us that God used them and their prayers (as well as the prayers of others) to move us into an incredibly exciting and potentially awesome new area of service for God’s Kingdom.

I do most of my teaching at Fuller in one-week or two-week modules. When I do them in one week, I teach mornings and afternoons each day. It is a concentrated schedule, but teaching usually stimulates and increases my energy level rather than diminishing it. A couple of years ago, one of my one-week church growth classes was not going well. On the Saturday before I began feeling washed out. Sunday also. When I began teaching on Monday I had no energy and I felt as though I was carrying a heavy load on my shoulders. Tuesday was almost as bad. But on Wednesday the load lifted, I could relax while I taught, and I could think clearly and creatively for the first time since Saturday.

Soon afterward three of our I-2 intercessors, Mary Wernle, Cindy Jacobs and Joanna McClure, approached me one at a time and said, “What happened last Wednesday? Why did I feel you needed special prayer that day?” When I told them, we rejoiced together that God had coupled us in ministry and that the answers to prayer were so tangible.

I-1 Intercessors

God calls I-1 intercessors to have a special close relationship with the pastor or other leader. Sometimes this involves a close social relationship, sometimes it is a largely spiritual relationship. Most, if not all, of the I-1 intercessors I know have the spiritual gift of intercession. Through it they have developed an intimacy with the Father that allows them to hear the Father’s voice and know His purposes more clearly than most.

The leaders I know who relate to I-1 prayer partners sometimes have three of them, sometimes two, but most frequently one. Through the years, God has assigned two of them to us. The first was Cathy Schaller who was assigned to us for seven years. The second is Alice Smith, our current I-1 intercessor. They are both extremely powerful women in spiritual things, and both of them were first bonded to us in prayer through extraordinary circumstances.

The Ladder and the Fall

The memorable day of our bonding with Cathy Schaller was March 25, 1983. I went out to our garage at 8:30 that evening to get some income tax papers. I had stored them up on a loft in the garage, which was 10 feet off the cement floor. As I had been doing for years, I climbed the stepladder to get onto the loft. My head was 12 feet above the floor when I began from the ladder to the loft.

Then in an instant something pulled the ladder out from under me (I have chosen those words carefully!) and I took a free fall, landing on the back of my head, my neck and my upper back. During the second or so it took to complete the fall, I was thinking to myself, “This is it!” but I also was able to shout loudly enough so that Doris came running to the garage. My next-door neighbor, Randy Becker, heard the commotion and rushed over. He and Doris called the paramedics and prayed.

The ambulance came and took me to the emergency room at St. Luke’s Hospital. They put me though all these tests and X-rays and a couple of hours later sent me home. Remarkably, they found no structural damage or internal injuries. I was badly bruised, stiff and sore for about six weeks, but had no after effects at all from what was the most serious accident of my life.

That evening Cindy Schaller and her husband, Mike, who is a school psychologist, had taken a group of young girls to a Ken Medema concert in a church about 10 miles from my home. Cathy at that time was in her late 20s, and was working part-time as a speech therapist. They had three children who were not with them that evening. Some months previously they had joined Lake Avenue Congregational Church and the 120 Fellowship, but we had not known each other well as yet.

A Life and Death Battle

When Mike and Cathy returned to their seats after an intermission, Cathy happened to notice that her watch said 8:30. They began to dim the lights for effect when an incredibly powerful cloud of evil darkness seemed to envelope Cathy. The presence of evil was so strong around her that she could smell it. In her spirit she identified it as a spirit of death and destruction. The Holy Spirit said to her, “It has come to destroy someone you have a relationship to, but not one of your children.” She felt a shield of protection raised between the force of evil and her own being, so she knew she was personally safe.

Without hesitation, Cathy began to pray under her breath for “legions of angels.” Then a severe pain came into her back. It felt as through her back was breaking. She squirmed with pain and Mike whispered, “What’s wrong?” All she could say was, “My spirit is troubled and my back hurts.” Mike laid on hands and prayed that her back would be healed. Cathy continued to pray in the Spirit under her breath for 20 minutes, then sensed a total release. The battle was over, the evil cloud left, she relaxed, enjoyed the rest of the concert and went home to bed.

