The Travail
MidWeek Pulse Session 3 • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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The Travail
The Travail
Hello Welcome to Midweek pulse today we are dealing with the concept of The Travail and spiritual warfare. This is a concept that the modern church lacks and misses all the time. We are so quick that we think we can face most circumstances with just a few words and a quick prayer but there comes a time in every believers life when they must learn to travail. The Old TIme Pentecost used to call it Tarrying at the Altar. THe KJV says holding onto the horns of the altar. Tonight I want to talk about the travial. I want to look at what it means to travail. To Travail is not just a quick prayer or hope its going to be alright its war. Standing in the gap is what some others would call it but its really spiritual warfare and it requires a posture of determined intercession. When the well feels blocked or the spiritual atmosphere is heavy, the call is not to beg God to show up—He has already promised His presence—but to contend for the ground, clear the debris, and uncap the wells of revival.
A few things to note about Spiritual Warefare or learning to Travail.
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
We do not fight human to human. We do not fight against things we can see. We are fighting against a spiritual host that is truly not a worthy foe when you realize whose authority we are praying in.
Believers do not fight for victory; they fight from victory, enforcing the triumph of Calvary over territorial strongholds.
praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints—
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.
Prayer in the Spirit bypasses the limitations of the human intellect, allowing the Holy Spirit to intercede through the believer with groanings too deep for words, striking directly at the root of spiritual resistance.
We fully believe in praying in the Spirit and fully believe that there is somethign that happens when we pray in the Spirit we are praying the direct will of the father. WE are not fighting or waring in something we have no authoirty. We are waring in soemthing where the authority belongs to teh Lord who lives with in us and therefore we are operating under his authority. This is the only way we can truly press through. It is not in our own authoirty or in our own plans. God is the only one capable to see us through it.
So lets dive into some warefare prayer and travailing prayer
The first thing we start with is thanking God we begin to adore and worship him for who He is.
We then move beyond that to a place of repentance and removing barriers in our lives. We may have sinned inadvertalty it may be such there is hidden sin in our hearts. The Lord can’t move through those things. We must clear the way to allow him to push through. There is a odd verse found in Hosea
Ephraim is a trained heifer
That loves to thresh grain;
But I harnessed her fair neck,
I will make Ephraim pull a plow.
Judah shall plow;
Jacob shall break his clods.”
Judah shall plow a refrernce to judah is the one that pushes through and breaks the fallow ground. This is praise. Praise pushes through. So I’ll be honest when I know i am going into a spiritual warfare I begin by praising God for all that He has given me. I fully believe that Praise is the reason we push through.
I then believe that we contend for the Altar the ground that the Lord has given us. Its about declaring the authoritt of Christ. We are waring in a spiritaul world so the weapons of are warfare are not carnal
For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds,
This is Pauls call to the Corinthian Church we are mighty through God to pull down strongholds. THere is nothing that our God can’t do. He is capable to move mountains and to push back the sea there is no power in hell that can attest to his strenght. Praying through pushing back against the enemy is all about the authority you are walking in. YOu are walking in His authority
Use the name and blood of Jesus to draw a spiritual line in the sand. Address the heavy, sluggish atmospheres that so often plague midweek services.
Declaring that principalities, distractions, and heavy spirits have no jurisdiction over the room, the minds of the people, or the ministry of the Word.
One thing that I want to make clear is that spiritual warefare is not silent While silent prayer has its place, active spiritual warfare thrives on a unified corporate sound—whether that is praying aloud together or joining in agreement with targeted declarations.
One clear cut way to pray is through unity. We pray and move together. There is power found in unity as we pray. Spiritual Warefare is fighting for ground and territory. It also leads to interecession and praying for others. This is a call and a connect for the church. Intercession is the beginning of spiritual warefare. It is the fight for others when they can’t fight for themselves. It is the call to help others. There is a beauty in warfare. You are fighting for what the Lord has given you. This is the direct link to activly fighting against spiritual enemies. The enemy of our soul had dominion over things. Unitl the Lord rose from the Dead and now he has dominon so therefore the enemy according to Peter
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.
The enemy a lion roaring.
I will say this a lion roars to declare dominance or to scare away intruders but when a lion is on the attack he does not make a sound. He moves slowly and then attacks ferociously.
