Strategic Prayer

Amen.

Well, I'll be right back. I haven't learned my wife's signals yet. Ephesians 6. One of the things I'm undefeated at in my house. Settlers of Catan. Or maybe you're supposed to say Catan. I think that's how Alex pronounces it.

I don't know if you've ever played the game, but when I play against my wife and kids, they've failed to be able to overtake me yet. It's a game that requires strategy. You can't just play it. You have to have a little bit of forethought and insight.

Strategy comes in to play when you're playing sports, when you come into playing games. Strategy, of course, is important in politics. Strategy is important in waging warfare. And what I want to say to us this morning is strategy matters in prayer too.

So we're considering in Ephesians 6 this great weapon of prayer. And it's my argument this morning that the church must pray strategically. Not haphazardly. Not without forethought. Paul instructs the church in Ephesus to pray strategically.

This matters to us today too, as we'll see. We should be praying strategic prayer. So that's what we're going to consider this morning. Ephesians 6. Let's start in verse 18. Would you stand as we honor the reading of God's Word?

Let's go back a couple of verses just to take in a sentence so we're not starting in the middle. Verse 16. In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one.

And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, 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.

And also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the Gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly as I ought to speak.

Father, help us to understand strategic prayers. And I pray right now, in light of this sermon, I pray for pulpits in Perryville, for pulpits in Perry County, Conway County, Yale County, Faulkner County, Saleen County, Pulaski County, Garland County.

Lord, I pray for pulpits in central Arkansas to be bold this morning. I pray that pastors would proclaim the Gospel boldly as they ought to do it. And I pray as churches disperse this week as we go into our homes and our workplaces and in various aspects of our lives, that we would declare the Gospel boldly, for we know that it is through the proclamation of the Gospel that Christ is building His church.

Give us this, please. Help us. We pray that the Spirit would apply this text appropriately and rightly to the church. Give us ears to hear. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. I cannot imagine understanding the world today without understanding spiritual warfare.

Or let me put it this way. I cannot imagine not understanding spiritual warfare today. I cannot imagine not understanding that there is a great enemy to the church that is at work today. I cannot imagine not understanding that what lies behind the demise of our country presently, if nothing changes, the demise of our country presently, what lies behind it is the serpent's hiss.

The mutilation of children is not just something random out of thin air. The murder of children. The sins of our day. Infidelity or LGBTQ, whatever the case may be, there is a reality that Satan is at work.

Look at v. 10 -13,. And finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might, put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil and the heavenly places.

Therefore, take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. I'm going to tell you an observation I have. You may or may not agree.

But an observation I have, I see it from churches, I see it from friends, I see it from family members, I see it from community leaders, politicians. An observation I have is what we're trying to do today is get back to how things used to be before 2020.

We just want to get back to a world before the coronavirus, before all the crazy stuff that happened,.

Before all the riots,.

We just want to get back to the way things used to be. The volatility of the 2020 election, we want to get back and get to those things. The way things used to be. I'm going to tell you something this morning that it's not the position of this church.

We are not interested at this church in a return to where we were, but in a reformation of where we are. We want to go forward for Christ. Ecclesiastes 7 .10 says this, Say not, why were the former days better than these?

For it is not from wisdom that you ask this. Oh, look, there is a part of me, I wish it was like the 80s or the 90s or whatever, where the only thing that children were really worried about is what the next episode of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was going to be on Saturday morning.

And not whether or not they should undergo life-changing surgery to change their body parts. But I'm going to tell you something this morning that we're not getting back to those days. Those days are over.

And the days that we have before us are the days that God has given us. It's been said, I didn't come up with this, it's been said, I've heard it before, I've heard it quoted, but we didn't choose to live in these days, right?

We didn't choose to live in these days, but God has chosen these days for us. And so it's our requirement to be faithful in these days. And in order to do that, I'm getting to the point, in order to do that, we must be people of prayer.

