From the desk of Steve Shultz:
If you're looking to go deeper in prayer and intercession, this word by Catherine Brown will show you how. Catherine shares some awesome testimonies with the power of prayer in this word that will inspire you to go deeper in travail for what the Lord sets before you. Yes, the world NEEDS intercessors to stand in the gap and pray for God's plans and purposes to be done in the earth.
I like what Catherine shares here about transitional prayer: Transitional prayer is prayer of encounter—the "garden" is the soil of our hearts and minds where God plants His purposes and meets with us to bring forth His will. And transitional prayer is prayer of exchange—where our flesh surrenders to the will and dominion of God by his Holy Spirit.
Here are also a couple of great E-books from Catherine that you can download even now:
Catherine Brown:
Transitional Prayer—A Place of Passage
Prayer is the heartbeat of every born again Believer that brings us before the throne of grace to experience the reality of God's love, authority, wisdom and power in our communion with Him. Without such divine encounters in prayer, we would miss out on the continuous process by which we mature in our comprehension of prayer and its affect in and through our lives. We would be like flowers without water and, in a spiritual context, we would quickly "wither" and become dry and lifeless.
Whilst in Uganda, I revisited the Garden of Gethsemane Scriptures and Christ's intercession there. Allow me to share some thoughts with you from my time of meeting with the Holy Spirit. The Garden of Gethsemane reveals a type of prayer that I will describe as "transitional prayer," which is prayer that causes a shift and a breakthrough, allowing us to pass from one stage of our God-given destiny and break through into another level. Transitional prayer serves as a place of passage in our lives.
Transitional prayer bridges from one season in our lives into the next. It may be described as prayer that flows from the heart of our Heavenly Father, with the mind of Christ to us. It is painful, powerful and a necessary type of prayer in the life of every Believer.
It is a Walk of One
Sit here while I go over there and pray.—Matthew 26:36
Jesus had taken Simon and the two sons of Zebedee with Him to the garden of Gethsemane, but although they had accompanied Christ, when it was time to pray the Lord went off to be alone with His Father. There are some things in our Christian walk that we can share with others, but there are other times when it can only be a walk of one, whereby we stand alone before God. At the moment of our conversion, at various significant milestones in our faith walk, and at the time of judgment/reward at the end of the Age, we stand alone before God. Transitional prayer is such a type of divinely-inspired, one-on-One spiritual encounter.
The disciples could not stay awake with Christ. He said to them, "Will you not wait with Me one hour?" The call to wait with the Master for one hour is still before the praying Church. As we transition from glory to glory, the principles of prayer in Gethsemane will help to enable the Church to pray and release God's apostolic end-time strategies.
It is Painful Prayer
...He began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then He said to them, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with Me."—Matthew 26:37-38
Mark 14 records Jesus, "began to be deeply distressed and troubled" (verse 33).
Jesus Christ's intercession in Gethsemane was extremely painful on levels that we can barely begin to comprehend. He suffered physically, spiritually, mentally and emotionally as He prayed. Whilst our prayers and intercession cannot be compared to that of Christ's Gethsemane experience, nonetheless we understand that there are times when God grants us grace to pray and push through our own discomfort, in order that His purposes and plans may be released from Heaven to earth—both for us as individuals and also for a corporate faith application.
Have you ever prayed until it hurts? I recall when God placed a burden for Korea upon me and how He turned my heart inside out with His heart for the Believers who were being persecuted there. I wept for several days as God unfolded the atrocities they were suffering. Such prevailing intercession moves Heaven on behalf of earth. Ultimately, God used this time to release a powerful prophetic word and to mobilise many on behalf of North Korean Believers. The prophetic word was flown into North Korea in hot air balloons, whilst others risked their lives to deliver it across the North Korean border to Believers there.
On another occasion, I was in Uganda and had only one night before I was due to fly back home. I began to pray fervently and called out to God, saying I would not board the plane to return to the U.K. unless I saw at least one person become born again. With that prayer, God flooded my being in travail for souls, and I wept until there was only a quiet whisper remaining in me. The next day, God faithfully swept many new sons into the Kingdom and I baptised them right there in the little African prison!
The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.—Matthew 26:41b
Jesus counseled His disciples that they must watch, and pray, and stay alert, and avoid the temptation of allowing their flesh to rule over the leading of the Holy Spirit in their lives. As disciples today, may we receive this word of divine encouragement today and pray even when it hurts; pushing through until breakthrough comes down in the holy fire of God's presence and power.
It is Enduring Prayer
An angel from Heaven appeared to Him and strengthened Him. And being in anguish, He prayed more earnestly, and His sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.—Luke 22:43-44
It is my firm conviction that the Father heart of God is supremely evident at Gethsemane. God released an angel to come and minister to His dear Son; God gave the gift of endurance to Christ to pass through Gethsemane and reach Golgotha.
Endurance is perhaps something we associate with athletes, as they work hard in training to prepare to compete in athletic events; or perhaps we associate endurance with passing through a trial or temptation of some kind. Indeed, both applications have spiritual comparisons in the place of prayer. We are continually being trained by the Holy Spirit in the things of God, and we are led through the valley into victory on the mountaintop as we pass through seasons of change. We are pressed down, and in the pressing we become more like our Beloved.
