(Ephesians) Fit for the Fight — Brian Brodersen

Prayer as the Final Element of Spiritual Warfare

Lord, tonight, as we come once again to the subject of spiritual warfare, we pray that you would give us insight and understanding. Teach us, Lord, that we can walk in victory in Jesus name. Amen. Let's turn to Ephesians chapter six.

And we come this evening to the final study in our series that we've been doing on the subject of spiritual warfare. And so we'll be talking tonight about the vitally important topic of prayer. So let's read from chapter six, verse 13 on through verse 19.

Paul says, 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, stand, therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace.

Above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for the saints and for me that utterance may be given to me that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel.

So we've been studying the subject of spiritual warfare, and we've looked at a lot of different facets of the whole issue of spiritual warfare. We've looked at the reality of the warfare. Sometimes, even though we're in the midst of it, we are oblivious to it.

And so we've tried to, you know, just bring that to light that there is a spiritual battle that's going on. We've looked a bit at the character of our adversary, the devil and Satan, and we've seen something about his activity, the things that he's doing on a large scale level throughout the world, the things that he's doing in the church, the things that he's doing to harass us on a personal level.

We looked at the subject of the wiles of the devil, and we looked at the age old preoccupation of Satan, that of tempting man. And then, of course, we looked at the armor of God, and we come now really to the final aspect of the armor of God.

And as we pointed out in our previous study, the armor of God primarily consists of a defensive set of weapons, really, or an armor that is primarily defensive and protective. But then there is that offensive element to it.

And we talked about that at length in our last study, and that is the word of God being the offensive weapon that God has given us. And through that word of God, that's how we defeat the enemy. That's how we not only keep him from pushing us back, but that's how we push him back.

That's how we take ground as we take those specific words of God, and we fight against the devil with the sword of the spirit. And now we come to prayer, which is the other offensive weapon that we have.

So we see the Christian soldier standing in full armor, dress for battle. Yet, at this point, he is not necessarily truly ready to fight, for there are two essential things that must accompany a fully equipped soldier, and that is skill and strength.

So, you know, you can take a person and you can dress them up in military clothing. You can give them the finest and the most advanced in weapons. But if they are not skilled, if they are not strong, if they are not able to use those weapons efficiently, then you don't have much of a soldier, really.

And the same can be true in the spiritual realm. Prayer is to the Christian soldier, what physical fitness and mental preparedness are to the prayer is for us, what those things would be to those fighting in the physical realm.

So without these things, even though you're well equipped in the outward sense, that doesn't guarantee victory. The Christian soldier needs to be fortified within, and that comes through prayer. And so that's why, as Paul comes to the end of his instruction on the armor of God, he says, and praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit.

Prayer as the Fuel for the Armor of God

Now, prayer, that's one of the main topics of the Bible. The Bible is full of examples of men and women in prayer. It's full of encouragement for us as God's people to be a praying people. There are over 300 references to prayer in the Bible.

But I do think that prayer could possibly be the most talked about, but least practiced aspects of the Christian life. We talk about it. We preach about it. We write books on it. But do we really do it?

That's the vitally important thing that we be praying as God's people. Prayer is the energy. It's the force. It's the fuel that empowers the armory of God to advance and to take territory away from the enemy.

Prayer is the it's really the empowering of the machinery. If we're making little progress, it could be due to our lack of prayer. And, you know, sometimes I do wonder myself as we look and we see. That there are many, many Christians.

In our communities. That there are still many Christians and many churches and many good churches, for that matter, in our country, but it seems like we're losing ground all the time, and I would suspect that it has something to do with a lack of power.

We've got all of the machinery. We've got the battle gear. We're all decked out in the armor. But yet we have no fuel. We have no empowering. You know, it reminds me of what we read about back in the life and times of David.

You remember that the Philistines were oppressing the Israelites, and there came a point when the Israelites and the Philistines were lining up to battle against one another in the Valley of Elah. And it says the Philistines were encamped on one side of the valley, and the Israelites were encamped on the other side of the valley.

And on a daily basis, the champion of the Philistines, Goliath, he went out and he taunted the men of Israel. But the interesting thing is, it says that they set themselves in battle array. They were all dressed up.