The devil prowls around roaring to get what he wants you scared. But we have dominion through Christ.
There is a time in our future and his when we are going to say
“Those who see you will gaze at you,
And consider you, saying:
‘Is this the man who made the earth tremble,
Who shook kingdoms,
Is this the man who shook the kingdoms. He isnt worth anything. Its a clear loss. We know that we have victory and therefore we operate from that point. Our victory is not found in our fight its found in our prayer its found on our knees pushing back. So today we are going to dive into prayer. Some of you have needs you have been fighting for some of you have family members you have been fighting for. Others you need God to touch you you need God to touch your family. You may be battling depression or anxiety you may be batteling fear or lies of the enemy. ONe thing I found intersesting as i studied this week is that fear cloaks instelf in the langage of wisdom and so it sounds good but all fear wants to do is push you away from the ground.
Next I want to focus in on the travail portion. I want to look at what it means to travail
travail is one of the deepest and most costly expressions of prayer. It is the spiritual equivalent of labor pains.
My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you,
Paul uses the a Greek word for physical labor to describe his agonizing, persistent prayer and care for the spiritual formation of the Galatian believers.
Who has heard such a thing?
Who has seen such things?
Shall the earth be made to give birth in one day?
Or shall a nation be born at once?
For as soon as Zion was in labor,
She gave birth to her children.
The prophetic pattern is that God's greatest breakthroughs often come through a corporate posture of spiritual labor.
Travail is often initiated when the Holy Spirit places His own burden for a situation directly into our spirits, causing us to intercede beyond human vocabulary.
A few items that travial is not
It is NOT manufactured emotion: True travail cannot be whipped up by human hype, manipulation, or trying to look "spiritual." It is a sovereign weight dropped by the Holy Spirit upon a believer or a congregation who cares deeply about God's ground and His wells.
It IS holy partnership: It is God sharing His heart's grief over a dry season, a blocked well, or a lost community, and allowing the church to feel a fraction of that weight so it can be birthed in prayer.
It is a process that ends in release: Physical labor always has an endpoint—the delivery of new life. Spiritual travail does not stay in endless agony; when the prayer has "broken through," the atmosphere shifts into a deep sense of peace, victory, release, and spontaneous praise.
Sometimes people think warfare and travail mean shouting louder. True travail often begins in deep quietness, groaning, heavy sighing, or weeping over the condition of the spiritual well.
When I was a kid we had this saying in church. Pray till you touch heaven don’t get up till heaven touches you
I have heard it said that you need to grab hold of the horns of the altar and not let go
This imagery is raw, desperate, and deeply rooted in biblical law and historical revivals. It describes a posture where intercession ceases to be a casual request and becomes a total, unyielding anchor of survival and breakthrough.
Now Adonijah was afraid of Solomon; so he arose, and went and took hold of the horns of the altar. And it was told Solomon, saying, “Indeed Adonijah is afraid of King Solomon; for look, he has taken hold of the horns of the altar, saying, ‘Let King Solomon swear to me today that he will not put his servant to death with the sword.’ ”
When Adonijah feared for his life from Solomon, he fled and "grabbed the horns of the altar," claiming sanctuary. He refused to let go until he received a guarantee of mercy.
In biblical worship, the altar is where the sacrifice is laid. When we "fall onto the horns of the altar," we are not just asking God to fix a problem; we are laying our own agendas, our fatigue, and our pride down as a sacrifice, binding ourselves completely to God's mercy and power.
In the context of spiritual warfare and contending for the well, holding onto the horns of the altar represents holy stubbornness in prayer:
Refusing to Quit Prematurely: Many prayers fail because we give up right before the breakthrough. Holding onto the horns means resisting the urge to abandon the place of prayer when it gets heavy, uncomfortable, or quiet. It is saying, "Lord, I am not moving from this place until You touch this church."
Clinging to God’s Promises When Darkness Presses In: When the enemy tries to crowd a midweek service with apathy, distraction, or heaviness, holding the horns is the anchor. It is wrapping your spiritual hands around the altar of His finished work and refusing to let circumstances talk you out of your faith.
