The 3 Spirit Realms & The Keys to Intercession

Intercessors have the ability to pick up many things that are going on in the spirit realm.

Often, it seems like intercessors get so focused on what the devil is doing that they don’t look at what God is doing. The question is not, What is the devil doing. The question should be, What is God doing? This should be the life theme of all of the people of God. But, here’s the deal. There are times when intercessors can pick things up from the demonic realm. And some intercessors will get stuck here and even live out of this place. They begin living out of the first and second realms.

Let me explain. There are three “realms” that are mentioned in the Bible. The word realm means a region, sphere, or area. The Bible specifically talks about the first realm, the second realm, and the third realm. The first realm is the realm that you can see with your eyes. It’s the physical realm. “Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea” (Rev. 21:1). So here you can see that the first heaven is the earthly realm, or what you can see right now. Our bodies, our homes, and our cities exist in the earthly realm. Deuteronomy 10:14 says, “Indeed heaven and the highest heavens belong to the Lord your God, also the earth with all that is in it.” According to the New American Standard Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, the word heaven means, “astrologers, compass, Earth, heaven, heavens, and the highest heaven those, from the beginning, God created the earth, the heavens, and the highest heavens.”

The second heaven, or “mid-heaven” of Revelation 14:6, “and I saw another angel flying in midheaven, having an eternal gospel to preach to those who live on the earth and to every nation and tribe and tongue and people” (NASB), is the demonic and angelic realm where they war with each other. In Daniel, the second realm is also shown to be the demonic and angelic realm (see Dan. 10:13).

Then, there is the third realm. This realm is where the glory of God is. It’s the beauty realm. The apostle Paul calls the third heaven “paradise.” It’s where we can see the great plans of Heaven.

I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago—whether in the body I do not know, or whether out of the body, I do not know, God knows—such a one was caught up to the third heaven (2 Corinthians 12:2).

He continues in verse 4, “…how he was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words….”

The third realm is where every believer should live. You see, all believers should live from a place of victory, knowing and partnering with the strategies of God. Ephesians 2:6 says that God has “raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” You have heard the saying, “so heavenly minded no earthy good”? That’s a very impossible saying. I believe that, if you are heavenly minded, you will be of great good to this earth.

However, I’ve discovered that many intercessors do not live out of a place of joy because they get stuck in the first or second realms. When intercessors get stuck in the first realm, they are preoccupied with logic and reason. Then their prayers become focused on what seems logical, which is not where God is coming from most of the time! And then there are those intercessors who get stuck in the second realm. This realm is the dark and demonic realm, which produces hopelessness, doom, and fear.

The problem is that, when intercessors choose to pray from those realms, they end up praying from a defensive place. This is what it looks like. You are watching TV or reading the newspaper and some bad news comes across. You have just been made aware of the first realm (the physical realm). You become defensive in your prayers and pray on a human level. Or, you see into the de- monic realm. Something bad is afoot. Sometimes it feels like pressure, like you have to pray now. It feels like you are chasing after the devil, and if you don’t pray now, the whole world will be destroyed. I know that’s a little extreme, but you get the idea.

I’ve learned that the devil will be more than happy to let us in on his schemes and strategies if it will distract us from what Heaven is doing. In the northern part of California, there is a beautiful mountain that is 14,000 feet from sea level, Mt. Shasta. Many people believe that the mountain carries power and consider it a high place of worship. There is a place on this mountain that is called Panther’s Meadows. There is a spring there that bubbles up out of the ground and is the headwaters of one of our rivers. Unfortunately, this place is used for ungodly practices. Many years ago, as the story goes, a man went up to this meadow and had a visitation from a saint in the form of a black panther. Out of this vision came the name of this meadow and an international cult.

In finding out this information and realizing that this was a beautiful place that God had made, I thought it would be good to start taking teams up there to worship and pray. It had been used by so many to worship other gods that it should be a place of godly worship.

For one of those times, I felt that we were to go up the mountain and take communion, pray, and blow the shofar. I had around 150 people as a team that day, so it was a power-charged group, and they were ready to see God. We spent some time walking around the meadow praying, and then we gathered around the spring and took communion together. Then I had a friend blow her shofar. After the third blow on the shofar, we all shouted out praise to God. We thought we were the only ones on the mountain that day. We were wrong. As we all left the meadow and began to walk out, a few of us walked out the lower trail. As we walked out, we passed a tree, and we could hear someone hissing. All of a sudden, a young man jumped out from under the tree and ran as fast as he could past us and down the meadow. No sooner did this happen then we came upon a lady sitting lotus style (meditation form) trying to channel. When they channel, they use a coming noise, like a shh, shh, shh, repeating it slowly and softly. One of my friends who was with us had used this practice before she got saved, so she knew what was going on. This lady’s air space had been so disrupted by our prayers that she was yelling her shh, shh, shh. My friend looked at me and said, “Well, she won’t be getting anywhere today.” Oh, to stop the plans of the devil—what a great day!

I love this story because it is a great example of how, as intercessors, we went to pray at a place that was known for its demonic activity, and we just focused on God. We were not distracted by the schemes of the enemy. All we did was look to God, and we let Him do the rest!