They were all ready for battle in the outward sense, but none of them had the strength or the fortitude or the courage to actually go out and engage the enemy. And Goliath knew that. And so daily he would taunt them and mock them.

And in some senses, it seems like the church is in a similar sort of a condition today. We're in the battle array, so to speak. We've got all of the weaponry. We've got all of the armament. We've got all of these advantages seemingly, but yet there's not a whole lot of activity.

And I do think it's due to the fact that we are missing this key element in the conflict, and that is the element of prayer. We haven't put on the full armor of God unless we are praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit.

So until prayer becomes a real integral part of everything we're doing as Christians, we're not fully equipped. That's what the apostle is telling us. And of course, we need to be fully equipped desperately in the days that we're living in.

So what we want to do now is just sort of break down what the apostle mentions here as he talks about prayer, the prayer, the praying always the praying in the spirit. The various things that he goes on to list here.

Praying Always and Cultivating Communion with God

So he begins by saying praying always. And in another place, he said, pray without ceasing, praying always pray without ceasing. The question is, how do we do that? I don't know if it's old age or. I don't know what it is, but my mind seems to be more easily distracted these days than it ever was at any time before.

Maybe there's just so much activity going on in the air, the atmosphere around us. It's interfering with our thinking process. I don't know, but there's so much activity and there's so much distraction.

And when Paul says to pray always or to pray without ceasing, that is a big challenge because I find that I'm so easily distracted from prayer. I'm so easily overcome with thinking about other things and making other things the priority just because those things seem to bombard my life.

But there is a place, no doubt, because God tells us to do it. And that means that he will enable us to do it. There is a place that we can come to where we actually will be in that state where we're praying always.

It's the sort of thing that happens. As we're just getting more and more connected with the Lord in our hearts and it's just working itself into every facet of our life, so wherever we go, whatever we do, we're just sort of going on in that silent communion with the Lord.

John Wesley. Beautifully described the man who had matured in prayer. He said his heart is ever lifted up to God at all times and in all places. In this, he has never hindered, much less interrupted by any person or thing in retirement, company, leisure, business or conversation.

His heart is ever with the Lord, whether he lies down or rises up. God is in all his thoughts. He walks with God continually, having the loving eye of his mind still fixed upon him and everywhere seeing him who is invisible.

Oh, that is a coveted place. That is a place that by God's grace we all need to strive to arrive at where we're just living in this sort of unspoken communion with God, where even though we're doing the things that we have to do.

Throughout the day, throughout the week, yet those things that can interfere and distract because we're so connected with the Lord in our hearts, they don't really interfere or distract because we've got our focus set on him.

So when Paul said pray always what he was encouraging us to do is to cultivate this real consistency in our communion with the Lord. You know, prayer is one of those things that is just such an incredible privilege when you think about it.

When you think of what prayer is, it is access to the king of kings, the Lord of Lords, the maker of heaven and earth, the omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God. It's access right into his presence.

And it's the ability to approach him with anything and everything, and just to lay it before him and ask him to deal with these things to help to do whatever needs to be done. That is incredible. But I think for many of us, we don't really comprehend.

The privilege that prayer is, we don't think of it in those terms, perhaps we don't totally understand it or or really believe it to the full extent that I can just go right in before God himself and I can pour out my heart to him.

I think if we understood it a little bit more, we would do it a lot more frequently. You know, if you had somebody that was near to you and that person had, you know, unlimited resources, unlimited abilities and so forth, you would probably call them on a pretty regular basis for advice.

If you had if you had to access, you know what I mean? When you get a predicament, oh, this let me call and then you'd be right on the phone to him because, you know, that person can help in this situation.

Well, that's what we have with the Lord, except in a much greater sense, whatever the need, whatever the issue, whatever the problem. God is there and he is bidding us to come to him and to commune with him and to lay out our petitions before him.

And boy, that is the privilege of all time. Paul says, take advantage of this. This is what really fortifies the Christian soldier to fight victoriously in the battle. So praying always. And then he says, with all prayer and supplication in the spirit.

