In this sermon, Pastor Babij teaches on the plan that every Christian needs for warfare praying. Pastor Babij also describes the three provisions such prayer provides:
1) Strength to engage in spiritual warfare
2) Watchfulness for yourself and the Church
3) Boldness to live before men in the Spirit
Full Transcript:
Let’s take our Bibles and turn to Ephesians 6:17-20:
And take THE HELMET OF SALVATION, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18With 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, 19and 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, 20for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.
Let’s pray:
Father, I thank You for the word of God. I thank You, Lord, for this time that we can continue to look at what the Bible says concerning spiritual warfare and how to resist the enemy. For we know, Lord, that all of us need to be informed as to who is against us and what is against us. We are dealing with our flesh and our remaining corruption. We’re dealing with the world and its system of thought that is against us. We are dealing with the enemy and his minions that are against those who are in Christ. So, I pray, Lord, that You would allow us to not only recognize, but be able to resist when he does come against us and when he does manipulate the truth and lie to us. As Your children, help us to know how to detect when he wants to present half-truths in a way that sound true. I pray this, in Christ’s name, Amen.
I am really spring boarding off the passage of Scripture in the Bible where it does tell us that we are to resist the enemy, which is part of our exhortation,
The Obligation for Christians to Resist.
1 Peter 5:9 says:
But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world.
I’m going to be continuing on the sixth point to resist him, the adversary, in the faith. Secondly, we are to resist the adversary by discerning your strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies towards sin. Then, fighting against him with the word of God. Thirdly, we are to resist the antagonist by maintaining a sanctified imagination. Fourthly, we are to resist the adversary by putting off sin and putting on righteousness. The fifth way is to resist by putting on Christ where it says in Romans 13:12-14:
The night is almost gone, and the day is near. Therefore let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. 13Let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy. 14But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.
To put on Christ means Christ is our armor. He is the truth. He is our righteousness. He is our peace and good news. He is the faithful one. He is our salvation. He is the word of God. In saying that, we will be looking at the sixth way in resisting the enemy, which is to resist by warfare praying. We have already learned that spiritual sobriety will be important for two specific purposes found in 1 Peter 4:7:
The end of all things is near; therefore, be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer.
Prayer becomes a very important and a vital thing for all Christians to be involved with. The second purpose is found in 1 Peter 5:8:
Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
We see very clearly that we are to keep awake. We are to keep alert with all our faculties under control in order to give ourselves to public and private prayer. When the church first began, recorded in the book of Acts, there were several means of grace that God established in the beginning in order for a body of believers to become strong, stable, and mature regardless of where they are in the world.
It included learning the apostle’s doctrine, fellowship of believers, meeting together as Believers, and then the breaking of bread, which is the Lord’s table and also accompanied by a meal. Then, there is corporate prayer. Christians having believed in Jesus Christ for salvation have a new standing before God because of Jesus Christ and His sacrificial death.
In that standing, they are able to approach God and come into the presence of God. They repented, believed, and were granted forgiveness of their sins. Because of the forgiveness of their sins, they now can approach God in Prayer. They don’t have to go through a ceremony. They don’t have to go through human priests. They just come anywhere and anytime before God and bring before God their prayers and requests.
As believers, we all realize that we’re kind of helpless in this world, and we have a logical conviction that God alone can help us. As the Psalmist said in Psalm 73:25-26:
Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth. 26My flesh and my heart may fail, But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
In a very real way, we feel our weakness. At the same time, we know that we really get our strength from our fellowship with God, with believers, and in that time of prayer. Thus, warfare praying is of vital importance for the Christian during their sojourn on this Earth. Christians can actually call unto the Living God, and they know that He will hear them and answer them according to His will.
He’s available. There are no busy signals when you call unto God. There are no machines with a voice saying, “All lines are busy.” God is not busy. He’s ready and open to hear the prayers of His children and of his Saints. You’ll never hear from God that He’s not there. He’s always there and thank God we have a Savior, who can actually hear our prayers, understands everything we say to him, is compassionate, and eager to bend down His ear to hear what’s going on. What a privilege that is!
However, I think that we often take that privilege way too lightly. We take this for granted. For some, they seldom use this. If you read through the word of God, the power and the privilege in Scripture are seen in those who walked with God. Just consider the times Scripture mentions prayer.
