Q&A About Spiritual Warfare

Grab a Bible, something to write with, we're going to pray, and then we will get started. We're going to be in Leviticus, tail end of 6, if you wanted to open up your

Bible ahead of time, and we will go from there. Let's pray. Almighty Father, lead us to Your Word, so that we may find healing of heart, soul, mind, in the

Gospel of Jesus Christ. Be near us as we read for ourselves that Jesus has indeed died and risen again for us.

Keep us steadfast in Your grace and Your mercy, so that we may spread Your love to those who haven't heard the good news, and to those who have heard, but have forgotten it.

Let us do all that we can to win souls for You, that they may go out and do the same. In Jesus' most holy name we pray.

Amen. Alright, were there any questions that came up that you had as a result of the sermon?

Michael, yes. Oh, it still happens.

Yeah, unfortunately that is a thing. Some people try to dismiss the demonic and basically just brush it under the rug as manifestations of mental illness.

In my experience, I would say the demonic and mental illness seem to go together sometimes, but you have to understand that there are different levels at which the demonic operates.

One would be through temptation. We all recognize that. And we pray, and the Lord's Prayer delivers us from the evil one.

If you really want to get super specific on how we pray the Lord's Prayer, the

English translation, deliver us from evil, is a little bit too abstract, and the Greek is a little bit more nuanced.

It actually delivers us from the evil one. We recognize that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood.

We wrestle against principalities and powers. And so in our day, the demonic has been sanitized, and so it's real.

It doesn't have the same Hollywood -esque attributes that you would expect to see if your expectation of the demonic is based upon watching horror movies.

I hate to say this, it's just not quite that level of fireworks. But it's real.

Oh yeah. Now, the other thing you've got to remember, and I always like to point this out, is that even if you were to take every one of the demonic horde and Satan himself and bind them in the abyss, we have enough sin among ourselves.

We are so bent on evil within ourselves that we don't really need the devil to make this world just an awful place to live in.

The demonic really seems to be obsessed with the destruction of the gospel, the destruction of the church.

That's where it seems to be focusing the most. And I do not think it is a coincidence that in several occasions when

Jesus is preaching in a synagogue, that somebody who is demonized manifests that demon.

Which kind of begs the question, if they were a noticeable demoniac, what were they doing in the synagogue?

They probably weren't. So I just always like to point out the demonic is real, but you'll note that Jesus makes it clear that the super, super tough demons, you know how you get rid of them?

Prayer, fasting, exercising a demon in a very real way is a non -event.

It's done on your knees. It's done by fasting. It's done by recognizing that you do not have power and authority over these things in the way that Christ has them and that he has the authority to banish them.

And so it begins humbly recognizing that you do not have that authority in that way, but Christ does in asking and praying and putting supplications up for that person.

It's also important to recognize then that every time we pray the Lord's Prayer, we are praying against the demonic.

So, exorcisms are real, alright? Somebody actually being possessed by demons, that's a real thing.

And you'll note that Rome has an entire subset of their priesthood dedicated to this particular thing.

They have a full liturgy, a rite for excommunication that is a time -honored rite, and that Rome, before an exorcism takes place, they do their due diligence to try to validate whether or not you're dealing with somebody who's just cuckoo or whether or not you're dealing with a true manifestation of something that's demonic.

And so I would stay away from showmen and hucksters who make it look like there's a demon under every rock and they've got a

TV camera there and they're casting out demons left and right. I forget, what's the name of that guy who does that on television?

There are people out there who try to turn it into a show, but at the same time, so we don't err by denying the demonic.

I think Rome has a far better approach to it, and I would say that in my experience as well as the experience of other pastors within our association as well as the

Missouri Synod, there's no doubt about it that the demonic is absolutely bona fide real, and possession is a real problem that does exist down to this day.

So you should not be reading your horoscope, and there's particular reasons why, is because that's a form of astrology which relies on, let's just say, pseudo -spiritual science that's hooked into the occult.

And you'll notice anyway, there was a time in my life, in my 20s, where I thought, what are these horoscopes about?

So I'd read it, and they're so vague anyway. The only thing

I'm supposed to understand is that as somebody who's born in the month of May, I'm supposed to be stubborn.

You know, yeah. Bruce. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, wow.

Yeah. Have not been exposed to that type of astrology, but that sounds just downright, like you said, demonic.

Yeah. Soul -crushing. Yeah. Yeah.

I would assume that Rome has these types of tests, and I'm sure it doesn't involve peeing on a stick and figuring out if the sulfur levels are high or not.

But the idea then is that I think those types of tests,

I would have to rely on somebody who's had more exposure to the demonic to even begin to formulate any way of verifying such a thing.

So I've heard that the ability to speak ancient languages that you've never studied is probably a good sign that you're dealing with the demonic.

And I've heard of exorcists speaking to them in Latin and Greek or Hebrew or something like that, dead languages.

And if they can speak fluently back to you, then you know you're dealing with something different. But devils are pretty smart on those kinds of things anyway.

