The Beginner's Guide to Intercession

Rating:
Summary: This book can change your life...!
Review: "God shapes the world by prayer. The more praying there is in the world the better the world will be,..." ~ Dutch Sheets I recently had the chance to go on a mission trip to England. While over there a good friend of mine recommended I read this book. This book is amazing! Through the coarse of reading this book it has changed my life and outlook on my personal relationship with God. Now understanding much more about God's call for us to become intercessors, I have found a new and amazing freedom as well as understanding and POWER in my prayer life! God has reveled amazing truths and principles in this book that we need to enforce in prayer. The book covers topics on how to intercede for everyday situations as well as very specific ones, such as the Salvation if our lost brothers and sisters. Sheets tell many spiritually encouraging stories and miracles that have been witnessed through the prayers of Spirit lead people. I truly and sincerely recommend this book to any who are looking for a deeper, more exciting and more powerful prayer life with our blessed Savior and Father. This book has the power to change your life!! "Your prayers and mine can make a difference. We must become convinced of this. Our prayers can be irresistible to God and indefensible to Satan." ~Dutch Sheets

Rating:
Summary: This book can change your life...!
Review: "God shapes the world by prayer. The more praying there is in the world the better the world will be,..." ~ Dutch Sheets I recently had the chance to go on a mission trip to England. While over there a good friend of mine recommended I read this book. This book is amazing! Through the coarse of reading this book it has changed my life and outlook on my personal relationship with God. Now understanding much more about God's call for us to become intercessors, I have found a new and amazing freedom as well as understanding and POWER in my prayer life! God has reveled amazing truths and principles in this book that we need to enforce in prayer. The book covers topics on how to intercede for everyday situations as well as very specific ones, such as the Salvation if our lost brothers and sisters. Sheets tell many spiritually encouraging stories and miracles that have been witnessed through the prayers of Spirit lead people. I truly and sincerely recommend this book to any who are looking for a deeper, more exciting and more powerful prayer life with our blessed Savior and Father. This book has the power to change your life!! "Your prayers and mine can make a difference. We must become convinced of this. Our prayers can be irresistible to God and indefensible to Satan." ~Dutch Sheets

Rating:
Summary: Excellent even if you read other books on intercession
Review: I read Dutch Sheet's other book "Intercession" and Cindy Jacob's book "Possessing the Gates of the Enemy" and others before my pastor asked me to teach college age students from this book.

I found this book less enjoyable, but more rigorous and foundational than his other book, "Intercession". Between this book and the other two I mentioned, it is impossible for me to say which book is the best.

Everyone is called to pray, but not everyone has the gift of intercession and not everyone is called to the office of an intercessor. I would recommend this book for teaching a basic but rigorous beginners class on intercession.

If you find you are very uncomfortable spending less than an hour per day in prayer, chances are you may have a gift of intercession. If that is so, I recommend reading the other two books mentioned before first, then C. Peter Wagner's series on intercessory prayer.

One other book that I found precious is "That None Should Perish" by Ed Silvoso which focuses on prayer evangelism.

Tom Tenney's "God Chasers" and "God Catchers" are also very good reading--enjoyable and challenging, but not as foundational as the others mentioned.

Also, one other book that helps build a solid foundation for intercessory prayer for all regardless of gifting is Charles G. Finney's Revival Lecture Series.

Now that I've given a two or three line review of all the other books, this one deserves a little more specific attention. If you examine the table of contents, you will see what I mean when I say this book is rigorous. I don't mean difficult--just very thorough.

When I taught from this book, I tried to get the students to remember each theme of each chapter. For example, Chapter 1 is "The Priority of Intercession", and when you read it, you find it is "Relationship". The whole chapter hangs on that. Chapter 2 is "The Plan of Intercession" and that is "to use people to accomplish His will", and so forth. Each week before I would start teaching I would ask them about the themes of the chapters before. I found myself challenged as I had to learn the material to teach it.

This book should be considered vital if you are being used by God to build a team of intercessors in your church. No church should be without such a team properly constructed well trained and prepared to serve. Many churches go into this without proper preparation and training and end up with gossips and strange mysticism rather than effective intercessory prayer.

I cannot stress hard enough how important this kind of preparation is.

Rating:
Summary: Introducing Intercessory Prayer
Review: Most "Christians" here in the West know very little of what it means to pray. We have many sermons on prayer but no true pray-ers. We have many books on prayer (just do a search here on Amazon) but we don't know how to pray. Nonetheless, Jesus' disciples asked Jesus how to pray (Luke 11:1) because they saw the power of prayer at work in Jesus' life (Luke 5:16; 6:12; 18:1-8).

This book is a good introduction to the life and work of the intercessor. While I believe that all disciples should be intercessors according to 1 Timothy 2:1-2, Sheets gives a strong view that God is raising up intercessors in these end times. While the book is good reading and easy to grasp, the book does lack biblical exegesis on prayer. We should be motivated to pray more from the Scriptures than from the examples or experiences of other Christians. We should pray out of obedience (John 14:12-15) and not just from a desire to have experiences.

If you long to pray, to touch the throne of God (Hebrews 4:14-16), to pray for the lost (Romans 10:1), to seek God's will (1 John 5:14-15), to pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17), to pray in the Spirit (Romans 8:26-27; Eph. 6:18; Jude 20), to devote yourself to prayer (Romans 12:12; Colossians 4:2) then this book is a good edition to your biblical library.