Supernatural Warfare - Part Eight: Prayer

These past several weeks we’ve examined elements of the supernatural armor God has provided us. Although we’ve looked at them in isolation, each piece is crucial to the entire unit of our armor. Today we will finish this series as we turn our attention to prayer.

 

For the sake of time I will focus today only on the last three verses of this section in Ephesians six: St Paul writes: “With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints, and pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak. (Ephesians 6:18-20)

 

Many Christians think of St Paul as a giant of faith and evangelistic fervor. And rightly so. If we look only at the book of Acts, it seems Paul single-handedly won Europe and Asia Minor to the Lord. He seemed unstoppable. Shipwrecked, flogged, stoned, imprisoned, hungry, cold, nakedness . . . nothing stopped the man from proclaiming Jesus the Christ as humanity’s ONLY hope for eternal life.

 

But the apostle recognized the daily battle he faced. That’s why he asked the Ephesians to pray for his perseverance and his boldness to proclaim the gospel.

 

Yes, he recognized the battle is long, arduous, and potentially deadly. And it’s easy to make application to this century. How many high-profile pastors and church leaders have you heard about who turned away from their calling? I did a quick internet search using the key words, ‘Famous Christians who Left Christianity’ and found many, many tragic examples.

 

But we should not be surprised by the numbers because Scripture is clear that such things happen and have always happened. Do we think Judas started out intending to betray Jesus? Of course not. And then there was Demas, a one-time missionary companion of Paul who walked away from Christ (2 Timothy 4). Scripture and Church history is replete with examples of men and women who became casualties in this deadly spiritual battle. And some of you know people close to you – perhaps even among your own family – who once walked with Christ and have since turned from Him.

 

That’s why we must put on our battle armor every day – the belt of God’s inerrant, infallible, and transcendent truth. We must daily wear the breastplate of righteousness, our feet sandaled with the preparation and the proclamation of the gospel, holding fast the shield of faith, wearing the helmet of salvation, holding high the sword of the Spirit – and never neglect prayer.

 

But exactly what IS prayer? It’s foolhardy for me to preach about the subject without first defining what prayer is. And so, in a few words, prayer for the Christian is more than simple communication between the Creator and humanity. God designed prayer to be an intimate exchange of love between us and our Creator. The closest I can come to describing what I mean by that is to compare prayer to a mother nursing her baby. I remember watching Nancy nurse our children. Her eyes glistening with love and warmth and wonder, her hand gently caressing their faces – and their eyes gazing mysteriously into hers as they suckled.

 

Thinking about that scene reminds me of the message God spoke to Israel through Isaiah – and by extension, the message God speaks to you and me: “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast, and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.” (Isaiah 49:15-16, NIV)

 

That’s the intimacy which God designed for prayer – communion with Him as close as skin touching skin. Picture that in your mind! The Creator designed a means for us to enter such closeness with Himself as a mother with her suckling child. Listen to the psalmist David: “Surely I have composed and quieted my soul; Like a weaned child rests against his mother, my soul is like a weaned child within me.” (Psalm 131:2)

 

Listen again as God speaks of His profound love for us: (Isaiah 46:3b-4) “You who have been borne by Me from birth and have been carried from the womb; Even to your old age I will be the same, and even to your graying years I will bear you! I have done it, and I will carry you; And I will bear you and I will deliver you.”

 

THAT’S the intimacy God designed for prayer – communion with Him as close as skin touching skin.

 

Jesuit priest, Pedro Arrupe spoke about this intimacy as well as I have ever heard it: Nothing is more practical than finding God, than falling in Love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in Love [with God]. Stay in love, and it will decide everything.

 

But although the Christian knows intuitively his or her longing for intimate prayer, every Christian in this room knows prayer is a battle – we battle distractions in prayer, and dryness, discouragements, disappointments, and disillusionments.

 

I found this in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Whatever your denominational label, these words ring true for anyone who has ever tried to connect with God through prayer: Prayer is both a gift of grace and a determined response on our part. It always presupposes effort. The great figures of prayer . . . all teach us this: prayer is a battle . . . against ourselves and against the wiles of the tempter who does all he can to turn man away from prayer, away from union with God. . . . The "spiritual battle" of the Christian's new life is inseparable from the battle of prayer. (Paragraph 2725)

 

I think the most common reason for the battle is that the devil understands prayer’s power far better than any of us know its power. That’s why he does all he can to keep us from prayer; And if he cannot keep us away from prayer, then he tries to keep it as anemic and as lifeless as he can.

 

But there are some things we can do to mitigate the distractions, the dryness, even the discouragements and disillusions that often plague our prayers. And I confess, I am certainly not there yet. I don’t want anyone to think I have arrived at that special place I am speaking of. But I have caught glimpses of it often enough in past years . . . just glimpses, mind you . . . that when I think of them, as I did as I prepared this message, I again long for those times to become more frequent.

 

So, to help us – you and me – learn to engage in prayer in such a way as to sense our spirit touching the Holy Spirit, I have a few suggestions – some strategies – that might make the effort of prayer less challenging and more in line with God’s plan for our lives.

 

Strategy Number One: Forgiveness of Others

 

Do we really think we can be intimate with Christ if we are unwilling to live as Christ? Of all the prayer strategies we could ever practice, if forgiveness of others is not at their core, we might as well stop jabbering at God. Forgiveness is a choice. It is an act of the will, independent of our ‘feelings’ of forgiveness.  It’s the choice Jesus made when He asked the Father to forgive those who mocked and crucified Him – even though they had not asked for forgiveness. It’s the same choice St. Stephen made when, as he was dying at the hands of the mob stoning him, he asked the Lord to not hold that sin against them – even though they had not asked for forgiveness.

