Prophetic intercession is most certainly included in Paul's exhortation to the Ephesians.

Ephesians 6:18 ""... praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit ...""

Paul tells us:

1 Corinthians 14:14,15 "For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful. What is the conclusion then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will also pray with the understanding."

Praying in our spirit, in Holy Spirit utterance, can be without our understanding when we do so in an unknown tongue. We can also pray in our understanding, being borne along by the utterance of the Holy Spirit in our known language, bringing prophetic knowledge to our minds. A simple definition of prophetic intercession is praying Holy Spirit inspired, unpremeditated utterances in our known language, bringing revelation to our understanding.

Simeon prayed prophetically (Luke 2:25-35 ). He was a man who lived righteously before God and man, was devoted to God and experienced open communion with God. He was living in expectation, "waiting for the consolation of Israel" (Luke 2:25 KJV). He was a man who experienced the anointing of the Holy Spirit: "the Holy Spirit was upon him" (Luke 2:25 KJV). Simeon had been given revelation that he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Christ.

Luke 2:27,28 "So he came by the Spirit into the temple. And when the parents brought in the Child Jesus, ... he took Him up in his arms and blessed God ..."

His prophetic prayer follows in Luke 2:29-32. He rejoiced in the faithfulness of the Lord in His promise, asking as the Lord's servant, now to be dismissed in peace. He rejoiced that his eyes were actually seeing the Lord's salvation, prepared openly before all peoples. He received prophetic dispensational insight: he saw that Jesus was first to be "revelation to the Gentiles" (Luke 2:32 NKJV), then the "glory of Your people Israel". We now know that at least two thousand years hang between the fulfillment of these two matters.

Significantly, Joseph and Mary marvelled at what was said about Jesus in Simeon's prophetic prayer. Simeon blessed them and moved into a direct prophetic word to them: that the child would be:

Luke 2:34,35 "... a sign which will be spoken against "(yes, a sword will pierce through your own soul also), that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed." "

The Psalms give us abundant examples of prophetic prayer. Psalm 22 prophetically gives the words prayed by Christ on the cross, hundreds of years before the event took place. No-one can study the recorded prayers of Paul without coming to a better understanding of inspired and prophetic intercession. Praying prophetically in the Spirit enables us to supernaturally go straight to the heart of the matter with which we are concerned. The Holy Spirit inspires us with the proper desires, and gives expression through our spirit to those desires that are in the will of God. In prophetic intercession by the Spirit, we are enabled to please the Father by asking that which is according to His mind and purpose, because the Holy Spirit knows the mind of the Father about everything for which we intercede.

In prophetic prayer, the Holy Spirit becomes the joint helper of the intercessor. He comes and takes hold of the burden of our need, and assists us by helping us to carry a load which otherwise would be too heavy for us to handle. Without the aid of the Holy Spirit, the intercessor would be physically, mentally and spiritually weak, and would blunder and fail to state the real need before God. Prophetic prayer is the very gushings of the Holy Spirit, out of the spirit of the intercessor, saying fully and adequately all that needs to be said in prevailing intercession.

The following story by Dr. Derek Prince serves as an example of prophetic intercession.

THE WAR IN NORTH AFRICA

"From 1941 to 1943 I served as a hospital attendant with the British forces in North Africa.

At that time the morale of the British forces was very low. The basic problem was that the men did not have confidence in their officers. I myself am the son of an army officer, and many of the friends with whom I grew up were from the same background. I thus had some valid standards of judgment. As a group, the officers in the desert at that time were selfish, irresponsible and undisciplined. Their main concern was not the well-being of the men, or the effective prosecution of the war, but their own physical comfort.

The result of all this was the longest retreat in the history of the British army - about seven hundred miles in all ... from a place in Tripoli called El Aghelia, about fifty miles west of Cairo. Here the British forces dug in for one final stand. If El Alamein should fall, the way would be open for the Axis powers to gain control of Egypt, to cut the Suez Canal, and to move over into Palestine. The Jewish community there would then be subjected to the same treatment that was already being meted out to the Jews in every area of Europe that had come under Nazi control.

About eighteen months previously, in a military barrack room in Britain, I had received a very dramatic and powerful revelation of Christ. I thus knew in my own experience the reality of God's power. In the desert I had no church or minister to offer me fellowship or counsel. I was obliged to depend upon the two great basic provisions of God for every Christian: the Bible and the Holy Spirit. I early came to see that, by New Testament standards, fasting was a normal part of Christian discipline. During the whole period that I was in the desert, I regularly set aside Wednesday of each week as a special day for fasting and prayer.

During the long and demoralising retreat to the gates of Cairo, God laid on my heart a burden of prayer, both for the British forces in the desert and for the whole situation in the Middle East. Yet I could not see how God could bless leadership that was so unworthy and so inefficient. I searched in my heart for some form of prayer that I could pray with genuine faith and that would cover the needs of the situation. After a while it seemed that the Holy Spirit gave me this prayer: "Lord, give us leaders such that it will be for your glory to give us victory through them."

I continued praying this prayer regularly every day. In due course the British government decided to relieve the commander of his forces in the desert and to replace him with another man. The man whom they chose was a general named W.H.E. "Strafer" Gott. He was flown to Cairo to take over command, but his plane was shot down and he was killed. Thus at this critical juncture, the British forces in this major theatre of the war were left without a commander. Winston Churchill, at that time Prime Minister, proceeded to act largely on his own initiative. He appointed a more-or-less unknown officer, named B.L. Montgomery, who was hastily flown out from Britain.

Montgomery was the son of an evangelical Anglican bishop. He was a man who very definitely fulfilled God's two requirements in a leader of men. He was JUST and GOD-FEARING. He was also a man of tremendous discipline. Within two months he had instilled a totally new sense of discipline into his officers, and had thus restored the confidence of the men in their leaders.

Then the main battle of El Alamein was fought. It was the first major allied victory in the entire war up to that point. The threat to Egypt, to the Suez Canal, and to Palestine was finally thrown back, and the whole course of the war changed in favour of the Allies. It is no exaggeration to say that the battle of El Alamein was the turning point of the war in North Africa.

Two or three days after the battle I found myself in the desert a few miles behind the advancing Allied forces. On the tailboard of a military truck beside me a small portable radio was relaying a news commentator's description of the scene at Montgomery's headquarters as he had witnessed it on the eve of the battle. He recalled how Montgomery publicly called his officers and men to prayer, saying: "Let us ask the Lord, mighty in battle, to give us the victory." As these words came through the portable radio, God spoke very clearly to my spirit and said: "This is the answer to your prayer."

How well this incident confirms the truth about promotion that is stated in Psalm 75:6-7. The British government chose Gott for their commander, but God set him aside and raised up Montgomery, the man of His own choosing. God did this to bring glory to His own name, and to answer a prayer which, by the Holy Spirit, He Himself had first inspired me to pray. By this intervention God also preserved the Jews in Palestine from coming under the control of the Axis powers.

I believe that the prayer which God gave me at that time could well be applied to other situations, both military and political: "Lord, give us leaders such that it will be for your glory to give us victory through them."

From: "Shaping history through prayer and fasting" by Derrek Prince. Copyright 1973 - Derek Prince. Published by Flemming H. Revell in association with Derek Prince Publications. Used by permission.

This account of inspired prayer indicates something of the far-reaching effect of prophetic intercession. By prophetic intercession, wisdom and counsel can be received from the Lord the Spirit, and acted upon. No wonder there is an emphasis in the New Testament on "praying in the Spirit".