Do you hear me, Providence? We must be people of prayer. Satan's schemes are crafty. They are deadly. They are treacherous. They are powerful. They are serious. But listen to me, church, they are not insurmountable.

We can overcome. God has given us a great weapon against the evil one in the weapon of prayer. And we began our examination of prayer two weeks ago. We said, we skipped a week because of Pastor Rayon, but we said the church must pray submissively, that is, in obedience to God, savingly, entrusting the Gospel, seasonally, meaning the prayer is always in season, we pray at all times spiritually, that is, in the Spirit, according with God's Word and the power and grace of the Holy Spirit.

And then we said significantly, verse 18, with all prayer and supplication, we pray big prayers to a big God, and we do so as if our lives depended on it,.

Because they do.

Again, don't miss the big picture of the context of this passage. Paul is calling the church at Ephesus to recognize her great enemy. It's not flesh and blood, like, for example, you cannot think to yourself, if we just get a new president this fall, I'm voting for a new president this fall, but you can't think, if we just get a new president this fall, that fixes our country.

Because we don't wrestle against flesh and blood. The enemy is not flesh and blood. If the enemy were flesh and blood, God would have given His church physical weapons to do what we need to do. But the enemy is spiritual, therefore we need a spiritual defense, and that's what we've talked about in the armor of God, but not only a spiritual defense, we need a spiritual offense, we need to go forward, we need to attack the gates of hell.

The gates of hell will not stand against the church, and so we march forward, and we bust through the gates of hell, and we see sinners saved, and we see the kingdom of darkness overtaken, and the kingdom of light spread.

The church continued to spread across the world, and in order to do that, we need offensive weapons. The Word of God is one of those weapons. So is the weapon of prayer. So what we're going to do today is continue in this examination of Paul's exhortation to the church at Ephesus to pray.

And we're going to skip a bit in verse 18, we'll have to come back to that just next week. We're actually going to go into verse 19 and 20 today. So I just have one main point today that builds off of two weeks ago.

So number six, but number one today, and that is the church must pray strategically. So the text says Paul's asking that the church... Okay, so remember, Paul is under house arrest, if you will. He's in prison.

He is probably chained to a Roman guard, and this is what he prays for. It's not maybe what I would ask you to pray for.

Me.

If I am in jail for the preaching of the gospel, perhaps one of the first things I'm going to say to you, Providence,.

Hey, don't forget me. Please get me out of this place.

But here's what Paul says. And also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly as I ought to speak.

Okay, let me say this clearly up front. We should pray for one another's physical needs. We should pray. This is all Bible. We should pray for the sicknesses in the church. We should pray. We should even pray for Aunt Susie's ingrown toenail.

I'm okay with praying for that, right? It's not that we shouldn't pray for these things. We should pray for leaders. We should pray. But what I'm saying is, sometimes in churches, I find that we're a bit out of balance.

We always want to pray for these physical things, and we're not really praying for these spiritual things. And Paul says to the church at Ephesus that he wants them to pray strategically for him, for specifically this area here where he will be bold in proclaiming the gospel as he ought.

In fact, it's not wrong for the church to pray for Paul's physical needs while he's in chains, but you just need to know something. He never one time here asked for that. He doesn't talk about his health or his food or his freedom.

Rather, he asked the church at Ephesus to pray strategically. He is concerned about this one thing. This one thing has captivated his mind. And oh to God that this would captivate the minds and the lives of the saints at Providence Baptist Church.

And that is this one overarching reality had captivated Paul, the advance of the gospel. So let me break this down into three points. The content of strategic prayer, the demeanor that we should pray for, and then the people we should pray for.

So number one, the content of strategic prayer. I've already told you Paul is praying for gospel advance or asking for prayers for gospel advance.

Verse 19,.

And also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly as I ought to speak.

It is okay for you to desire different life circumstances. It is okay for you to pray for God to relieve you from specific circumstances. It's okay, it's not wrong. Do I just have to suffer without asking God for alleviation?