 

And we must never forget, the Lord Jesus made it clear that God’s forgiveness of us is inextricably linked to our forgiveness of others. Perhaps the clearest example of this principle is found in the verses just after the “Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6 in which Jesus warned, “If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions (Matthew 6:14-15).

 

Strategy Number Two: The Examination of Conscience.

 

All of our strategies for prayer are utterly useless if we are aware of our sin – even what we might call ‘small sins’ – our prayers are useless if we delay our honest repentance. That’s why the examination of conscience, followed by confession and repentance, forms the basis of this prayer strategy.

 

What do I mean by the examination of conscience? Simply this, at some time during the day – the end of the day usually works best – we ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the things we did wrong during the day and for which we have not yet confessed and repented – like unnecessarily harsh words we spoke to others, the gossip we practiced, our resentments, impure thoughts, and so forth. And when He unveils those sins to our mind, immediately repent, ask His forgiveness, and His help to not do it again.

 

Without honest confession and repentance, our prayers are in danger of falling on His deaf ears. “If I hold sin in my heart,” the psalmist wrote, “the Lord will not hear me.” (Psalm 66:18)

 

Scripture links prayer and confession so often that it is impossible to miss the connection. For example, Proverbs 28:13 – “He who conceals his sins prospers not, but he who confesses and forsakes them obtains mercy.”

Psalm 32: “As long as I kept silent [about my sin], my bones wasted away; I groaned all the day . . . Then I declared my sin to you; my guilt I did not hide. I said, "I confess my faults to the Lord," and you took away the guilt of my sin” (Psalm 32:3-5).

Strategy Number Three: The Environment of Prayer

 

I’m sometimes easily distracted during my time with Jesus, so I developed a strategy to reduce the frequency and length of those distractions. My technique deals with the environment of prayer, which I think is just as important as the style of those prayers.

The Lord Jesus said, “When you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret” (Matthew 6:6). Where can you spend undistracted time with the Lord? And what is the best time for you to do so? Only you can answer those questions, but they ARE important questions to ask yourself.

 

I like to keep a notepad and pen at my side. In my experience, it’s usually the norm rather than the rarity that while in prayer an idea pops into my head about something I need to accomplish later that day. When that happens, I take a few seconds to jot the ‘to do’ items on the pad, so I won’t forget them or be further distracted by them. Having taken a moment to write them down, I can return to my time with the Lord.

 

Strategy Number Four: The Prayer List

 

During much of my adult life, I’ve used ‘to-do’ lists for just about everything – everything, that is, except prayer. I don’t know why it took so long for me to figure out I needed a list to help me remember to pray for people or particular needs. When the list becomes too long to easily pray through in one sitting, I divide the list into several lists, assigning each list to a particular day of the week. Of course, there are some people – family, for example – that remain on my ‘daily’ prayer list.

 

Strategy Number Five: The Alphabet Prayer

         

For me, this is a ‘fun’ strategy. At each letter of the alphabet, I make up a prayer. For example, at the letter ‘A’ – “All to you, O, God, all to you I surrender today. My time, my source of entertainment, my finances, my health – I lay them all at your feet to be guided and to be used for your honor.”

 

At ‘B’ I pray something like, “Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe. Be magnified, be exalted, be praised throughout all the earth, beginning in my own life and family.”

 

At ‘C’ – “Come, Holy Spirit, I need You. Come sweet Spirit, I pray. Come in Your strength and Your power. Come in Thine own gentle way.”

 

At ‘D’ I might say, “Deal with me, Thy servant, according to your mercy and grace. Deepen, please, my devotion to You.”

 

And so on. You get the idea. I’ve prayed the alphabet prayer through all 26 letters, and sometimes only through a part of the alphabet. But the point of this strategy is, of course, not to spend a set ‘time’ but rather to draw closer to our Lord.

 

Strategy Number Six: Scripted Prayer

 

In my early Christian years, I thought ‘scripted prayer’ – like those in prayer books – are less spiritual than spontaneous ones. But how foolish I was in those days. Men and women of God have prayed scripted prayers – such as the Psalms – for millennia.

 

I often look for psalms that exalt God, such as Psalm 145: “I will extol You, my God, O King, and I will bless Your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless You, and I will praise Your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised, and His greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall praise Your works to another, and shall declare Your mighty acts. On the glorious splendor of Your majesty and on Your wonderful works, I will meditate. Men shall speak of the power of Your awesome acts, and I will tell of Your greatness.”

 

Or Psalm 138: “I will give You thanks with all my heart; I will sing praises to You before the gods. I will bow down toward Your holy temple and give thanks to Your name for Your lovingkindness and Your truth; For You have magnified Your word and your Name above all things. On the day I called, You answered me; You made me bold with strength in my soul.”

 

But the Psalms are not the only source of meaningful prayer. Prayers offered by spiritual giants such as St. Augustine, St. Francis of Assisi, John Wesley and A. W. Tozer all work to draw us closer to Christ. For example, listen to one of John Wesley’s prayers: I am no longer my own, but Yours. Put me to what You will, rank me with whom You will; put me to doing, put me to suffering; let me be employed for You or laid aside for You, exalted for You or brought low for You; let me be full, let me be empty; let me have all things, let me have nothing; I freely and heartily yield all things to Your pleasure and disposal.

Or St. Francis: Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. Where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, not so much to be understood as to understand, not so much to be loved, as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, it is in dying that we awake to eternal life.
         

For the Christian, prayer is more than simple communication between the Creator and humanity. God designed prayer to be an intimate exchange of love between us and our Creator. I hope some of my suggestions here will enhance your prayer life and draw you so much closer to our Savior.

 

Oh, Lord, please make it so – for Christ and in His Name we pray. Amen