Moses prayed, and three million slaves went free. Joshua prayed, and the sun stood still. Gideon prayed and with three hundred men, he defeated a huge army of the Midianites. Samson prayed and destroyed more Philistines in his death than his whole life. David prayed and killed the great Giant Goliath with a shepherd boys sling and five smooth stones, and he just used one of them. Elijah prayed and stopped the rain for three and a half years; then, he prayed again, and the rain resumed.
When the armies of the Assyrian surrounded the city of Jerusalem, Isaiah prayed and asked the Lord for help. That night an Angel of the Lord came and slaughtered one hundred and eighty-five thousand Assyrian soldiers. They were found dead around the walls of Jerusalem. Then, the Assyrian king went back with his tail between his legs, and one of his sons assassinated. King Hezekiah prayed, and God extended his life for fifteen years.
Jonah prayed from the middle of the stomach of a great fish in the depths of the sea, and soon as he was fat upon with dry ground. Job prayed in the middle of his sufferings, and the latter end of Job was greater than the former. Daniel prayed and stopped the mouths of lions.
These are just a few examples in Scripture that encourages us to do the same thing in prayer. However, there are some who pray very little, or perhaps hardly pray at all. You ask them why and they respond something such as:
Well, I have prayed, and I don’t think God answered me. I guess I just kind of gave up praying and I don’t really do it anymore.
Some of the reasons why we really don’t pray is because we don’t really plan to pray. Why is there a dearth of this activity in the modern church? Paul Gardner said:
Perhaps one of the strangest anomalies of the modern church is how it often spends much time talking about how evil the world is and how dreadful society has become while at the same time spends little time or no time in prayer.
Now, I’m not saying that we don’t spend time in prayer here when we do. However, we all have to be admonishing to get in Scripture and not let this go by the wayside because this is a very important thing that all believers must be involved with. He went on to say:
The result of lack of prayer is everywhere to be seen. For the spiritual forces of evil are at work in our midst. Consumerism, materialism, and individualism are really on the bound. Other gods of our age seem to have influenced our Christian thinking far more deeply than we imagined. We shall only keep alert properly when we pray together.
So, why is it that God’s children give up or don’t have a significant prayer life? Well, probably because we don’t plan to. One Christian minister says:
Unless I’m badly mistaken, one of the main reasons so many of God’s children don’t have a significant life of prayer is not so much that they don’t want to, but they just don’t plan to.
In the meantime, we tell the Lord:
I want to pray, but I’m so busy. I can’t seem to find the time.
Thus, nothing really gets ready in order to pray, and the opposite of planning is always to be in a rut. Unplanned prayer brings our spiritual life to its lowest ebb in vitality. The admonition must be for us to take time this very day to rethink our priorities and how our prayer life fits in. We have to make some new resolve today and try some new Venture with God. Set some time, set a place, choose a portion of Scripture to guide you through that, and don’t be tyrannized by the press of busy days.
We’re all busy and knocked from pillar to post. It seems like the information just presses on us so much. Those things that we carry around with us all day that chip, bleep, and vibrate lets us know that something is trying to get ahold of us, and what a distraction it is. It’s not a bad thing to just shut the phone off. Just put it aside for a period of time and remove all obstacles or interferences so we can actually take time to pray.
Make this day a day of turning to prayer for the glory of God the fullness of your own joy. You will find that it is a very joy-filled activity when you are bringing things to God in prayer.
In other words, we must pray for ourselves, we must pray for all the saints, so that Satan does not low us into sleeping these days and make us silent or mute. We must develop a strategic plan for praying. It is not rocket science. It is not that difficult. In theory, it is not, but in opposition it is because everything is against you everything.
There are three means of prayer vital for Christian warfare. First, prayer is a means of strength in spiritual warfare. Ephesians 3:16 says:
that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man.
It is the means of strength that prayer is the essence of spiritual warfare and the most important means by which Believers are strengthened by God. As I have mentioned, putting on Christ makes us able. Ephesians 6:11 says:
Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.
Then, Ephesians 6:16 says:
In addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.