When you fall onto the horns of the altar, you are anchoring yourself to a place of absolute surrender and safety. You aren't running away from the spiritual battle or retreating into comfort. Once anchored to that place of sacrifice, travail is the holy labor that flows out of it. It is the deep, groaning, persistent push of the Holy Spirit through a believer who refuses to leave empty-handed.
Experience is one of the biggest things we can fight for in this realm We can talk all day long. We can foucs on what we seem as important but travail and spiritual warfare are so vital to the call that God has placed upon this house to be a house of sustained revival we can’t host the presencce of God unless we first are willing to fight unitl we breakthrough. God told me earlier this month that you dont die to a dead atmosphere you push past it. That is the key for warfare and travail travil is the weight its the heavy of the burden its the weight of you know the Lord will do it its holding onto the altar and laying it all down. Warfare is the fight its the contending for the well and the altar. its the place hwere we find ourselves contending fo the ground the enemy would ike to push us off of. Its fighting fo the place we are to be. Its not just good its the only way we push through. Travail is the weight of the feelings Travail is crying out and allowing the Lord to birth in you a burden for the lost a burden for the city a burden for the ground. Travail is not just a short time. WE can spend hours in travail and it feel like moments. The truth is most of us never get here because we are to busty pushing our own agenda in prayer we are to busy to really spend the time the Lord is asking us to. We fight with weapons made by man but never get anywhere. They say the squeaky wheel gets the grease but its not so when it comes to spiritual warfare. WE are not fighting flesh and blood we ar enot fighting against things we can see we are fighting against the powers of the air the unseen realm. Now I will say that there is a camp of people that believe that spiritual warfare is only for casting out demons and deliverance ministry and those things are true I have seen them with my own eyes but I know that there are times that we go to war with the spirit of darkness the spirit of suiciide the spirit of this age. We are not waring agaisnt things that can be won overnight A part of Spiritual warfare is fasting….
However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.”
When you hit a wall in ministry, a deep-seated stronghold, or a generational blockage that refuses to budge with routine, casual religion, Jesus gives us the diagnostic: "This kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting."
Some spiritual blockages over a region, a family, or a church aren't surface-level issues. They are deeply rooted strongholds of apathy, division, or heaviness that have held ground for years.
"This kind" exposes where our spiritual muscle is weak. It reminds us that some doors will not open, and some wells will not un-plug, simply because we asked politely once or twice. It requires a different caliber of spiritual gravity.
Fasting shifts our intercession from polite requests into the very kind of travail we discussed. When you are emptied of self, the Holy Spirit's groanings and burdens take over with absolute clarity.
When the disciples failed, Jesus didn't excuse them, but He didn't abandon them either; He called them up higher.
When a church or an intercessor reaches the ceiling of their current spiritual measure, God rarely gives a gentle nudge to move forward. Instead, He issues a divine invitation that sounds a lot like what John heard on Patmos:
After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven. And the first voice which I heard was like a trumpet speaking with me, saying, “Come up here, and I will show you things which must take place after this.”
You cannot step into a higher realm of spiritual authority, revival, or breakthrough while remaining comfortable in the lower room. Travail is the holy labor pains that squeeze us out of our complacency and birth us into a new dimension of spiritual reality.
hroughout Scripture and church history, every major shift in a move of God required His people to leave the flatlands of routine religion and scale a steep spiritual mountain:
Often, a church stays stuck at a certain numerical or spiritual measure because the atmosphere above them has settled into a comfortable ceiling. Travail functions like a spiritual battering ram. It creates the pressure needed to crack open the stagnant atmosphere, allowing the congregation to step through the ceiling and into a higher authority.
It Shifts Our Perspective from Horizontal to Vertical: When we are low in the valley of dry bones or routine services, we look at our problems horizontally—we see empty seats, spiritual apathy, or cultural resistance. Travail forces us to look upward. As the soul labors in prayer, our eyes are locked onto the throne room, aligning us with God's perspective rather than our own limitations.
It Proves Our Hunger ("This Kind"): As we established with “this kind only comes out by prayer and fasting,” God does not elevate us because we asked nicely; He elevates us when our hunger matches His holiness. Travail is the physical and spiritual evidence that we are no longer content with the shallow water at the edge of the well. We are crying out to be plunged into the deep current of His Spirit.