Praying in the Spirit and Spiritual Promptings

Now, I think what Paul is talking about here is. Praying in. Tune with the spirit or praying under the spirit's guidance, praying under the direction of the spirit. As we come to prayer, I think it's always a good thing to ask the Lord to lead us in prayer.

I believe that there are things that the Lord wants us to pray about. There are things that are in a sense pressing. To him, there are things that are on the top of his list of things that he wants to see get accomplished at certain points in time.

So I think it's always a good idea when we start to pray to ask the Lord to direct us in our prayers, because sometimes we can end up just praying so aimlessly. You ever have that experience where you're praying about this a little bit and then you distract and you start praying about that.

And then another thought comes, you start praying about that. And pretty soon you're like, well, how did I ever get onto this subject? You trace your way back, you know, through the steps and you think, wow, that was a crazy diversion.

And sometimes if you, you know, you get together for a prayer meeting, you got a small number of people and everybody starts praying and just, you know, prayer over here and over there. And, you know, there's no coherence to it.

It's all just all over the place. The Lord, I believe, wants to lead us in prayer by his spirit. And so as we come to him and as we seek him to guide us, he does that. And you know what it's like. You've had those experiences, I'm sure, in a group prayer session or even in your own personal prayer where you sense that God is really leading this thing.

Those times when you really sense the Lord is leading you to pray personally, prayer becomes no longer a real struggle or a battle. It's just something that is flowing. One thought flows into another.

One word follows easily after another and you just find yourself caught up in this beautiful thing that's praying in the spirit. And we need to seek to do that. Now, sometimes we've got to fight our way through a lot of different things before we can get to that place.

But also in that group setting, it's so great when you sense that the spirit is leading a prayer meeting, because what you find often is somebody is praying about something and then you think about praying about something else.

And before you can even pray about it, somebody else prays about that very thing. And that just happens over and over again. And you sense the Holy Spirit is putting things on people's heart as you go about in that time of prayer.

That's exciting stuff when that happens. And we need to seek to pray in accordance with the spirit. And I think we do that really by just taking a few moments before we enter into prayer and just asking the Lord to direct us as we pray.

But like I said, there are times when we have to battle through a lot of the distractions and a lot of the chaos that might just sort of overtake our minds, because there is in this realm as well a spiritual battle.

There are times when the spirit will prompt us to pray for certain things. Sometimes the spirit will prompt us to pray for certain people, or maybe the spirit will put a certain place upon our hearts, or perhaps the spirit will put an event that's going to occur on our hearts and we'll just have this thing coming back to us over and over again in our thinking.

That's the spirit prompting us to pray for those things. And I'm sure that you've all had that sort of experience where a person maybe just kind of keeps coming to your mind and you just feel sort of like, wow, I wonder what's going on with them.

And Lord, I pray that you'd be with them and just God, whatever's happening in their life, just encourage them right now. And then maybe a month or so later, you run into him and you say, hey, what was going on a month ago?

And they tell you, oh, man, I was having a trial of my life. You think, wow, the Lord had me praying for you back then. Those promptings sometimes, as I said, it's a it's a geographical area. God puts a place on your heart and you pray for that place and then you find that the Lord is doing a work in that place.

Oswald Sanders, who was one of the. Overseers of the China Inland Mission after the. After the era of J. Hudson Taylor and D .E. Host, he said this about the these promptings of the spirit. He said the very fact that God lays a burden of prayer on our hearts and keeps us praying is evidence that he purposes to grant the answer.

Those are things that you can have real confidence that God is wanting to answer these prayers. That's why he's putting these prayers on our hearts. When George Mueller was asked if he thought that the two men that he had been praying for for 50 years would be saved, he replied, do you think that the Lord would have kept me praying all of these years if he didn't intend to save these men?

The fact that God continues to put people and places and events and things on our heart. This is really just an indicator that these are areas where God is wanting to work. So that's what I mean by seeking to be led by the spirit.

I think that's what Paul is referring to when he says here praying in the spirit. Now, it's also possible that he's referring to maybe included in it using a prayer language. The Bible teaches that one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is the gift of tongues, and there seems to be a couple of different manifestations biblically of the gift of tongues.

In Acts chapter two, we have the first occurrence of the gift of tongues, and there it seems to be manifest in a way where there's a proclamation of the truth of God in the languages of the various people that happen to be in Jerusalem at the time.