Paul instructed his spiritual son Timothy, "Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Jesus Christ" (2 Timothy 2:3), and went on to speak further of the athlete's victory crown attained in competition and the hard working farmer being first to receive his share of the crops. All of these allegorical comparisons point us to the benefits of endurance—we receive a crown of glory because Jesus bore the crown of thorns; we share in the harvest rewards, because Christ is Lord of the Harvest; we serve the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and follow Him onto the battlefield where He reigns victorious. May God open our eyes afresh to see the beauty and benefits of the gift of endurance and teach us to pray as though our lives depend on it, as they surely do; what a person is in the place of prayer is a reflection of the conformed inner man.
It is Prayer that Questions
...everything is possible for you. Take this cup from Me...—Mark 14:36
By asking His Father to take the cup from Him, Jesus raised a question of the possibility of not having to drink the cup of suffering. Jesus was an obedient Son and understood His destiny, yet even Christ asked the Father if it was possible for the cup to be taken from Him.
At Golgotha, Christ called out again to His Father with a question that did not receive an answer this side of eternity: "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachtani?"—which means, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me" (Mark 15:34b).
Beloved, there are times in our lives when we call out to God when our hearts are full of pain, with questions that have no answers. I recall such a situation some years ago and the comfort I received when I realised that our dear Lord died on the Cross with an unanswered question. Jesus can empathise with us in every situation. He is the Light at the end of the tunnel and the Light in the middle! He is beautiful in every situation and brings peace to our troubled souls. May we rest in His sovereignty and in His ability to meet us in the place of pain and help us transition to healing and wholeness, so that we may be used to pray life-changing prayers that flow from His heart.
The Father's Gift—The Son's Choice
Mark records, "Going a little farther, He fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from Him. 'Abba, Father,' He said, 'everything is possible for You...'" (v35-36a).
My Father, if it is not possible...—Matthew 26:42a
In Gethsemane—the place of silent encounter—Jesus did not feel abandoned by His Father. This time took Him deep into the place of covenant love, deeper still in His relationship with His Father. God is with us in the place of transitional prayer as we each face our own "Gethsemane" (where we pass from "groaning" to "glory"). God our Father is near to strengthen and encourage us. He grants us grace to choose the path He has ordained and placed before us, no matter what the cost of following that Kingdom destiny path may be.
It is Surrendered Prayer—A Time of Opening
...Yet not as I will, but as You will.—Matthew 26:39
My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may Your will be done.—Matthew 26:42
God enables us to surrender to His will at the appointed time. Surrender is about our ability to trust in God and obey Him. In love, He enables us to turn from self-reliance and become completely God-reliant. New places of surrender in us lead to in-breaking of new levels of anointing upon us. Holy boldness is always preceded by a fresh brokenness in God's servants, in which Christ is lifted up and exalted through our adoration of Him and obedience to Him.
It is Prayer that Embraces the Cross
It is true to say that without Gethsemane, there could be no Golgotha; Golgotha may be described as the outward manifestation of the glory of the Lord's intercession at Gethsemane, in which Christ travailed to break through to the Cross. Similarly, there could be no Pentecost without the Cross—the Blood had to be poured out as a fountainhead of God's love at Calvary before the Spirit could be poured out at Pentecost. Every priest has an altar and every altar requires a sacrifice. The Cross is the altar upon which Christ, our High Priest, sacrificed His life once and for all for mankind, purchasing our redemption by His precious Blood. He ministers in the power of an indestructible life. The altar was sanctified by the Blood, and the Blood was acceptable as it was empowered by the sacrificial life of Christ given on the Cross.
The Cross must be central in our lives, for there we receive the revelation and impartation of the divine exchanges purchased by Christ's sacrifice and the enabling of the Holy Spirit to live our lives for God. Such divine exchanges include Jesus bearing our sin so that we might receive forgiveness; He was punished so that we might receive peace; He was rejected to that we might be accepted; He was made a curse so that we might enter into blessing and be restored in fellowship with God.
It is Breakthrough Prayer
Transitional prayer is epiphany prayer, i.e. it is life-changing and transformational. Transitional prayer is prayer of encounter—the "garden" is the soil of our hearts and minds where God plants His purposes and meets with us to bring forth His will. And transitional prayer is prayer of exchange—where our flesh surrenders to the will and dominion of God by his Holy Spirit.
In the garden of Eden, the flesh of mankind was overcome by temptation and sin, and the first Adam fell from grace; in the Garden of Gethsemane the Lord prevailed in obedience to the Father's will, and the second Adam (Jesus Christ) broke through in redemptive glory to make a way for the Blood of Calvary to flow as an eternal river of cleansing and healing.
It is Birthing Prayer
The travail and tears of Gethsemane preceded the triumph of the Cross over the power and penalty of sin, death and sickness.
When a woman is in labour pains, she enters a time of transition which precedes the imminent birth of her child. The birth of the child is inevitable, yet during this painful process, a woman must refrain from bearing down and pushing the baby out as the midwife examines the birth canal to check if the baby's airway is clear for a safe delivery. Once the examination is complete and the baby is declared safe, then the woman can give the final pushes and the much anticipated child comes forth.
Transitional prayer has similar stages within it. The Believers must rely on the Holy Spirit as the spiritual midwife to bring forth the purposes and plans of God at the appointed time and in the appointed way. God births His will in us through prayer; May we be a people who embrace this sovereign call to intercession, with no holds barred, to the glory of our God!
Yours because we are His,
Catherine Brown
Founder, Gatekeepers Global Ministries and
Co-Founder Scottish Apostolic Networking Enterprise
Email: admin@gatekeepers.org.uk
