https://www.harvestprayer.com/resources/personal-2/praying-the-news.
he's making to inspire our emotions. We have to resist the enemy when we are attacked with oppression. We should cast down vain imaginations. But if it's a prayer burden, you can't cast it down—and why would you want to?
If you resist a prayer burden, you are resisting God because it's God who is allowing you to feel His feelings—or sometimes the feelings of those to whom you are assigned to pray. He may give you a burden for the city, and you will feel the emotions of people there who are crying out to God for deliverance.
This happened when I was in Nicaragua in the early 2000s. I was getting ready to join the prayer meeting when I felt a heavy oppression. I had no idea what was going on. I asked the Lord, "What is the matter with me? I was happy a minute ago." The Holy Spirit told me it was despondency, and it wasn't my feeling—it was the emotion of the people in Nicaragua who were facing desperate times. When I went into corporate prayer in the atrium, the burden lifted.
Watchman, be faithful to obey the unction. You will not be a successful and effective watchman if you think it's all about you. Sometimes it's easy to discern because your mood suddenly swings, like mine did in Nicaragua. Sometimes, it's more subtle. You may never know exactly who or what you were praying for, though as a watchman it's usually connected to something He showed you. You grow in this through experience.
NOTES
1. Dave Butts, "Praying the News," Harvest Prayer Ministries, https://www.harvestprayer.com/resources/personal-2/praying-the-news. 2. Wendy Griffith and Craig von Buseck, Praying the News (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 2011), 14 3. E.M. Bounds, The Necessity of Prayer (New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 1984), 16.