And that's one manifestation of it. But when you come to Paul's instruction for the church in first Corinthians, the 14th chapter, Paul talks there about praying in a tongue. And he talks about the person who prays in a tongue.

He prays to God and not to men. He speaks mysteries in the spirit. And so there is legitimately, according to Paul in first Corinthians 14, there is what you might call a prayer language that God gives to some people.

We commonly call it the gift of tongues, and I guess that would be accurate. But it's a prayer language. It's something that the Holy Spirit gives you that you can exercise in your times of prayer. And as you're praying in the spirit, in that sense, using your prayer language, you really are then praying in the spirit because it's really not even you that's praying at that point.

It's the spirit of God praying through you. So if God has given you that gift, if you have a prayer language, then, of course, it would be advisable to use it frequently in times of prayer. So praying always praying in the spirit.

Watchfulness in Prayer

And then he says that we are to be watchful in prayer. We are to be on alert. We're to be on our guard. Remember, the whole context here and the whole picture is a military picture. And what a soldier on duty is supposed to do is to be on alert, to be on guard.

And that's the position that we're in as as God's people in the world today. We're soldiers. We're in a battle. We're on duty. We need to be alert. We need to be on guard. We need to be looking out for opportunities to exercise this great privilege and powerful weapon of prayer that God has given us.

So just watching the landscape, just, you know, sort of taking a regular survey of the activity that's going on in our families, in our church body, in the church, in a larger sense, in our country, perhaps in our world.

Oh, there's so many things that need prayer. And this is a place where we as Christians need to be on duty. We need to be regularly on duty watching for things that we can pray for. Boy, you read the newspapers and look at all of the things that are happening in our country.

Look at all of the things that are going on in our world. And sometimes we look at these things and we just sort of almost despair at the condition. But we don't pray. But why don't we pray? Do we not believe that God cares?

Do we not believe that God hears? Do we not believe that God is interested in these things? He certainly indicates that he is in his word. And so we really need to, again, take advantage of this great privilege.

And when we see these urgent matters arise before us, whether they're in our own personal lives or in the lives of friends or fellow members of the body of Christ, our local congregation, the church at large, we need to immediately go to prayer on those things.

And pray through those things and see what God is going to do as we seek him in prayer. And then he says, with all perseverance, persevering in prayer, Jesus said that men should always pray and not faint or lose heart.

Perseverance and Faith in Prayer

And it's so true that we so often lose heart in prayer. If we don't have some immediate result from our prayers, we often just lose heart and prayer, don't we? We often just sort of. Fade out of our commitment to praying about that particular thing, because, well, you know, we prayed about it and nothing really happened, but yet we don't know.

We don't know what's happening, but by faith, we ought to believe that God is doing something, even though we might not be able to see it at the present time. And we've mentioned Daniel before. I think we talked about this in the first lesson in this series, but think of Daniel, who began to pray, asking God for wisdom and insight and understanding and how he was to conduct himself in light of where he was living at in history.

And there in the 10th chapter, we read that Daniel prayed for three full weeks before he got a response from the Lord. And remember how, when he finally did get a response, the angel said, from the moment you set your heart to seek God in prayer, I was dispatched to come to you.

But the Prince of Persia resisted me. So there's a spiritual battle that's going on the whole time that Daniel is praying. And I think that that happens when we pray too. And so even though we might not see any immediate result in the, in the physical realm or this situation that we're praying about might not be immediately resolved.

Perhaps there's such an intense battle over that situation that it's not going to be immediately resolved. Maybe it's going to be a three week situation like Daniel encounter, but thank God for Daniel, that he didn't stop praying, that he kept going until he got the desired response from the Lord.

And that's what Jesus is calling us to men should always pray and not lose heart. Why do we lose heart? We lose heart because we lose faith. We somehow think that, well, God doesn't really care about this or he's not really interested in this or, you know, this is not important to him or whatever.

But we have to understand that if God moves on us to pray, it's important. And since we're God's children, he loves us. There isn't anything in our lives that he doesn't deem important. And so we need to persevere in prayer.

