It’s
great to be back with you again – and thank you for your prayers for what
seemed like a very long trip this time. As we continue in our series on
spiritual warfare, we now come to a very special weapon – a secret weapon, if
you will, that allows us to catch our enemy off guard.
The weapons we fight
with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine
power to demolish strongholds.--2 Corinthians 10:4
Weapons
with divine power. When we talk about putting on and using the whole armor of
God in this Great War that we are engaged in, we don’t usually list the secret
weapon that we are talking about today, even though it is mentioned in the very
next verse – after the other items that we have been talking about for the past
several weeks: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes
of the gospel, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of
the Spirit.
And pray in the
Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and
requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for
all the Lord’s people.—Ephesians 6:18
Perhaps
we don’t normally add prayer to the list because it is not associated with a
physical item as the others are. I can picture holding up the shield of faith
to block the fiery darts of Satan or swinging the sword of the Spirit to cut
through the lies that try to deceive or hold people in bondage. What do I do
with prayer? How does it feature in the battle? I wonder if Carl has labeled it
a “secret weapon” because it is a bit hard to pin down. What is prayer and what
is it for? How do we use it in the battle?
Prayer
is actually many things, playing a variety of roles. For one, prayer is the way
in which we put on the other items of armor – and put them to use. When you are
under attack, remember this list at your disposal and mention each of them in
prayer, asking God what each one means for you or the person you are battling
for. “Lord, I want to put on your belt of truth. What does that mean for me in
this situation? And the breastplate of righteousness. I want to remember that I
am covered over with the righteousness of Jesus himself. The Accuser of the
Brethren cannot bring any charge against me to weaken or discourage me.” And so
on with the others: the shoes of the gospel, the shield of faith, the helmet of
salvation, and the sword of the Spirit. We put them on and we apply them with
prayer.
Prayer
is also the way in which we receive our marching orders for the battle. What
are we even supposed to be fighting? Who should we be fighting for? We need to
pray to find out. We need to be sure that we are fighting the right battle,
with the assurance that we are doing what God wants each of us to do. “The
powers of this dark world” and “the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly
realms” – that sounds like a big, vague, scary thing to take on. But in a war
no soldier tries to fight the entire enemy army. He or she has a specific role
and place and objective. Where does God want you to stand and fight? What
specific situation does he want you to address? What lie or sin or injustice or
bondage does he want to guard against, attack, and defeat? You will only find
out by praying and asking Him to show you. Some of the orders may be for today;
some may direct your entire life.
Prayer
is integral to every aspect of spiritual warfare. Consider the sword of the
Spirit, which is the word of God. How do we use the word of God? We can read
the Bible, learn it, speak it to others. But we also need to pray it. As we read
it we need to let it soak in and become the prayer of our heart. As we pray for
others we need to claim God’s promises for them. As we confront evil of all
kinds we need to pray against it with the words of God Himself. These are weapons
with divine power to demolish strongholds.
Prayer
is such a huge, important topic. It felt overwhelming when I wondered where to
go with this message. And, quite honestly, prayer is something that I have
struggled with my entire life. It is not something that we can fully
understand. There will always be a mystery to prayer that we are unable to
fathom. Why should we tell God what he already knows and ask Him to do what he
already wants to do? Does prayer actually change God’s mind about anything?
Perhaps you have struggled with similar questions. I’m not going to get into
them today. Maybe we need a whole sermon series on prayer!
Prayer
is ultimately a matter of obedience. God has commanded us to pray, so we pray.
Clearly it is the way that we connect with Him, invite Him to work in our
lives, and make ourselves available for His purposes. Prayer is the way that we
renew our perspective and reset our priorities. How do we receive anything from
God? We pray for forgiveness, we pray for direction, we pray for provision, we
pray for understanding, we can even pray for faith.
Most
of you know of my lifelong association with the World Mission Prayer League. It
was founded to gather and direct people to pray, specifically for world mission
– as you might guess from the name. One of our foundational documents states
that “Prayer is our working method.” This reflects a quote from Oswald Chambers
that we frequently recall: “Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer
is the greater work.”
So
what does it mean to have prayer as our working method? Ideally, it means that
everything we do is surrounded, supported, and infused with prayer. At a
practical level, we try not to say, “I’ll pray about it.” If something comes up
– a crisis, a decision, a need – we try to immediately bring God into the
situation by talking to Him about it, even in the flow of conversation. In 1
Thessalonians 5 Paul tells us to
Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in
all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.—I Thessalonians
5:16-18
How
can it be realistic to pray continually? We wouldn’t get anything else done! We
need to live our lives in an attitude of prayer and turn to God frequently,
remembering our dependence on him – our need for his presence and power and
help. Of course this includes time set aside specifically for adoration and
worship and confession and thanksgiving and intercession and supplication.