Do I have to just deal with this and I can't take it to God and ask for relief? No, you can ask for relief. Amen, absolutely you can. But you also must understand that in whatever present circumstance God has you in, that it can and must be used for the advance of the gospel.

I don't know why we have a church member who is having to deal with the realities of Parkinson's disease.

I don't understand it.

It's very sad and hard. And we need to pray for him. And we need to pray for his wife. And we need to pray that God would be merciful and alleviate even the circumstances they are in and things would be better.

But if we just pray that, and we fail to also pray that God would work in the lives of this precious couple to advance the gospel, then we misunderstand the strategic weapon that we have of prayer. Do you understand?

I'm not trying to put one opposed to the other. I'm saying this is a total package. Just a real life illustration. Do you pray this way? This is what Paul is saying. Let me make much of Christ in the place that God has me.

Do you pray this way? The kids are crazy. The house is messy. Have you considered, how do I make Christ known in this situation? The job is hard. The co-workers are lazy. Have you considered, how can I declare the gospel boldly in this situation?

Do we pray this way for one another? In whatever circumstances the church finds itself in, do we pray for gospel advance?

Is that on our radar?

Is strategic prayer our priority? Or church, listen to me, are we more concerned about our comfortability? It seems to me that Paul was less concerned in the text about his comfortability, and more concerned about the advancement of Christ.

And also for me that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel. This is another reason, by the way, that the church continually needs the preaching of the gospel.

The preaching of the gospel recalibrates us. Do you understand that? The preaching of the gospel reminds us. It shakes us out of slumber.

Oh yeah!

Our life is not about us. It is about Christ. You're tempted to compartmentalize your life. To have Christ over here. To have your ball game over here. To have your work life over here. To have your family over here.

And it's the heralding of the gospel that reminds you your life is not in compartments. It's all together under the headship of Christ. Truly God and truly man. Born of the Virgin Mary. Came to make God known to us.

Came to obey God in our place. Came to fulfill all righteousness. Came to complete the covenant of works as the true and better Adam. Came to lay down His life as our substitute. To bear God's righteous wrath and God's judgment for sinners.

To die the death we deserve. To be laid in a borrowed tomb. To rise again on the third day. To commission His church. To call sinners to repentance of sin and faith in this message. Friends, this message recalibrates us towards strategic prayer.

Are you resting in this message? I wonder if there's someone in here that may say it this way. Has there actually been a real time in your life not where you prayed a prayer, walked an aisle, or got baptized.

Has there been a real moment in your life that you left sin and self? You turned away from your works' righteousness? And you rested in Jesus by faith as your only suitable and all-sufficient Savior?

I wonder if you realize this morning that you have the opportunity and the command to do so even now to repent and believe the Gospel. Now that's the content of strategic prayer. That whatever circumstance we find ourselves in, that we would use the opportunity afforded to us by God to proclaim Christ and that we would pray this way for ourselves and one another.

The content of strategic prayer is Gospel advance. Look again at verse 19 just to mention this. The word proclaim. You see that there in the ESV. Boldly to proclaim the mystery of the Gospel. The word proclaim is the same word used in other places like Luke 2 .15 where the shepherds say, the Lord has made known to them the Gospel.

So just as the Lord made known the Gospel to the shepherds, just as the Lord has made known the Gospel to us, the prayer here for Paul, the request for prayer, is that he would make the Gospel known. He would proclaim it.

I'm going to mention this later, but he would proclaim it with his words, right? Not live the Gospel. You can't live the Gospel. Jesus lived the Gospel. He's the only one that can. Your responsibility is not to live the Gospel, but to proclaim the Gospel.

Now, we do this to our children, to our coworkers, to our neighbors, to the parents of the kids on our ball team. Oh, listen. To the parents of the kids on the other ball team. We share the Gospel. We pray for Gospel advance.