Late that night her bedside telephone rang. It was our Sunday School class president alerting the class prayer chain to pray for me because I had suffered a terrible accident. Cathy instantly knew in her spirit what she had prayed for at the concert, but the president could not confirm the exact time of the fall.

The next morning Cathy’s call to Doris and me was one of the most incredible telephone calls I can remember. We could not prove it in a court of law, but Doris and I do not need a court of law to be convinced that Cathy’s faithfulness in prayer that night literally saved my physical life. Satan had sent an evil spirit (which we later located, but that is another story) to kill me. for years and years after that, Doris and I took Cathy and Mike out to dinner every March 25 to celebrate my deliverance from “The Fall” and express our gratitude to her for ministering to us.

Seven Years of Learning

“The Fall” incident was the dramatic beginning of a prayer partner relationship of seven years, which ultimately changed the direction of our lives and ministry. At the beginning none of us knew much about prayer or personal intercession.

Cathy recalls that some time before the incident someone casually mentioned to her that she might have the gift of intercession. Subsequently she received internal impressions about relatives who were in danger on two separate occasions, but had no idea how to respond to them. Both of them died! You can imagine how grateful I am that the third time she did respond. When she called me the next morning, I said, “Cathy, do yo know that this is a gift of intercession?”

Through the years, Cathy related to Doris and me as our first I-1 intercessor. Those were the years the seed thoughts for the content of this entire book were planted. She was learning what it meant to be an intercessor. We were learning how to receive intercession. We had our ups and our downs, and we needed both of them to learn what we know now.

After seven years, Cathy’s gift had developed to the extent that God released her from her assignment to the Wagners and assigned her to be the full-time prayer leader for DAWN Ministries, an international mission agency promoting saturation church planting. She is now an ordained minister and an intercessor for James Montgomery, DAWN’s president, and his wife, Lyn.

Few people have had the profound effect on our lives, careers and ministries as has Cathy Schaller. Her name will come upon several other occasions as the book moves on.

Intercessors Need Help Too

One of the things we learned about I-1 intercessors is that they, particularly during critical times, need intercessory help themselves. The spiritual warfare they find themselves engaged in on behalf of the pastor or leader can become overwhelming. Moses, for example, would not have been able to intercede effectively for Joshua without the timely help of Aaron and Hur as he fought the battle of Rephidim. I recall one time when Cathy desperately needed her Aaron’s and Hur’s.

During the 1980s, I had invited John Wimber to help me teach a new course on Signs, Wonders and Church Growth at Fuller Seminary. It eventually stirred up a very intense controversy and I was in the center of it for years. This was by far the most painful experience I have personally had since leaving the mission field in Bolivia. And it lasted for three and a half years!

Without going into details here, by the end of three and a half years I had come to the end of my patience. I had been on the defensive for all that time and I was prepared to switch to the offensive. A crucial meeting had been scheduled with the seminary Faculty Senate. My temper was on edge and my guns were loaded for the showdown. I went to the meeting. A grimfaced dean entered and put my book “How to Have a Healing Ministry” on the table in front of him. A distinguished theological professor did the same. I knew very well that both of them had higher IQs that I did. I thought I was in for it!

But the meeting was called to order and there was no showdown. The proposal I presented was passed unanimously. No one was nasty. A couple of rather routine questions were addressed to me, nothing else. I had my guns loaded, but did not have to pull the trigger. Why? The spiritual warfare behind the whole scenario had been done before the meeting began. I believe that Cathy as my I-1 intercessor was the principal agent for winning that spiritual battle.

But it was not easy for her by any means. Looking back, I am convinced that this Faculty Senate meeting was a significant milestone in my personal ministry career, it not also for Fuller Seminary. Because of that, the warfare was more intense than usual.