Prayer is not an easy thing to which to dedicate ourselves. I confess that I
don’t pray nearly as much as I should. I think Satan tries very hard to keep us
from prayer simply because it is such a powerful weapon against him. He will do
whatever he can to distract us or discourage us from praying. You may recall
from Screwtape Letter #4 the following advice:
The best thing, where
it is possible, is to keep the patient from the serious intention of praying
altogether…. He may be persuaded to aim at … an effort to produce in himself a
vaguely devotional mood in which real concentration of will and intelligence
have no part…. If this fails, you must fall back on a subtler misdirection of
his intention…. The simplest is to turn their gaze away from Him towards
themselves. Keep them watching their own minds and trying to produce feelings
there by the action of their own wills…. Teach them to estimate the value of
each prayer by their success in producing the desired feeling…. [However, if] the
man trusts himself to the completely real, external, invisible Presence, there
with him in the room and never knowable by him as he is known by it—why, then
it is that the incalculable may occur. In avoiding this situation—this real
nakedness of the soul in prayer—you will be helped by the fact that the humans
themselves do not desire it as much as they suppose. There's such a thing as
getting more than they bargained for!
Few
of us naturally desire complete vulnerability. C.S. Lewis has this remarkable
insight, that we may enjoy a “devotional mood” or the feelings that we can
generate on our own, but we shy away from really doing business with God. The
“real nakedness of the soul in prayer” is a scary thing, especially when we are
praying with other people.
For
me, however, the vulnerability is not the main barrier to prayer. More often it
is laziness or busyness that keeps me from praying. How many of you have ever
felt too busy to pray? This is one of Satan’s favorite ways to divert us from
prayer. Bill Hybels wrote a classic book called Too Busy NOT to Pray. Has anyone read it? How was it? I have seen
it, but I was too busy to read it. I do like the title though. If we are too
busy to pray, then we need to stop and ask ourselves, “What is more important
in my life than seeking God?”
On
my trip I attended a conference in Thailand where one of the speakers
encouraged us to spend “extravagant” time with God each and every day – more
than we think we can afford. The theme of the conference was Abide – Bear
Fruit. The reference is to the true vine of John chapter 15, where Jesus says,
I am the vine; you
are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears
much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.—John 15:5
As
believers, we all want to be fruitful, don’t we? What is the secret to being
fruitful? It’s not better techniques, more initiative, greater effort. It’s
abiding in the vine. How much time do you spend just abiding with Jesus? This
was a huge challenge to me, as I’m sure it is for many of you. How much time do
you spend alone with God, in His word, in prayer, just focused on Him? Some
people claim that they can abide in Jesus as they go about their daily
business. And that is certainly true, in one sense. The speaker described
abiding as both a state and a discipline. He used marriage as an analogy. When
a man gets married he enters the state of marriage. Whether he does anything
more than that or not, he is married. However, if he wants his marriage to
thrive – to be fruitful, in that sense – he is going to need to put some work
into it. And that requires discipline: giving up himself for his wife, caring
for her, loving her as Christ loves the church. And part of that is regular,
quality time spent together, seeking true intimacy. So discipline is required
for the state to be meaningful.
In
the same way, abiding in Jesus is both a state and discipline. We are grafted
into the vine when we are saved. We have that connection with Him from that
point on. However, if we want to thrive in our relationship then we will need
the regular discipline of time spent with Him, in prayer and in His word.
The
speaker used his own parents as an example of this discipline of abiding. He
said that as he was growing up his mother and father would spend two hours
every day just abiding in the presence of God. Regardless of anything else
going on, what work needed to be done, how many people were clamoring for their
attention, each of them would go off with their Bibles each morning and spend
two solid hours just focusing on God. And this was clearly the source of their
fruitfulness as missionaries.
Another
example that he mentioned was a minister by the name of Edward Payson. How many
of you have heard of him? If you could be transported back to New England 200
years ago, you would find him a household name. He was one of the most
influential preachers of the early 19th century. His nickname was “Praying
Payson.” One of his biographers states that he spent two hours a day in prayer
and 12 hours in Bible study. His knees had worn grooves in the wooden floor
next to his bed. He was also known as an extremely humble man, very
uncomfortable with being a celebrity to the crowds of people who came to hear
him speak. He was continually conscious of God wanting to deal with his pride: “The most of my sufferings and sorrows were
occasioned by my own unwillingness to be nothing, which I am, and by struggling
to be something.”
Payson
wanted all the glory to go to God, to live a life of complete submission and
obedience. He was also conscious of his own sinfulness and need for grace: “I
was never fit to say a word to a sinner, except when I had a broken heart
myself.” He knew the secret of abiding
in the vine, and it was the source of all his fruitfulness. Payson died in
great pain in his early 40s, after being bedridden for several months. But he
was full of the joy of the Holy Spirit to the end. He wrote to a friend, “I can
find no words to express my happiness. I seem to be swimming in a river of
pleasure, which is carrying me on to the great fountain.”
It’s
an amazing testimony. People who dwell in God’s presence bring Him into every
situation in an unmistakable way. Can you tell when someone has been with
Jesus? The presence of God in a person is not something that can be
manufactured, bought, or faked. It becomes real in us only after much time
spent with Him.
