Protective Prayers for the End Times: How to Protect Your Family in the Last Days
Many believers of past generations who have been promoted to Heaven would give us a warning for these last days.
They would say that, before the return of Christ, we must pray with-out ceasing and pray earnestly with the anointing of the Holy Spirit if we expect to survive the attacks that the adversary has planned.
It is going to become vital to make a habit of praying every morning over yourself and your family. Ask God to protect you and order your steps for the day. Listen to the Holy Spirit throughout the day and obey accordingly, as that will help you avoid trouble. Remaining sensitive to the Holy Spirit allows you to receive a warning from God when something isn’t right. You will know if a family member is in trouble. You will know if there’s a place you need to avoid today. You can leave for work just early or late enough to avoid an accident.
I have watched this happen many times in my own life. I watched God use my own dad powerfully in the gifts of the Spirit, especially word of wisdom, word of knowledge, and discerning of spirits (1 Corinthians 12:7-10). God gave him detailed dreams that would come to pass. During my early and teenage years, he pastored three different churches in the state of Virginia. I recall how he would reveal detailed warnings to church members of trouble ahead and even tell them what action they should take to solve the problem or avoid the trap. People returned with testimonies of how something happened exactly as he had warned, and they were spared from harm, a trap, or a difficult financial situation. Dad was reminiscent of a biblical seer in the way he could sense trouble on the horizon. Several times he prayed for me and my life was spared.
Discern the Burden
Dad’s personal spiritual experiences provided great lessons for me. I learned from him the importance of never ignoring any spiritual burden that suddenly fills the mind and spirit, but to stop at that moment and pray.
The word burden is used several ways in Scripture. The Hebrew word massa’ alludes to something that is carried, such as responsibilities and duties (Numbers 4:15). The Hebrew word sobel speaks of carrying something heavy, such as a yoke. This can refer to a literal load or a figurative load, such as political or economic oppression (Isaiah 10:27). A third word, amas, alludes to imposing a weight on people due to their actions (Zechariah 12:3).
When ancient Hebrew prophets spoke a strong warning of the Lord to the people, at times their warning message began with their name: “The burden of Nineveh” (Nahum 1:1 KJV), “The burden which Habakkuk the prophet did see” (Habakkuk 1:1 KJV), and, “The burden of the word of the Lord for Israel” (Zechariah 12:1 KJV). In the New Testament, Acts 15:28 speaks of the apostles not wanting to burden the young church with oppressive traditions that were dividing the congregation. In 2 Corinthians 12:11-18, Paul was concerned with not being financially burdensome to the churches where he ministered.
A spiritual burden is often the Holy Spirit’s way of making us aware of unseen activity occurring in the spirit realm. A strong burden that presses on the heart and spirit of a believer can also indicate that the Holy Spirit sees trouble over the horizon and is either signaling you to pray against it or preparing you for what is ahead.
In late 2019 and into early 2020, while sitting behind my desk studying and writing, my spirit began to sense some-thing happening in the spirit realm. I suddenly, out of the blue, shouted, “The quake! The quake!” I came to myself and thought, What was that about?
Off and on over the next couple months while I was working, I would again find myself shouting, “The quake! The shaking is coming!” I incorrectly assumed this must be a warning of a devastating earthquake. Within a few months, everything in the world was indeed shaken; not by a literal earthquake, but by the covid virus. There were also shakings in churches and ministries, some due to the virus and others due to circumstances within.
Through the years, each time my father sensed a strong inner burden pressing his spirit, I watched him immediately shut himself in a room or go to the church and pray. Dad never prayed silently, whether he was alone or with people. When the windows were open in the summer, all the neighbors could hear him pray. He took literally this verse, “The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much” (James 5:16 NKJV). I learned important things from observing him.
In a normal prayer of petition or thanksgiving, Dad would pray with his understanding, meaning in the English language. However, when he was under a spiritual burden and was uncertain of the reason for the heaviness, he would pray both with his understanding and in his prayer language of the Holy Spirit. Paul revealed the reason behind such prayers when he wrote:
Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God (Romans 8:26-27 NKJV).