Secondly, the demeanor we should pray for. So it's interesting, when I was studying this text, this is really what jumped off and made this whole sermon, this whole section, not just a section, but a sermon in itself, is that twice Paul uses the word boldly.

So he says, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth, in what way?

Boldly.

Now, it's not a great translation to say boldly, because boldly there is like an adverb, right?

Is that an adverb?

Boldly, yeah. So the idea is, it's not an adverb there, it's actually a noun. So it's proclaim the Gospel, or proclaim opening my mouth in boldness, is what it would say. Maybe a better translation. Open our mouth in boldness.

That's what he's saying. And then the second time, it is an adverb. It is there used as a verb. But what I'm saying there, that's in verse 20.

Boldly.

I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak. But I'm saying to us here that this is the demeanor for which we should pray for ourselves.

And one another.

What kind of demeanor? Just clear.

Bold.

We should pray for boldness in declaring the Gospel. And I don't know what kind of person it takes to miss that these are the days for boldness. These are the times for boldness. For spines, right? For feet that are standing firm.

And I don't mean brashness. The times that we live in have created weak men, but they've also created brash men at times. So we're not praying for brashness. We're praying for boldness. We're not trying to offend just for the sake of being offensive.

We're not after rudeness. We're not just trying to go viral on social media or make the headlines. We are after the bold proclamation of our Lord Jesus Christ and His Word. These words here for boldness,.

The Greek, the language,.

They carry the connotation of plain speaking,.

Of confidence,.

Of openness, of courage. I've had moments of success and failure in this. I'll give you both in this sermon, but one, just an example of success. We're just here. So I'll give you a failure later in the sermon.

But one time a few months ago, I was with Gunner and Pastor Jacob. We had to make a quick delivery. Actually, we were delivering some Bibles. We had to make a quick delivery with some Bibles and then we had to go on.

Well, we dropped off.

It'd be too long to tell you the whole story, but Gunner and I had to run inside, drop off the Bibles. There was a man outside. Jacob begins sharing the Gospel. So Gunner and I go inside, dropping off the Bibles, come out.

They're kind of arguing back and forth. Jacob's being gracious, but the guy's just like resistant, resistant, resistant. And he knows a lot of stuff. The point is he knows a lot of the right answers, but he's just kind of shaking it off.

I felt like I had like 20 seconds. So I just went up to him and I said, Sir, if you don't change your ways, if you don't repent, you're going to burn in hell.

And then we left.

So I'm just saying, I'm not saying that that is always the best strategy. Please don't take that as like a license to always like that stuff. Hello, cashier, how are you? You're going to burn in hell.

I'm not saying that you should use it that way, but I am saying that there are moments in our life we just have a little bit of time. What do I want to share with this guy? God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

No, the reality of if you reject this Gospel message that our pastor has graciously shared with you and Pastor Jacob,.

You're going to go to hell.

Repent.

And believe the Gospel. We need to be prudent. We need to think about what we say. We need to think about how we say it. But listen, I'm just going to tell you, we live in a culture today, particularly in the South, that likes to hem and haw and talk around issues and not speak plainly.

Just kind of maybe make suggestions or whatever. And I'm saying, brothers and sisters, what we need in churches today is boldness. We need clarity. We need conviction. We need confidence. We need hope in the Gospel and power of God.

So my encouragement to you is to speak plainly.

Speak openly. Speak boldly.

You say, is there any other examples of this in the Scriptures? Yes. This is the way Jesus spoke. In John 18, verse 20, Jesus says, now it's translated here openly, but it's the same word. He says, I have spoken openly to the world.

In other words, Jesus is saying, I've spoken boldly, plainly, openly to the world. This is the way the apostles spoke in the book of Acts. Acts 4 .13. Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated common men, they were astonished.

And they recognized that they had been with Jesus. How did they recognize that they had been with Jesus? Because of their boldness. Acts 4 .31. It says they continued to speak the word of God with boldness.