Jesus, again. He said to his disciples, he said, ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door shall be open to you. And what he had said literally was keep on asking, keep on seeking and keep on knocking.

How long do I keep on asking? How long should I keep on seeking? How long do I go on knocking until you get a response? When you get the response, then you can see where to go from there. But what happens is we give up prematurely, we.

We don't get the response in the in the time that we think it should come, and so we lose heart, we faint. We don't persevere, and many times we don't see our prayers answered simply because of that. I told you, I think.

About the situation that we encountered. A few weeks back when we were getting ready to travel and suddenly we found out that our youngest son, Braden, his passport had expired and he was scheduled to get on the plane the next day, and we went up to L .A. and we tried to walk in and just get his passport taken care of, and they laughed at us and sent us away, told us that we weren't going to get in without an appointment.

And, you know, trying to call and make an appointment with the automated systems, you know, is just almost impossible. And there's no available time prior to the flight and all of that. And and yet we just believe that the Lord was going to do something.

That. Braden was supposed to go on this trip, and so we prayed and we kept praying and we kept praying, and many of you prayed and we just got everybody praying. And at the last moment, when it just seemed that it wasn't going to happen, there was that breakthrough.

And sure enough, he got his passport at two o 'clock, was on the plane at five. The Lord just took care of it. And, you know, over this past summer and some of the things that we were involved in, some of the outreach, I really saw the Lord answer.

Persevering Prayer in Evangelistic Outreach

As people were persevering in prayer. When we were doing an outreach over in Deberetson, Hungary, this summer. We had, you know, planned to go over in the church that we were working with, they'd set up to do an outreach concert in the streets and preaching and all of that.

And so, you know, we came when that was going to happen and the venue that we wanted didn't come through and all kinds of, you know, little frustrations were there. But yet there there was a place that we were going to be able to do it out, even though it wasn't the ideal situation, it was still there available.

And we were supposed to have this outreach at four in the afternoon. At two o 'clock in the afternoon, I was sitting in the square and I was about the only person in the square. I think there were two other people meandering around and I'm looking around thinking, Lord, there isn't a soul around here.

What? Who are we going to outreach to? And and the Lord just was speaking to my heart. Don't faint. Just pray. Just trust me. Just keep praying. And so I just sat there in that square by myself. I just sat there praying, Lord, bring some people, Lord, do something.

Lord, we've come all the way over here. Lord, please. And, you know, sure enough, at four o 'clock, to my amazement, the crowd gathered and it kept building and building. And for the next three hours, we got to share the gospel with hundreds of Hungarian people.

And it was a great experience. But as I walked away from it, it was one of those lessons again in persevering in prayer. We had a similar thing when we did our outreach in Devon, England, that I shared with you.

And there we were on the day that we're going to do the outreach and. The weather is horrible. It's sort of raining off and on intermittently and the beach is desolate and there's no people around and we're all set up and ready to go.

Lord, where are the people? And I remember I'm sitting on this bench, I'm overlooking the beach that's usually crowded with thousands of people. I could count the number of people on the beach. There were probably like 20.

And this village that's usually just swarming with people like, you know, ants just trampling on each other and everything. There's nobody around and we're sitting there. Lord, what is going on? And oh, God, help, Lord, bring people clear up the weather.

And but, you know, sure enough, at the appointed time, the crowd started gathering and by the end of the evening, several hundred people had come and heard the gospel. And I'll tell you, the Lord is faithful.

And I am seeing right now that God is really. He's answering prayer right now. In a real extraordinary way, so many things that we have been praying about. Personally, for quite some time now, it's just everything's kind of coming to fruition.

God is answering prayer and it's so exciting to see what's happening. And as you see the Lord answering prayer, it just really excites you about prayer, makes you want to pray more. We've got to persevere in prayer.

Don't give up. I mentioned. George Mueller and the prayer for 50 years, there were actually five men that he had put on a prayer list that he wanted to see saved. And I can't remember the exact. Ratios there, but it was something like the first one was saved after 10 years of prayer.

The second one was saved after 20 years of prayer. The third one was saved after 30 years of prayer. And then after 50 years of prayer, there were two that were still unconverted. After 50 years of prayer.