Praying in the prayer language of the Holy Spirit allows the Holy Spirit to pray from our human spirit when we are uncertain what to pray for with our human understanding. Praying in the Holy Spirit allows us to pray according to the will of God. A burden signals activity that we are unable to detect with human eyes until it is revealed by the Holy Spirit. This prayer is a form of intercession, even when you are not yet aware of what you are praying for.
When the Assyrians marched toward Jerusalem with 185,000 armed men coming to destroy the city, King Hezekiah called an emergency prayer meeting with Isaiah, both of whom stood in the gap and announced that God was rising up against Jerusalem’s enemies and would defeat them. At sunrise, the entire Assyrian army had become a pile of corpses scattered across the mountains surrounding Jerusalem (2 Kings 19).
The Sign That Everything Will Be Okay
When do you know with assurance that God has heard and answered your prayers, and your words of petition can now become words of thanksgiving? This is an important signal to discern.
At times, I watched Dad pray for over an hour in deep travail. On one occasion he prayed for his backslidden half-brother for three hours before he knew that God was answering the prayer and sparing his life. The important thing I learned that I want to pass on to you is that he prayed until he sensed that the weight in his spirit was lifting. Only when he felt relief from the burden would he stop praying and begin to thank the Lord for hearing and answering his prayer. Note that he did not wait for the manifestation of the answer to thank God for the answer. He knew that when he prayed and felt a release, God was going to intervene.
There is a verse that reads, “Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them (Mark 11:24 NKJV). Note that when you pray, you believe that you will receive. This is faith, which is some-thing you believe for, yet you have not seen (Hebrews 11:1).
One of the biggest mistakes a person can make is to misinterpret the burden as the sudden onset of depression or oppression. That sudden, uneasy feeling is often a warning of danger. Stop everything and pray.
In the mid-1980s, I visited Crater Lake National Park in Oregon. I was alone and walking along the ridge of the volcano (after my travel companion decided he wanted to return to the car). Suddenly I slipped and found myself sliding down a cliff toward the lake.
Meanwhile, back in North Carolina, Dad was driving the car when he suddenly got a heavy burden to pray. He pulled over to the side of the road and told Mom to drive. He said, “Perry is in trouble, and I need to pray right now.” Dad got in the back seat and began to pray fervently for me.
Back in Oregon, there had been nothing on the cliff for me to grab onto or to break my fall. But suddenly a hefty stick appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. I grabbed hold of it and used it as a walking stick to brace myself and make it back to the top of the cliff.
Pre-Burden Anxiety
If we ignore the inner prompting of the Holy Spirit, we will begin to sense strong anxiety. I was in Hamilton, Alabama, with some of our dear ministry friends when I began to hear “accident, accident” in my spirit. I prayed for protection over my family or whoever this warning was for. Two days later, my longest serving board member was stopped in traffic when a car suddenly hit him from behind at full speed. Miraculously, he was able to walk away from the car after the impact.
Over a decade ago I had a strong, sudden burden to pray against someone’s death. I didn’t know who I was praying for until a few days later when my office manager received word that his mother had died of a heart attack and was in the hospital after being brought back to life. As he was leaving the office to travel out of state, I told him that everything was going to be okay because the Holy Spirit had already prompted me to pray against premature death.
Sixty Years of Experience
Dad had sixty years of ministry experience, and he taught me something I haven’t forgotten. He often experienced warning dreams of coming trouble, and sometimes they were about me. This always bothered me because I wanted him to dream something positive about me. But his advice to me was, “A warning dream is not an indication that the event is absolutely going to happen. The warning is for you to intercede to prevent the event from happening.”
We find examples of this in Scripture:
God was determined to destroy all of Israel and raise a new nation through Moses, until Moses interceded and God changed His mind concerning Israel (Exodus 32).
Isaiah told King Hezekiah to set things in order because his death was imminent. However, after a tearful plea for more years, God cancelled the death sentence and gave the king 15 more years (2 Kings 20:1-6).
King Jehoshaphat was about to be killed in battle, but he cried out and the Lord stopped the enemy’s arrows, sending them instead to Ahab (2 Chronicles 18).
When you receive a warning, your fervent prayer and intercession can change the outcome. This should be our position throughout life. With us it might seem impossible, but with God all things are possible (Matthew 19:26).