The one thing you definitely want to avoid is anybody who gets their information about how to fight the demonic from the demonic.

Here's what I mean. Scripture's very clear the devil's a liar, that when he's lying he's speaking his native language.

So there's a whole subset of people who are super obsessed with and focused on fighting the demonic.

So they get a demoniac in an exorcism session, and rather than getting to a point and actually freeing the person bound by the demon, they decide they're going to engage in interrogating the demon in order for the purpose of getting intel, as if somehow they're a

POW. This is just crazy talk. And there are entire books and demonic almanacs of demonic forces and names and regions and stuff like this, all based upon interrogations done with demons.

And I would just basically say put all of that nonsense away, because where's your emphasis? Where's your focus? Your focus isn't on Christ, the gospel, setting this person free.

You have become a demon slayer. This past week on Issues Etc, I was interviewed on the program, and I do this weekly segment called

This Week in Evangelicalism, and we took a look at a woman by the name of Katie Sousa. And Katie Sousa is selling a set of DVDs and a book titled

Legion Slayer. And the whole purpose of her television program that airs on God TV, the whole purpose of that particular episode, was to convince you that she has gone toe -to -toe with Legion, from like Mark 5.

And as a result of her experiences in fighting him, she's learned the secret to getting dominion over Legion, and she can teach you this too.

But of course, it costs $52. Put that on a resume, by the way.

I worked at Taco Bell from this time to this time. I made manager over at Kroger.

And then also, I'm a Legion slayer. I've got a certificate from Katie Sousa's Legion slaying school.

It's just nonsense. And what gets lost in all of this is Christ. You're going to notice that when it comes to the demonic, it appears in Scripture, and we pray against it daily, because Christ has taught us to pray against it daily.

But as far as sentences in Scripture, it's minuscule. We know just about this much.

And that's on purpose. If Christ wanted us to know more, He would have put more in there. And you don't see the apostles, when they're going out on their missionary journeys, seeking out the demonic.

Or even when Christ is doing His preaching ministry, He's not seeking out the demonic. Oftentimes, the demonic are seeking them out.

And when they come in conflict, they become a nuisance. It's just an irritant.

And at the end of the day, they're cast out. And that's the end of the story.

There's a whole group in the charismatic movement, that's kind of the big umbrella, that nebulous thing called the

New Apostolic Reformation, where they literally try to figure out, what is the name of the demon that is in charge of this region right here?

And so they'll try to do historical work and figure out, well, we used to have the

Sioux Indian here in this area. And so they worship these particular spirit gods and stuff like that.

So there's a likely possibility that whatever demon is in charge of this region, is probably one of those things.

And it's like, why are you doing this? We are called to make disciples, baptize and teach all that Christ has commanded.

When the demonic shows up, you pray, you fast, you confront it, it goes away, then you stay on task.

Make disciples, baptizing and teaching all that Christ has commanded. Rinse, wash, repeat.

This is how this works. And the people who are obsessed with these things, they are almost of no value at all, as far as making disciples, because they're off teaching the importance of knowing who these demons are and how to fight them when, quite frankly, you don't know any of them.

And if you were to have a demon and you were to interrogate it, it's going to lie through the person it's possessing through their teeth.

So just knock it off. You think of Paul when he was in Philippi.

There was that slave girl that had a spirit of Puthona, the

Greek there, which is a weird one, because the straight translation would be like Python or something like that.

But that particular designation regarding the type of spirit that she suffered from links her to the oracle at Delphi.

If you're familiar with the oracle at Delphi, Alexander the Great, before he goes on his big campaign, pays a visit to the oracle at Delphi, which is a strange name, because Delphi means dolphin.

I guess the way the story goes is that there were some sailors, I don't know if they were in the

Adriatic or which portion of it was, and Apollo appeared to them in the form of a dolphin while they were out sailing and told them to build this temple.

So they found the place where Apollo supposedly had set this up, and so it became known as the oracle at Delphi.

It was a temple complex that was built over a fissure, a volcanic fissure.

And so there were these volcanic gases that were coming up through this fissure. And the way the oracle at Delphi was set up, the slave girls, the girls who were the ones who were kind of the first part of this, when somebody would pay the amount of money, it's usually a very expensive amount of money to get the oracle at Delphi to look into the spiritual realm for you, these slave girls would actually put their face over the fissure and inhale deeply these volcanic gases.

And it would send them into an ecstatic state. And in that ecstatic state, they would speak in tongues.

They would speak kind of gibberish. After inhaling this, whatever this was, she'd take it and go,

And then the male priest at the oracle at Delphi, they were the ones who would interpret what she was saying.

And the fact that you get one of these girls who's associated with the oracle at Delphi, she's demon -possessed.

So Paul shows up in Philippi, and he's preaching the gospel. And the strange thing about the demonic, you'll notice this in there, is that you saw this in the text this morning, and then with Paul, this slave girl who's possessed by this demon, she is literally crying out,

These men are telling you the way of truth. Just follow God Most High, the

Most High God. And it's like, that's kind of right -ish, but not exactly.