The very last verse of the book of Acts, chapter 28, verse 31, says that Paul continued proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus with all boldness. Listen to me, church. This is the demeanor of Christ.

This is the demeanor of the apostles. This is the desire of Paul in this text. Give me boldness. Pray that I would do this boldly. And I'm saying, this is the demeanor the church in the 21st century must recover.

We must not be afraid. Ladies, let's get specific. Ladies, when you speak to your friends, you're tempted at times to be a flatterer. What do you think about this situation? You're tempted to paint it in the best light, not to cut through and not to offend and just to say, oh, well, that's great.

I'm not saying that you can't ever encourage your friends.

I'm not saying that.

Please don't miss that. But listen to me. Your friends don't need flattered. They need the gospel. Ladies, your friends need Christ. They need for you to be bold. They need for you to speak plain truth to them.

And your sisters in church need your boldness, too. They need ladies around them, godly ladies around them that are willing to be serious about sin and grace and to speak plainly.

We're good.

I'm going to speak plainly. I'm okay with that. That's good. I understand what's going on there. But listen to me, ladies. You have the temptation, maybe, to see another lady's actions and it kind of frustrates you, but you just kind of keep it down.

Because you don't want to,.

Like, I don't want to get into all that. But I'm saying you need to speak plainly. You need to speak boldly. Men, same. When you're speaking with your friends, you're tempted to keep things on a surface level, to keep things from getting too serious, too deep, what you think about the buck, dear, what you think about the sports, what you think about whatever the case may be.

And I'm saying your friends don't need shallowness. They need your boldness. Men, your friends, your co-workers, your neighbors, they need the gospel. They need Christ. And I want to say this, men, your brothers in the church, they need your boldness, too.

They need men willing to be serious about sin and about grace and to speak confidently. And let us be here, plain speakers, open speakers. And what I'm saying is that a church should pray for these things strategically.

And we should be praying for gospel advance and that ourselves and our fellow church members should have a confident demeanor, a disposition of boldness in proclaiming Christ. We should pray this way for one another.

This was Paul's request. Let me give you another application maybe here. Maybe a tertiary application, but just a thought. Why don't you pray for men in this church to be bold in their homes in the gospel?

To not just be men that just come home, turn on the television, and disengage. Or come home and even do things with their children. Work on the baseball. Work on digging the ditch. Work on cutting the firewood.

But they don't share the gospel in the home. Let us pray that the men of our church would be bold in leading in family worship, in consistent family worship, and consistent in the gospel shaping the way that they even discipline.

The gospel shaping the way that they understand that no child in our church would look at their dad and say, I guess my dad doesn't need the gospel because he always acts perfect around me and my mom.

I guess he doesn't need Christ. But we would have humble men that are bold in the gospel. We can pray this way and should pray this way for one another. Now again, I draw your attention to verse 19 and to say it's very important to notice that Paul wants to have words to open his mouth with boldness.

We have believed the lie, listen church, we have believed the lie that it's our actions that win people to Christ, not our words. So the idea is churches today say, well look, I know you guys are out there preaching the gospel, I know you guys are out there going door to door, but that just doesn't work because they don't care what you know until they know that you care.

Have you heard that before? I want to tell you something, it's not that a church shouldn't be loving, it's not that a church can't do good works in the community, absolutely we can do those things, but you need to understand it is not a requirement for a church to win the favor of the community before we can share the gospel.

That's not what Paul's trying to do. Or he would ask to pray that way. Hey, help me win the favor of the guards so that I can have an appropriate bridge in order to share the gospel with them. Help me to make friends with these people so that they'll listen to me and I can declare the gospel.

It's not what he asked for prayer.

He asked for prayer that he would open his mouth.

And proclaim the truth of Christ.

Don't believe, there needs to be prudence.

And we could qualify this to death. I'm not going to qualify, I'm just going to say listen to me. We would be much better served to pray for boldness and plainness in preaching the gospel and proclaiming the gospel to those around us.

