“I will build by Ecclesia and the strategically positioned authorities of Hades will be displaced by its expansion.” – Jesus Christ (Matthew 16)
The gates are the points of confrontation with the prevailing spiritual condition. The enemy will be happy for intercessors to browbeat anywhere else because it produces moral victories instead of transformation. The gates are the points of purpose where kingdom blueprint leaders are stationed and the Ecclesia displaces the strategically positioned authorities of Hades. The gates are strategic, so that is where intercession must be directed.
GATE LEADERS
Jesus positions gate leaders at the gates: gate nations, gate regions, gate ministries, gates leaders, and gate focused intercession. The gate leaders are assigned to gates, and they function to prepare and position the leaders who can do the work of ministry, tantamount to that function and foundational to its successful completion is intercession. That is, we can measure the successful leadership of a gate leader by his or her capacity to prepare and produce intercessors.
We have often looked in the wrong places for our strategic leaders. We have looked for numbers, money, exposure, name recognition, and even for supernatural power when we should have been looking for leaders who make leaders.
The gate leader is not the fasting growing church’s leader in the region, the pastor with the largest congregation, or the person best known in the circles. Not even the coolest revival leader can be measured by revival!
Intercession in any region depends upon the preparation and positioning of intercessors at the gates, so the leader who produces leaders is often a Remnant leader. That is, the leader with blueprints for the region has birth vision, purpose, focus, passion, and expertise and experience in the area of warfare intercession. That leader carries the strategies to war at the gates.
In comparison with national and international leaders who have blueprints and strategies for national and international gates, the regional leaders blend blueprint strategies through alignment just as intercessors align their personal assignment with regional gate leaders. Currently, we have positioned a certain group of leaders out of place who lack both blueprints and alignments that come from assignment: the basis for alignment is assignment, and artificially aligning without an assignment cannot produce kingdom function. People who align “where I want to” are nearly always out of alignment.
ALIGNMENT AND ASSIGNMENT
Alignment recognizes Jesus as King by assignment. Since assignment can only come for the King, and the King is not ignoring the need for alignment, the King’s assignment produces the King’s alignments. I align because of shared assignment, aligning with a leader with blueprints of a greater scope than mine but whose blueprints blend with mine. We end up constructing the building with my part of the structure fitting in properly. If I’m doing site preparation, the site preparation matches what the blueprints call for. If I’m a subcontractor doing the electrical work, the blueprints I possess tell me how to produce what is consistent with the blueprints of the leader with whom I am aligned.
Intercession is the most strategic of all the systems of the kingdom Ecclesia. Alignment is more important for intercessors than any other assignment. Nothing happens without it, so the entire process awaits intercession. (Of course, every leader is an intercessor or they are not building anything that makes Jesus happy.) Intercessors, as the specialists of intercession, are always more than intercessors except in very rare instances where the pure worshiper and intercessor possess only that specific and specialized skill set. These intercessors who have only that skill set are not leaders outside the closet, cannot lead other intercessors, and should be prepared and positioned for birthing alone. They are the most special of all intercessors but rare because all kingdom leaders are first worshipers and intercessors, and every kingdom leader’s maturity is first measured by maturity in worship and intercession. This speaks back to the initial point of looking in the wrong places for leadership.
An intercessor without assignment is an intercessor without a leader. Nearly all intercessors realize assignment with the help of a leader, and without a fathering leader who discerns their purpose and assignment they are often easily victimized by opportunists.
So, getting intercessors prepared and positioned remains the greater challenge of kingdom leaders.
DOMINATING THE GATES
To dominate the gates, we begin with purpose. Spiritual warfare is “positively pressing for the purpose of God.” As we positively press for God’s purpose, we run into His enemies. We engage with His enemies to displace them, but we establish the purpose of the people and place that gate governs. We always operate to press for purpose. We engage God’s enemies on assignment, and our alignment with leaders with greater scope of assignment brings international level of spiritual power and authority into the confrontation. We are always ready for any battle when our assignment is prepared and positioned in alignment!
Acts 19:20 explains what happens when we displace the strategically positioned authorities of Hades: “in this way, the word of the Lord gained momentum through overcoming spiritual power and took dominion.”
What Paul was teaching people to do in his school of Tyrannus had influence at the gates. When the demon beat up the sons of Sceva, he said, “I know Jesus well, and I’m acquainted with Paul, but I don’t know you.” Paul as a gate leader had engaged with God’s enemies while pursuing God purpose for the region. The purpose is “the word of the Lord.” The enemies at the gates were operating at every level, including international, national, and regional. In several different ways, the ways intercessors usually pray, declare, and decree, the issues operating at the gates were affected by worship and intercession, with manifestations of overcoming spiritual power, until God’s purpose dominated. The subsequent cultural and economic shock produced both revival and riot.
Paul dominated the gates by training leaders who could operate in intercession.