But George Mueller was faithful. He kept praying just before he died. The fourth one. Received Christ. So now George Mueller has passed away. He prayed for 50 years and one of the guys he prayed for was still unsaved.

Guess what? He came to George Mueller's funeral and there a message was preached and he gave his life to Christ. And so all five were saved 50 years of prayer. Boy, that's a lesson for us. Be perseverant.

Keep on praying. Keep praying for your family members. Keep praying for that husband or that wife or those children or those parents or whoever, those neighbors, those people you care about, old friends from the past.

Keep praying for those people. Because you never know what's happening. You see, again, we don't know what's going on. If we just go by what we can see, we can easily get discouraged and to say, oh, forget it.

I'm not going to pray. After all, I've been praying for this and nothing's happening. And, you know, sometimes you pray and things get worse. Have you ever noticed that? When things get worse, that is an indicator that something is happening.

Because God's moving and the devil's getting stirred up and the flesh is getting aroused. And so there's things going on there. We need to persevere in prayer. And then he said, be watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints.

Praying for All the Saints

Now, have you ever felt like. Well, you know. I don't really know what to pray about. Maybe you wanted to really get into prayer, but you're kind of your prayer list is kind of small. Well, here it is.

Pray for all the saints. That'll keep you busy the rest of your life. You'll never have to worry again about not having anything to pray about. Paul said, pray for all the saints. Pray for all the saints everywhere.

Remember, we're just a little group of saints here, but there are saints everywhere. There's God's people everywhere. There's all throughout our community. There are more fellowships, more Christians and all the way across our country, but all around the world, God's people are everywhere.

And Paul says that we are to make supplication for all the saints everywhere. Here's a good idea. Family project. Get a map. Get a map of the United States. Get a map of California, if you will. Get a map of the world.

Get a globe and just sit that thing before your family. Take some time and just go around the globe or point out places on the map and just there. There are surely Christians anywhere you point on the map.

They're going to be Christians. There might be very few. They might be in distress. They might be greatly persecuted. They might be suffering. In some way, but yet you can be sure that God's people are every place you can point on a map and you can just say, Lord, we pray for the saints in that place.

Lord, you know those saints, but we pray for them. We pray your blessing. We pray your healing. We pray your mercy just as the spirit would lead. Praying, praying for pastors. The church sometimes. Is in a dire.

State because. Of bad leaders or no leaders. And so we can help the church by praying for pastors by praying for leaders. By praying that God would raise up faithful shepherds. We can pray for the pastors and ask God to protect them because pastors and leaders are, of course.

Primary targets of the devil. The devil. He's a brilliant military strategist. He knows if you can knock out a leader, you can take a lot of the foot soldiers with him just by knocking him out. And so he goes after the leaders.

Pastors need to be prayed for. Pray for the evangelist. Pray for the missionaries. We've developed here at our fellowship this beautiful little guide to all of those who are serving as missionaries through our ministry.

And you can pick that up and you can take that home and you can pray for each one of these missionaries. You can have that as a project. Pray for. All of those serving the Lord in the various capacities.

Pray for Christian parents and Christian children. Pray for Christians in all walks of life. It's really just as Paul said, it's praying for all the saints in every conceivable situation. Praying that God would bless and strengthen, praying that God would anoint and use them, praying that God would raise them up to testify and to be his witnesses at this time.

If you don't have anything to pray about. Pray for all the saints. J. Hudson Taylor recorded an interesting experience he had upon visiting England. Coming back to England after being in China for some years and as he was speaking at.

An event. He happened to mention a particular mission station and after the teaching aspect was over, a man came in and greeted him. And began to talk to him about this mission station. And Hudson Taylor was really puzzled as to why that particular station had been so blessed in comparison to others in the same region.

This was something that was just personally on his mind. And he really didn't understand why this one station just seemed to really be flourishing, while the others seem to really be just limping along, struggling.

But as he begins to talk to this man, to his surprise, this man knows all about that particular mission station that's prospering. And he's familiar with names and in different situations that have gone on there and in all of this.

And so Hudson Taylor finally says, how do you know so much about this particular station? He said, oh, the man who is the missionary there, him and I were friends in college. And we made a covenant together that when he would go to the mission field, I would support him in prayer.