As far as understanding right doctrine and understanding what a believer’s conduct should be in the world, we can all have our ducks in a row spiritually. If a Christian soldier attempts to fight or attempts to resist in their own strength, they will be rendered crippled by the enemy and his forces.
You can believe everything correctly, you can do everything correctly, but if you don’t believe in the necessity of regular prayer, then you are in the battle without coms. That is military talk for being cut off from vital communication with the commanding officer. Of course, our commanding officer is our Lord, Jesus Christ. If you don’t have communication with God, then you’re on your own, so how do we get strong in the Lord and the power of His might?
It’s not just by knowing the truth of God, but it’s by a living connection that we have with the Lord Jesus Christ and we keep on growing in it stronger we keep on protecting our prayer time with the Lord, and we make a plan to be with the gathered assembly at least once or twice a month so that we can pray about the things that the Lord has given us in and has provided to us. Ephesians 6:10 says:
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might.
Then, Ephesians 6:18 says:
With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit.
There must be a constant contact and communication with the Lord. Christians must maintain an intimate relationship with the One who died in their place and the One who’s making intercession right now in heaven for them. That relationship is maintained by prayer. For your information, thirty-one out of the hundred and fifty-five verses in the Epistle of Ephesians 31 are on prayer. That’s quite a bit.
Christians, once you put your armor on, once you put on Christ, you are not yet done. We must now put on our armor with prayer because prayer shows our dependence on our Lord. Prayer means that we are in a living relationship with our God. Prayer demonstrates that the Christian soldier is not attempting to fight in his own strength and power.
Christians do not possess power gained through some driving energy on their own, some polished skill that they have, or some trusted methods that they possibly used in the past. Believers gain and maintain power for spiritual warfare through prayer. When I was preaching through Ephesians, Dr. Raska, professor at the Master’s Seminary, said:
We make fools of ourselves, setting ourselves up for mediocrity, emptiness, and disaster if we do not insist to be much in prayer whatever the cost.
There is a cost. The cost maybe a little less time to eat dinner. It may be coming home from work a little earlier. It may mean getting up earlier in the morning, less time to watch your favorite programs, or to surf some social media sites. There will be some denial of self, some discipline of the flesh, and some moving around of the schedule in order through to be persistent in prayer.
Trials, suffering, and spiritual warfare all have some connection to affliction, trouble, and friction though it’s hard to accept it at times that these are not ideal situations. Nature even tells us that a tree planted in a rainforest is never anchored and can be toppled even by a moderate wind. By contrast, a mesquite tree that’s planted in a dry desert is threatened by a hostile environment. It survives by driving its roots down more than thirty feet into the earth seeking for water by adapting and adjusting to harsh conditions. The well-rooted tree becomes strong and steady against all assailants.
Christians are like these two trees. There are those who learn to stand strong in the faith and conquer their problems in the strength and the wisdom of the Lord, who are better anchored and better able than those whose roots have not gone down deep into truth or trained by troubles. Brethren, it was the Lord who told us in Luke 18:1 that we are weak without prayer. If we don’t pray, we will faint:
Now He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart.
At some point in our Christian walk, we have all experienced that. We are all the same boat. We’re all in the same world and in the same context as far as where we live. We know that it’s difficult to plan this into our life, protect it, and be persistent in it.
What is the character of your prayer life? What place does it actually have in your daily routine? What place does public prayer meetings have in your weekly schedule or in your monthly schedule? If we don’t pray, then you and I will be weak and faint. In the midst of spiritual battle, we will get weak. The very fact of battle means weariness, but we don’t have to be weak and faint in the sense that we give up.
We want to be strong in the Lord, and in being strong in the Lord, Christians can show that they are in touch with Jesus, the commander of the troops. Christians are to put on the whole armor of God while maintaining constant contact with God in Prayer.
One of the characteristics of warfare prayer is that it is multifaceted. Ephesians 6:18 says:
With all prayer and petition…
Meaning, all kinds of prayers we are to pray. The commitment to prayer raises the soldier to a state of a real urgency in all forms and all kinds of prayer. In other words, there’s closet prayer, which is a private prayer, and there is public prayer, which is to pray with the church body in prayer meetings.