In addition, while we're doing that, we should be living holy lives. We should be, of course we should be. But the boldness we must pray for is a boldness that activates our vocal cords. We need to open our mouths to proclaim Christ.

So live holy, share boldly. Look at the end of verse 20, it's a duty. Paul says he needs to declare it boldly as he ought to speak. Gospel boldness is required. Paul was required, it's required of blood-bought rebels.

We cannot be ashamed. It's not just that we must not be ashamed, we cannot be ashamed. It would be forsaking our duty. It would be besmirching the glory of our king. We must declare the gospel boldly.

Will we pray? This seems impossible. That's why God's given us prayer, right?

That's why we need this.

Isn't it comforting, by the way, that Paul asked for prayer? I mean, let's just be honest. You take the Lord Jesus out, like you can't pick Him, but you're going to pick one person in the New Testament that you think is the epitome of boldness.

You're probably not going to pick Peter. You've seen him kind of go back, although he's bold too. Who's the epitome of boldness? I'd probably pick Paul. Paul is the epitome of boldness, and yet he asked the church at Ephesus to pray for what?

His boldness.

So this encourages me, because even Paul faced the temptation that I face, which is the temptation to be cowardly. Paul needed prayers for boldness, and we need them too. So that's the content of strategic prayer and the demeanor of strategic prayer.

And now I want to talk about the people we should pray for. So just back to context. Also for me, the words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly as I ought to speak.

Now I stand behind absolutely everything I've said so far, but there is a certain priority in the text. We should pray for one another about gospel advance, for boldness, all the things that I've said.

But there are also certain individuals that God has entrusted with the heralding of the gospel that should be especially emphasized in the church's prayers. So in context, the church should pray here for the Apostle Paul.

Now Paul was an Apostle in the Apostolic Office, but he was also an Apostle in the sense of the idea of being a missionary. So a local church should pray strategically for her missionaries to have the boldness to proclaim Christ.

Listen, if people are out on the front lines, if they're out in other countries and these things, and they're like, what do you do?

And you're just like, you know, well, you know,.

We're just trying to be nice to people and stuff like that. That's not missionary work. Missionary work is proclaiming the gospel. And by the way, let me say this. Do you think that maybe we could pull from this text an application that a church should know her missionaries?

I'm not saying it's wrong to pray for an organization. We can, we can pray for organizations. But I think that local churches must know the men that they have in these other countries to pray for them by name.

I'm praying for them by name that they would be bold. A local church should pray strategically in this way. And we pray for these missionaries even when they're in difficult circumstances. We don't merely pray for relief from the circumstance, but for God to use the circumstance for them to declare Christ boldly.

You, hold on, where am I coming up with that? Just again, you understand that's the text. Paul is not asking the church to pray for relief from his circumstance. I am saying it's okay for us to pray that way.

But you cannot pray that way with absence of praying for the advance of the gospel in the circumstance. You pray for this man who is in this situation and you pray that God will use him in this situation for the advance of the gospel.

The same is true, we could make this application to evangelists. Men who are out on the street preaching Christ. We should pray for these men by name that God would give them the needed boldness to speak the gospel plainly and clearly and compassionately and confidently.

This is strategic prayer. Church, to pray for the gospel to advance by asking preachers and missionaries and evangelists to pray that they would have the words they need to declare what Christ has done.

His righteous life, His substitutionary death, His victorious resurrection, His shed blood for those who repent and believe the gospel, the hope of reconciliation for any sinner who will put their faith in Jesus.

What I'm trying to argue in this sermon is this is one of the ways that we press back the kingdom of darkness. We are not fatalists. Don't be a fatalist. A fatalist is someone who says, well, God's sovereign, I'll just sit back and do nothing.

Wrong. God is going to work. But here's how He's going to work, church. He is going to work and He is working by and with and through the prayers of His people. Yeah, just think about that for a second.