Well,
I have diverged a little from our subject of spiritual warfare, but abiding is
such a key principle in all aspects of our spiritual life. Let’s go back to our
verse from Ephesians 6:
And pray in the
Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and
requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for
all the Lord’s people. –Ephesians 6:18 (NIV)
Praying at all times in
the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all
perseverance, making supplication for all the saints. –Ephesians 6:18 (ESV)
In the same way, prayer
is essential in this ongoing warfare. Pray hard and long. Pray for your
brothers and sisters. Keep your eyes open. Keep each other’s spirits up so that
no one falls behind or drops out. –Ephesians 6:18 (The Message)
These
three renderings of the verse show how widely encompassing prayer should be.
Prayer should happen at ALL times, include ALL kinds of requests, be done with
ALL perseverance, and include ALL of God’s people. This is clearly describing
an intense, committed life of prayer. The prayer must be directed and
controlled by the Holy Spirit. It doesn’t mean that we turn off our reasoning
and intellect, but we submit it to the Spirit’s authority. Sometimes we know immediately
what and how to pray; sometimes seeking God about what to pray should be our
first prayer. The Holy Spirit is on our side. As it says in Romans 8,
Likewise the Spirit
helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought,
but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for
words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the
Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according
to the will of God.—Romans 8:26-27 (ESV)
So
not only do we have the Holy Spirit helping to direct our prayers, but He is
also interceding on our behalf before the Father. This is a great mystery, but
gives us another glimpse into the spiritual warfare that is happening in the
heavens.
We
need to persevere in prayer. This also is part of the mystery. Why do we need
to keep praying? It must be for our benefit, to keep us engaged with what God
wants, opening our hearts to how He might want to use us in working in a
situation. At the same time we are to stay alert, watching for what? God’s
answer may come in a way that we do not expect and we need to careful not to
miss it. We also need to be alert to how Satan may want to deceive or tempt us,
even as we try to pray. Remember Jesus’s warning to His disciples in Gethsemane
in Matthew 26:
“Watch and pray so that you will not fall into
temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”—Matthew 26:41
Our
flesh is weak and prone to error and inaction. Therefore we need to watch as
well as pray, guarding against our tendency to get lazy, to get distracted, or
to give up. Jesus told His disciples to “always pray and not give up.” The
temptation will be there.
So
be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people. When we
pray we have a natural tendency to focus on our own needs and those of the ones
we love. That’s okay – God wants us to bring those to Him. But He wants to
broaden the scope of our prayers as well. When we think of all of the Lord’s
people, we realize that some of those most in need of our prayers are the ones
undergoing severe persecution for their faith. Carl reminded me that today is
an International Day of Prayer for the persecuted church, and we want to spend
some time together as a body praying for these brothers and sisters around the
world. This can be a very practical way for us to begin applying what we are
learning about spiritual warfare. The fight for these believers must first be
won in the spiritual realm before the hearts of their persecutors can be
changed.
Before
we go to prayer, I would like to do three more things. First, I would like to
encourage you with one of the testimonies that was shared at the conference I
attended. A man from Sudan told the story of his life. He was raised in a
radical Muslim family. Growing up, he was taught to hate Christians and Jews,
so he decided his life goal should be to go to southern Sudan and fight the
Christians there. There was one Christian boy in his school, named Zakaria, so
he gathered a gang to attack him, injuring him so badly that he never came back
to school. His hatred for Christians grew and grew, but one day when he was
visiting a young cousin who was terminally ill in the hospital, some Christians
stopped by the room and offered to pray for the child. When he saw not just
their genuine love, but the power of Jesus to heal, his heart was changed. He
realized that he was completely mistaken about Christianity. It was a long
process, but eventually he decided to follow Jesus. Now he needed to tell his
beloved family, and he knew how they would respond. Sure enough, his father
said, “Now you are dead.” His family held his funeral, even burying his empty
coffin. He knew he had lost his family. He would have to leave and never come
back. He stopped at his own grave and cried out to God. Jesus answered him
clearly, “Your grave is empty. And mine is empty, too. I will give you a new
family.” Christians looked after him, and he was eventually able to start a new
life in Germany. Long afterward, when he was giving his testimony one time he
noticed a crippled man listening and crying. He went up to him later and asked
him why he was crying. The man simply opened his Bible and showed him a name
written in the front. It was his own name! The man said, “I am Zakaria, and I
have been praying for you for the last 25 years.”
So
praise God for prayers of faith in the midst of incredible persecution.
The
second thing I would like to do is play a song for you by Audrey Assad. She is
the daughter of a Syrian refugee, so the persecuted church is close to her
heart. She wrote this song, “Even Unto Death,” as a tribute to Christians
killed by ISIS. Let it prepare your heart to pray for and with suffering
believers.
Finally,
as we turn to the Lord in prayer, I want to us to look at a map that shows the
areas of highest persecution around the world.
Let’s remember the believers in these countries as we pray:
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