Also, there is heart-prayer, which is with no words, but with groans. Sometimes, we just come to the Lord groaning. We can’t even put them into words and God knows our heart. There are prayers of praise, blessing, thanksgiving, confession of sin, and affirmation. So, there are all kinds of prayers.
Secondly, prayers are to be earnestly specific. In Ephesians 6:18, it says
petitions,
which is also entreaty, supplications, intersections, and prayers with regard to a special request and desires. Keep bringing prayer to God as you see the different needs arising in your life. Philippians 4:6 says:
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
This is something that we ought to be doing. Then, prayer is also constant. Ephesians 6:18 says:
…pray at all times in the Spirit…
Prayer is to be offered at every conceivable time in our life such as when things are going well, when things are not going well, when things are full of joy, or when things are not full of joy. A real obstacle to frequent and constant prayer is often our failure to acknowledge our deep need for God and an oppressing dependence upon Him.
When we do not sense our weaknesses, our helplessness, our dependence, our danger, we will not pray. However, if we have an acute awareness of the war and our weaknesses, it will drive us to our needs:
Lord, I cannot do this. I cannot live the Christian life without You and without the strength that You provide for me. I cannot win my family member to Christ or even Share the gospel with them without You. Lord, I can’t go on this job interview where I’m so full of anxiety and nervous about it without You. I need Your strength. I need Your help.
All these things come to our mind, so the attitude of our heart is in prayer all day long. It does not mean we’re on our face all day or kneeling all day. It means that you’re driving in the car and your very hard attitude is to be talking to God about the day. Thanking Him about allowing you to wake up that morning, allowing you to have this car to drive to work, allowing you to have a job.
You’re just thanking God and it just flows out of you, and that’s what God wants. As we do that, then we are ready when the difficult parts of life come.
Prayer is no stranger to us. It’s something that we do. It’s the fabric of our whole being in life. We are in contact with God because we know what He’s done for us. We know for sure that He hears us when satan is lying to us by telling us God doesn’t hear us or that he doesn’t care for you.
We don’t believe those lies anymore, and one reason why is that part of warfare prayer is with the help the Spirit gives. Ephesians 6:18 says:
…pray at all times in the Spirit…
Meaning, in the Holy Spirit of God by keeping our minds in the mindset of real prayer. All prayer must be done in the Spirit. Negatively, repetitious prayers, making long prayers, or prayers just done for the ear of the public is not praying in the Spirit.
Praying in the Spirit means your heart is definitely engaged in talking with the Lord. Jude 1:20 says:
But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit links closely with the word of God and the Spirit of God. The sword of the Spirit becomes the cutting edge in prayer. It’s driving our thoughts, so we pray in the will of God and we pray for would God wants in our life. Prayer in the spirit is inspired, it’s guided, and it’s made effective through the spirit of God who indwells us.
A second mean of prayer is watchfulness in spiritual warfare. Again, Ephesians 6:18 says:
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.
Warfare watching s a watching in which we are not to fall asleep at the switch. We are not the fall asleep at our post. We must have, as I mentioned years ago, a tobacco juice alertness. What does that mean? Well, early American cowboys, who took drastic measures to keep alert and hold fast to their work while guarding the cattle, would rub tobacco juice in their eyes to make them smart or to keep their eyes open and help the riders stay at their vigil even when they were weary. They did this in the interest of their bosses and the safety of the animals.
Will we remain constantly steadfast in prayer for the high interest of our Lord Jesus Christ and for the benefit of His people, who are much more important than cattle? We stay awake for the sake of the church and not fall asleep in this area. We are not to give up or discouraged when answers to our prayers are delayed.
Sometimes, the answer to our prayer is wait. Sometimes, the answer to our prayer is no. Sometimes, the answer to our prayer is yes, but not in the way you thought it would be answered. See, we should never give up our responsibility because God knows how to and when to answer prayer.
Our responsibility is to keep on praying and to trust God completely for the answer according to His will and on His own time. Believe me, when He does that, it’s the right time. It’s not a forced time. It’s not a time that we think you should do something. It’s a time when it all comes together. If you have been a believer for a while, you’ve experienced those times.
You prayed and prayed, but things didn’t seem to happen. All of a sudden, you prayed, and it all came together. God was doing it at the right moment, at the right time. If you notice, warfare watching is connected also with the discipline of prayer. We are to be disciplined in this matter.
