Our team was praying for a staff member’s elderly father who was ill and had fallen down. He had not yet accepted the Lord into his life. We went into prayer for him and (I am just being transparent here) I knew that his time was closing up—I knew that it was. I found myself in intercession all the time; my spirit was praying non-stop. Sometimes I would just be praying and I would start praying out loud and it would hit me, “I am praying.” My spirit just continued the intercession, because the fight for this man’s soul was so critical. It became not just a battle for his life, but a battle for his eternity and I found myself immersing myself in God, submitting to the mercy of God and crying out for this man’s soul.

Day and night, I would wake up praying—praying! I would wake up with my spirit crying out, “Let this man come to you Jesus! I know they are saying that he is unconscious, but let his spirit rise up and receive of you, because this staff couple fights to raise up intercessors for this nation and this was their loved one!” If he did not accept Jesus, his death would devastate them. All of this was going through me and I said, “Lord, you have got to do something—You must do something for this man’s soul! He must enter the kingdom!” And I just wept and prayed and wept and prayed, and when I woke up praying one morning, I heard the angels sing and I knew Clay would be in the arms of Jesus soon. I knew he had given his life to the Lord. God used this very difficult season for our staff to do something in me, causing me to step into a new level of fight as I immersed myself in the presence of God to save a brother from Hell.

We listened one Monday as Nita came on the phone during our staff prayer and shared her heart. When she was done I thought, “Lord, us praying for her, praying for one another, has caused this team to grow together in strength, because we have become immersed in one another. Our love for each other causes us to cast everything else to the wayside so that we fight for one another. It has developed new levels of intercession in each of us. The suffering that we have carried with one another—that suffering brought us together to pray for her, and to seek the Lord for one another.

I think of when we came to the Lord for another staff member’s daughter. We brought this child to Him and said, “Lord, we need to know the obstacles that are in the way, let us pray and war!” We immersed ourselves in Him that he would speak to us and I am telling you, she is a different girl today, because God stood with us in the fight for her. In a moment of desperation, we immersed ourselves in intercession for our sister and God saved her. He saved her!

When we face obstacles, let us find a way to let God use those obstacles to draw us into Him and fight. As we pull upon hope that He will fulfill the promises for them, we immerse ourselves in His presence to find out what His will is, what His ways are, and how we are to seek Him on behalf of that person. That is what an intercessor does. That is what we are being called to do, that is what we are being drawn out to do. These struggles, these trials that we are carrying for one another on a weekly basis, develop and strengthen and prepare us to fight for the Nation.

Let us not waste these difficult times; let’s use them to press into Him. I remember when Obama got elected and Nita got up and shared about how she tried to get depressed (which was rather fitting when he was re-elected) but she knew God had a plan. And as I watched the last 4 years, I saw one thing that was born out of that event and I believe it was the intercessor—the Spirit of intercession really poured out into our nation over his last eight years in the presidency. The need for it, the call of the intercessor is one of the most difficult calls that you will answer. It requires alone time, it requires you to quiet yourself to hear from Him. It is essential if a nation is going to rise up and be a beacon for God to all the nations.

Intercessors immerse themselves in God. Over the next several years, we will need to come to a place where we strive to immerse ourselves in Him, where we quit limiting ourselves based on our pre-conceived notions, where we press through. Just because our man, our Cyrus is in office, does not mean our prayers can let up—it is quite the contrary. He has so much work to do in such a short time. Much to be reversed, much to be set and our intercessions are key to a godly and righteous nation being born out of this.

So I say again, what is your passion? Christ’s passion was the cross, to restore a relationship between God and His creation. What is your passion? What has God created you for? Find out what it is and immerse yourself in Him so that you can fulfill it. Imagine a life with no bounds, nothing holding your back, because we were created to be baptized into the life, the death and resurrection in Christ. That is the true immersion experience. And if we are baptized into the life, the death and the resurrection of Christ, what is it that we are supposed to do with it?

I was reading in the gospel this morning and going through a portion after the death of Christ where the disciples were out fishing. Peter was out in the boat as well, because he was a fisherman before Jesus called Him. He had not yet seen Jesus after His resurrection. So, he was out in the boat fishing and I wondered, “What is he doing in the boat?” I mean, he has got his big old net out, like he is a fisherman, like he is going to sell those fish. Did he return to the life he had before he became a disciple of Christ? What would Peter have done if Jesus had not appeared to him after the resurrection? I looked at the disciples and thought, “Lord, were they returning to their former life?” I do not have the answer to that, but when Jesus appeared to them, that was like the completion of the old life. They finally let go of the old and pressed on into the new.

Are we waiting for Christ to appear to us so we finally step into the call He has for us, the passion He has put in us? I do not know—I hope not. Press on! We cannot wait. We have to press on. We cannot wait for Nita to be healed. We have to press on. What if the Lord is waiting to heal her until we are pressing on? I know my heart here is not to offend anyone, it is simply to say, do not let anything hold you back from stepping into the relationship that God has for you.

This week did something—actually the last few weeks really did something in my heart and I began to pray for you. I prayed, “Lord, help us reach this this passion—the thing that you put in us. Help us to fulfill it. Do not let anything stand in our way or hold us back. Help us to immerse ourselves in You so that when we come up, we are rich with the fragrance of Christ.”

I ask Lord God, in this season when you are drawing us into Your bosom, when You are teaching us how to abide in You, teach us how to live our lives so we represent You in all we do, so that sin loses its grip because we have so immersed ourselves in you that it cannot grab hold. It cannot grab hold anymore while You are working to develop us in this, Lord God. Cause the passion that you put in us to grow, to become a fire within us, so that everything that we do will accomplish that. Your passion was the cross, it was our souls that made Him to be able to endure the cross. Help us, Lord God, to immerse ourselves in You so that we can fulfill our passion, the call that you have placed in our lives. I thank You Lord, I thank You. In Your precious and holy Name, Amen.

Blessings & Love,

Ricci Wilson