But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord oneday is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day (2 Peter 3:8).

So many people were being ushered into His presence during that season in our church. So many at that time were caught up into heaven, into that completeness. We began to hear the heartbeat of heaven. This depth of His presence was new for many. What we learned was that we were moving into true intercession. There was a mixture of love, joy and extreme heartbreak. This heartbreak that we would feel was from the extreme intense love that our Father had for His children all over the world. Like in the story of the prodigal son, we felt the Father missing them and longing for them to come back to Him and His love. Out of that longing , at the same time. We become, if I can redeem this word, "addicted" to His glorious presence.

Calling Forth His Desires

In these times I often "see" faces, places, and situations in my mind's eye. I often feel like God is showing me things that I need to think about and "brood over" in the way that a mother hen broods over her eggs. Genesis 1:1 says, "Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness. God's Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss" (The Message Bible). To be honest, most of the time when I am in this place, I just agree. I agree with the plans that God already has for people's lives, for regions, and for the earth. "Yes God." "Do that God." "Go there, Father." "That's amazing, Lord Jesus." When I pray this way, I feel as though I am praying from His heart. It is almost as though I am calling forth the very desires that are already in the heart of God, as though I am calling them into existence.

In those times, I feel as though I become the very "womb of God." "He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water'" (John 7:38). The words innermost being come from the word, koilia, which means "womb."  We are the womb of God. In our intercessions, we are creating and birthing the things of heaven. We carry the life of the kingdom within us. It will flow out of us in our intercessions.

No Agendas Required

When any of us go into God's presence, when we tap into the realm of heaven, we position ourselves to receive great breakthrough. One of the things that we need to be careful about is not going before God with our own agendas. Sometimes I think we go before God and we already have an idea of what we want God to do, so we close ourselves off from receiving and partnering with God and what He may want to do in the moment. In fact, God may want to do something completely different. It is almost like we say, "Here God, here is my idea, now do it my way." When we do that, we handcuff God. We are no longer partnering with Him.

Often, when people ask me to pray for them, they come with an agenda-or an idea-of what they want to ask God to do. When I am praying for people and I ask them what they need prayer for, sometimes their requests are not what is on God's agenda for the moment. We need to learn how to be sensitive and move with the Holy Spirit. The same with intercession; we need to listen to the heartbeat of God and not always present our stuff to Him. It's not that our agendas are wrong or right and there are times for that. But when I just want to spend time with God and feel his presence, I don't bring any agenda.

I remember one time while I was praying, a man's face came before me. He was an Asian man. When I saw his face, I began agreeing with God on behalf of this man. I still to this day do not know anything about this man nor do I understand what I was praying about concerning him. You never know. It could have been an intervention prayer, a prayer that saved that man's life. Or, it could have been that I was praying for a whole people group. Some things will not be known this side of eternity. It is important that we learn to respond to His leading- even when there will be no immediate gratification from seeing an answer in the natural.

Another time I woke up praying for one of our sons, Brian. I prayed for his safety. Right after I prayed, we got a call from him in the middle of the night telling us that he was driving home from a trip down south. He had fallen asleep at the wheel while driving and had run off the road. He called to tell us that he was OK. I was so thankful that I had been woken up to pray.

Intercession is just the fruit of being with Him. It was birthed in my own heart because of spending time with Him. I go into His presence to love Him, to experience "spirit-to-spirit"-His Spirit with my spirit. When I experienced this for the first time, I remember just being with Him and feeling our hearts connecting. It felt like my heart was picking up the same heartbeat as His-His heart "liquid love." His heart was broken for humanity. Our two hearts are intertwined. When you feel that, when you see His heart broken and His amazing love, your only response can be to pray with burning passion-compassion for a lost generation.

Whatever God has promised gets stamped with the Yes of Jesus. In him, this is what we preach and pray, the great Amen, God's Yes and our Yes together, gloriously evident (2 Corinthians 1:20 The Message Bible).

The amazing thing to me is that God is waiting for us to enter into Him. He is longing for us to see His world, to see into that glorious realm of His kingdom. He is wanting us to partner with Him for heavenly breakthrough.

God Likes Our Ideas

God's yes together with our yes are what brings about breakthrough in prayer. I'm continually amazed that God would choose to partner with us. But, at the same time, it makes all the sense in the world that He would want us to join with Him in making history. We are, after all, His children. He is a great and all- powerful God and also a loving and caring Father who, I believe, wants to be involved in our lives. Incredibly, He also wants us to be involved in His kingdom. He wants us to help build His kingdom here on earth. I believe that God likes my ideas. Some of the prophetic acts that we do come from the Lord, but I think that some of the things we do are good ideas that the Father says, "Yeah, that's good."