Also, we are to be concerned about the needs of others. That’s something that’s very vital for a Christian. Ephesians 6:18 says:
…and petition for all the saints.
In other words, our first priority on our list is the church. Actually, saints describe that we have been set apart for God. We are His property. We are His holy people. We are Saints. We are faithful. We are in Christ. We are chosen in the Beloved. We are adopted into the family of God. We are His children. God is going to listen to His children. We are a special group of people.
Thus, the church ought to be praying for that special group of people. We ought to be praying for each other. When we pray for the saints, we pray for the sick, we pray for the elderly, we pray for the deacons and elders, for the widows, the single moms, the young parents, and the teenagers. We pray for healing, jobs, traveling mercies, and all things that are on our minds and are involved in our community.
Some saints are in particular stress and difficulty. We must pray for them. Also, we should pray that they would stand firm in the faith, which is one thing that is connected to the armor of God. Matters like truth, righteousness, readiness of the Gospel, realities of salvation, and the word of God.
Prayers that we offer up to God that will drive back the enemy, so that saints would be strong in the Lord and the strength of His might. Pray that they would stand firm when things get tough. A one-person army will soon be defeated. We must fight against the individualistic mindset that we are all prone to in our culture in America.
It’s really not about you and it’s not about me. It’s about us. It’s about the people of God. To make that shift in your mind will actually drive you to pray. Now, you know that you are responsible to pray for other people.
When we become Christians, we are actually interconnected with each even more than our own blood family. We are mutually independent or interdependent whether we know it or not, and nothing can really happen to any Christian without all being involved. If anyone Christian fails, every one of us suffers inevitably because we are all members of the body. We are all in this Army together until the Lord comes.
All of us, who are now joined in this new community called The Church, need to intercede for each other. We all need to be able to stand firm in the middle of spiritual battle and we can’t do that alone.
There are two dangers that praying for others hedge against, which are dangers that really helped us. First, it is the danger of self-centeredness. Meaning, you deal with your problems, difficulties, or fears in a purely personal way. When we do it alone, we mole over things and we feel sorry for ourselves. We end up totally cast down in our soul and the devil gains victory. We end up licking our wounds and soaking in our personal battle alone. That’s not how God intended it. Really, praying for other people hedges against self-centeredness and aloneness.
Secondly, it hedges against isolation. The one other ploy of the devil is to convince you that you are alone, and your situation is unique. No one understands what you’re going through, what you’re feeling, and what happened to you in your struggle. That’s a complete lie because Jesus was tempted to the extreme without committing sin.
Meaning, nobody was tempted to the extent that Jesus was, so He knows all your struggles. He knows all the troubles that you’re going through. He knows all of them from the top to the bottom. He knows every single thing, that you’re going through, so you can’t believe the lie that you are alone. We know we have the Lord with us, but we also have the church with us.
I know when people pray for me. When I’m out there doing something, and someone is praying for a specific thing, I just feel strength that people are behind me. I can trust them that they’re going to be praying for me. To know that the church is praying is incredible comfort.
Thus, the remedy is to rise up and pray for all the other saints because they are engaged in the same feelings and struggles. Look again at what it says in 1 Peter 5:9:
But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world.
We can’t claim that we’re alone. That’s a complete lie of the enemy. The truth about the armor of God is that God and the Lord Jesus Christ are engaged in this battle with us against cosmic forces. We are strong, and we are not alone.
If you remember, Elijah defeated the prophets of Baal in the name of the Lord. It was a tremendous day where fire came down from heaven. All the water that he poured on sacrifices were consumed. He walked away, and God worked. Then, the wicked Jezebel found out about what happened and threatened to kill Elijah, and what does Elijah do? He takes off. In fact, he runs and tells the Lord to kill him and take him out of there.
However, the Lord cared for him by sending ravens to feed him with food, give him water, and to give him a good night’s rest. Sometimes, that’s all we need spiritually. Sometimes, that’s all we need to just get back going again. We wear ourselves down to the point where we’re not considering our health, which is part of our spiritual understanding of how to live life. We have to take care of ourselves, right? 1 King 19:10 says:
He said, “I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the sons of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars and killed Your prophets with the sword. And I alone am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.”