During the days leading up to that meeting, Cathy experienced several devastating events.

Cathy’s car was totaled and she received a serious whiplash. The other driver was clearly at fault, but they were suing Cathy!

The family of a student in the Christian junior high school where Cathy was then teaching had pressed a written list of 30 trumped-up charges against her competence and character. She was emotionally devastated. The charges were being taken to her school board, which coincidentally was meeting to consider them on the same day our Faculty Senate was meeting.

Cathy’s kitchen caught on fire, and the fire burned a hole through her kitchen floor.

Aaron’s and Hur’s

More than ever before, Cathy needed her Aaron’s and Hur’s. And God sent them.

The first one we knew about was Dave Rumph, an I-2 intercessor who does not have a gift of intercession, but does have a recognized gift of encouragement. God assigned Dave to pray for Cathy at that time, but especially to call her on the telephone several times that preceding week to encourage her.

After the fact, we learned about eight others who prayed for Cathy. Christy Graham, whom I have previously mentioned as an example fo a crisis intercessor, had been assigned by God to pray intensely for Cathy six weeks before the Faculty Senate meeting, and she had been praying faithfully every day.

Lil Walker, who is now one of our I-2 but at that time was not, was assigned to pray for Cathy. Linda Stanberry, a furloughed missionary taking my courses at Fuller, received a week-long burden to pray for Cathy. Nanette Brown, a member of our Sunday School class, was awakened by God at 3:30 a.m. The morning of Cathy’s school board meeting and she prayed for Cathy for three-quarters of an hour before going back to sleep. The other four were Yvonne Lindsey, Joanna McClure and Elizabeth Philip from our Sunday School class, and one of the other teachers in Cathy’s school.

Cathy was doing what Euodia and Syntyche did for the apostle Paul: spiritual warfare on my behalf. I did not have to go through the potentially explosive Faculty Senate debate I had anticipated. Cathy took the brunt of the spiritual attack for me. It never occurred to her to complain. She was using her spiritual gift and flowing with the Holy Spirit, and her prayers for me were being answered. But she needed help. None of the nine people who helped her was praying for me at the time. Satan was trying to get Cathy’s arms down (to use the analogy of Moses praying for Joshua), but God provided her the nine Aaron’s and Hur’s.

The results of their prayers? The lawsuit from the accident was dropped; the school board dismissed the charges totally; the fire insurance paid for rebuilding Cathy’s kitchen floor much better than it had been before the fire. She told us that the week after the Faculty Senate meeting was one of the most relaxed, pleasant and less stressful weeks she could remember both in her school and with her family. The battle had been fought and won!

A helpful analysis of what happens spiritually in situations like this comes from Sylvia R. Evans of Elim Bible Fellowship in Lima, New York. She says that one of God’s most wonderful blessings is His faithfulness “to waken intercessors for the ‘night watch’ or an ‘early morning watch’ and to place them on duty to hold off the enemy.” She sees intercessors as watchmen constantly on the alert to be assigned their position in battle.

Speaking of the full armor of God in Ephesians 6, Evans interprets the passage as suggesting that the intercessor “is to be able to aggressively withstand the enemy, taking the attack for others who may be the real target. The watchman must be able to quench all the fiery darts, not only against himself or herself but also against the ones for whom they are standing watch.”3

Doris and I are thankful to God for raising up intercessors willing and able to take the fiery darts of the enemy for us. They are the most precious group of people related to our lives and our ministry. And we rejoice as we see God spreading this kind of spiritual power more and more widely throughout the Body of Christ these days.

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Used by permission www.globalharvest.org.. Excerpt from Prayer Shield, published by Regal Books (1992).

C. Peter Wagner went to be with the Lord on October 21, 2016. He served as Chancellor of Wagner Leadership Institute and President of Global Harvest Ministries. He was a widely recognized authority in the fields of church growth and spiritual warfare, and was the author of more than 50 books.