I am convinced that God likes my ideas. So, when I pray, I pray from a place of security. It is like I go into prayer believing that God is on my side. Let me give you an example. We took a team to Croatia in 2007. It was one of the most amazing prayer trips I've ever been on. One of the places that we planned on going to was a concentration camp outside of  Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. During World War II many Jews, Serbs, Gypsies, anyone who was not a Croat, were put to death. It was pretty brutal. We had joined with our missionary friends and a national pastor and his wife to go there and pray. How do you pray for such a huge, devastating thing? I had been praying, pondering how we could make a difference and help bring healing to a land of much bloodshed. The idea came to get a bottle of wine and have it poured out on the land. We had been praying in one of the towns that morning and I had honestly wondered if this wine thing was what we were to do. I mentioned to some of the group that we needed to get a bottle of wine before we left for the concentration camp but purposely dismissed it still thinking that it might not be the right thing to do. One of the gals on the team spoke up and said, "Are we going to get the wine before we go to the camp?" "OK. Let's get it," I said.

I hadn't told the national pastors what we were going to do yet. You see, I felt like the pastor and his wife were to pour the wine out on the ground as a prophetic sign of reconciliation prayer. Srecko, the national pastor, is Croatian and his wife, Inas, is Serbian. If you don't know, those were two of the many ethnic groups involved not only in World War II but also in the Bosnian War of the early 1990s. So I explained to this wonderful pastor and his wife the idea of pouring out the wine on the ground, and then as we prayed together believing that God would cover the bloodshed over the land with His blood. They held the bottle together and poured. They had never done anything like this before, but were so gracious. While they poured the wine out, I was watching their 6-year-old son playing. He was so carefree and happy. His bloodline represented two warring ethnic groups. His generation would no longer have the pain of war. There would be healing.

Was this my idea or the Holy Spirit's idea? I don't know. It just felt really right. I feel like our lives can be so intertwined with God's that our thoughts, feelings and even what we do are melted together with His. When God made us just the way we are, He liked what He made. He likes everything about us. I believe He enjoys our ideas, and we in turn like His ideas. God chooses us. He chose David.

It says that God chose David and it was in David's heart to build a house for the Lord. God told David in verse 18, "David, you did well that it was in your heart." Wow! That is our God. God chose a man who He knew would say, "Yes!" God said, "yes" to David, and everything else is history. God's yes to you and your yes to Him are all that is needed.

Staying Focused

When our daughter Leah was expecting her first baby, she asked with permission from her husband if I would be the coach for her. I had had three children by natural birth, and she told me, "You're the pro, Mom." It was an honor for me. I told my husband afterwards that it was the most amazing experience and the hardest work I've done since I had my own kids.

God is always breaking into our natural world and showing us the spirit realm. That's what happened in this birthing experience with our daughter. In a natural birth you can invite friends and family into the labor room. Our daughter is a very social being and loved having those friends and family visit up until the time of the birth. As you may know, towards the end of the labor there is a time that is the most intense. It takes all of your concentration just to make it through the contraction. We were at that place. Whenever a contraction would start, we would release peace over Leah, and then the focus was all on her part to listen to my instructions. One of our friends came into the room at one of those moments and began talking, not really paying attention to the intensity of what was going on. Leah seemed to be OK with it. After the delivery, I asked her about the distraction in the room. She told me that she really didn't notice because she was so focused on my voice and what I was telling her to do. As she told me that, I had a revelation of intercession. When God gives us strategies to pray-you know, the ones that we burn with-we can become so focused on His voice that we don't become distracted. Nothing can take us away from his voice. There were times during her delivery that we would lock eyes as well. It was how she got through the intense times. She drew strength from looking into my eyes. There was an intensity in my eyes or determination that she picked up on and could keep going.

There are times in our lives when we must stay closer, locking onto His words and His vision. God gives us prayer strategies, and we look to Him for focus and understanding on how to pray with results. Then the birthing will come.

By the way, the baby that was born that day to our son-in-law and daughter was named him Judah (Hebrew for "praise"). The result of our steadfast focus can only be praise for Him.

When I pray from the heart of God, I become so lost in the presence of God that it feels like the only thing I am listening to is the voice of God. In that place, His heart, His plans, His voice become so real it is almost like we become one. At those times, it feels like I pray with Him. When I am in that place, all I have to do is agree with God and partner with the things that are already on His heart. Those are the times when we pray together, and I begin to co-labor with God through my prayers. Those are the times where I begin to see real breakthrough, no agenda required.

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