How did he go from the mountain to the valley so fast? Well, we do the same thing, don’t we? There are not many mountain experiences for Christians. There are a lot of valleys. We don’t learn anything on the mountain. We learn in the valley, and when we’re in the valley, we understand what the mountain is about. 1 Kings 19:14 says:
Then he said, “I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the sons of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars and killed Your prophets with the sword. And I alone am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.”
Then, the Lord says to Elijah in 1 Kings 19:18:
Yet I will leave 7,000 in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal and every mouth that has not kissed him.”
See, we’re not alone. Don’t believe that lie. That’s a lie. Then, spiritual strength and spiritual watchfulness brings us to a place where we don’t shut our mouth. It gives us boldness to live the Christian life, but also to speak for the Lord. Lastly, prayer is a means of boldness in spiritual warfare. Ephesians 6:19-20 says:
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, 20for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.
Apostle Paul is asking the church to not allow Satan to tempt him where he doesn’t say anything when he ought to. What causes me to keep my mouth shut when I should have spoken? So, where does boldness come from? Well, it comes in several ways. Number one, boldness comes by being with the Lord Jesus. Acts 4:13 says:
Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus.
To these uneducated people, boldness came from Christ. They were able to speak very clear, articulate things about truth that pierced people’s hearts. These guys didn’t have any degrees, nor did they go to rabbinical schools. They weren’t trained by the Scribes and the Pharisees. They’re just dumb fisherman, but they spoke like that because they had been with Jesus. You can speak like that because you’ve been with Jesus and you have been in the word of God. That’s how you get boldness.
When you have boldness, when you’ve learned something to say, and when it’s time to say, you can say it. When we go out and do evangelism, they say, “you know what I never thought I knew those things until I started talking to that person.” Meanwhile, it just started coming out of me because I’ve been learning these things. Don’t keep a cap on what you know, let it out and let people know what God’s teaching you.
Secondly, boldness comes from prayer and this is one thing I want to stress where it says in Acts 4:29:
And now, Lord, take note of their threats, and grant that Your bond-servants may speak Your word with all confidence
We know from the context this had to do with prayer. Lastly, prayer boldness comes from the Holy Spirit of God where it says in Acts 4:31:
And when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God with boldness.
Again, the response to their prayer was a fresh, infilling of the Holy Spirit, which was manifest in the disciple’s fearless proclamation of the word of God. Prayer is the most thorough test of faith because it reveals to you and to me that we are growing in the knowledge of God, the knowledge of his plan, and that we are ever being conformed to them and bold in speaking about them.
In Ephesians, Paul was praying that he would receive boldness to speak forth the mysteries of the Gospel as he ought to speak. However, there’s a paradox in prayer, and the paradoxes reveals to the enemy that we are totally dependent on God because we do not have super natural wisdom and power. That must come from the Lord. It cannot come from anywhere else.
Prayer is a means of strength in spiritual warfare, a means of watchfulness in spiritual warfare, and it’s a means of boldness in spiritual warfare. In conclusion, Samuel Chadwick said:
The chief concern of the devil is to keep Christians from praying. He laughs at our toils. He mocks at are wisdom, but he trembles when we pray.
Let’s pray:
Lord, I thank You for this time that You set up side for us to pray and to hear the word of God. I pray Lord for everyone here, including myself, that we would plan a prayer time and prayer place. I pray, Lord, that we would also plan to be with the gathering church on as many Fridays as we can come. To spend that hour and a half with other brothers and sisters and to bring our petitions, intercessions, and our requests before You Lord. I pray, Lord, as we do that, You would enable us to stick to it and fight for it until we get it. Once we get it, we would keep it because we know, Lord, that this is going to be the very strength and joy that we need in our Christian Life as we seek Your face out, we see You answered prayer, and interaction in our life. We want to praise You, Lord, for all the prayers that we have offered up. Thank You, Lord, for all the prayers that You’ve answered. I pray, Lord, let there be many other requests that we bring before You that You will answer according to Your will. I pray, Lord, make us a sober, serious assembly of prayer. I pray this in the great and the awesome name of Jesus Christ. Amen.