And in a pagan context, telling everyone that we're telling people to follow the

Most High God still implies that there's more than one. And so be careful when the demons speak, because they always have these double entendre meetings that can be misinterpreted.

And so this went on for a while. It says in the text that this went on for a few days, and Paul was greatly annoyed by this girl.

And finally, just in pure exasperation, he commands the spirit to leave her, and it leaves.

And her owners, because she was a slave, at this point, Paul's in trouble now, because they've lost their ability to make money, because it was through this demonic spirit that they were doing fortune -telling and stuff like that, so they lost their ability to make a profit, because now their slave is in the right mind, right?

And so they want to punish Paul for this. So, you know, it's kind of fascinating how it all works, but the point is that the demonic is an irritant.

It's an irritant. It's very dangerous, it's very destructive, and at the end of the day, still, it's an irritant.

The demons are not more powerful than Christ, and that's why we pray to Him, and if necessary, fast, for protection from the demonic, or for those who are under demonic influences to be released from them.

Yeah, I don't have any great ghost stories, sorry. The zombie shows?

Well, zombies are as real as, like, what? You know, the Harry Potter books? There's...

I always thought, you know, the dystopian future. The concept of the zombie does come out of voodoo.

That's its original origin. That being the case, the Hollywood version of it is...

It's just become a standard genre. You know, it's become a movie trope. You know, the world gone mad.

We're going to have our last stand against the zombies. Mm -hmm, yeah.

I usually am a zombie before my second cup of coffee in the morning. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I would say this, is that when it comes to American pop culture, that there's some things that can be a little bit dangerous.

And I'll give you an example of something that I think is fascinating. Remember the movie, was it

The Exorcist? Oh, OK, now that's an interesting story.

The story, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, is based upon real historical events. And the director who produced that is a

Presbyterian Christian. And he wanted to get that out there as a think piece.

Now, granted, he took the historical events and wove them into a fictional story, but the core story of The Exorcism of Emily Rose is based upon real history.

So I'm going to hold that out into a different category, because that was produced by a Christian for the point of pointing out the demonic is real.

And also, I think, kind of secondarily, to convey one of the messages of the actual

Emily, you know, the person who was Emily Rose, and that was that her claim is that she was the one who was possessed by Lucifer upon his re -arrival on Earth and being set free from the chains of darkness, which is kind of a fascinating subplot to all of that.

That's a whole other thing. The movie The Exorcist, which predates that, that was the demon's name was

Pazuzu, and I'm doing this from memory. What was her name?

Reagan? She was possessed. The whole point of that movie, which is kind of fascinating, there's a real interesting...

The time it was produced, we were not postmodern in our thinking.

We were still a very much modernist in our thinking. And so the whole subplot of this is that you've got a real girl who's actually really possessed, and it's doing really horrible, awful things to this girl, and if you would just open your eyes and look at it, you couldn't deny it.

And so you have this one priest who's fighting against the modern philosophical mindset of Rome at the time, which was discounting and pooh -poohing the existence of the demonic.

And so it's this uphill battle by this priest to get permission to perform an exorcism, and the rest of the bureaucracy is saying, you know, we live in the modern age, this doesn't really happen, this is just mental illness, and all this kind of stuff.

And at the time that movie was produced, that was the world we lived in. Supernatural doesn't exist.

Within the church itself, you had a bunch of people denying the miraculous. This is part of the reason why liberalism peeled off and went into the ditch, because liberalism denied that Christ bodily rose from the grave, denied the virgin birth, denied that the

Bible is the Word of God, denied actual future -telling prophecy and stuff like this, and found every way possible to deny these things, and as a result of it, they ended up basically gutting the gospel of its power.

Because the gospel says that Christ died and on the third day rose bodily from the grave. What does the word bodily mean?

It means bodily. And so that modernist liberalism was still a major...

it was still ruling the day in American culture at the time The Exorcist comes out.

Emily Rose comes out... How old is that movie? What, 12 years old at this point?

So that's still in the early 2000s. Did we call them the aughties? Is that what we called them? You know, aught?

Never mind. You got the 90s, the 80s, then the zeros are the aughties, right? Hey... Come on, 30 -aught -6?

Yeah, you see what I'm saying? I'm going to lobby for this.

I'm going to lobby for this. Because as a guy who's into firearms, I learned to shoot a rifle on a 30 -aught -6.

And if you look at the numbers, it's 3 -0 -6, right? It's a 30 -aught -6.

So it's the aughties. The aughties, right? I'm going to win on this.

History will prove me right. Anyway, so the exorcism of Emily Rose comes out, and American culture has changed, and we're in the early part of post -modernity taking over our cultural mindset.

And here's one of the big differences between post -modernity. Post -modernity says that modernism's assumption that the supernatural doesn't exist is arrogant.

It's arrogant. And where America starts to make the change into post -modernism, as you can see it in American pop culture, where it makes the change is with the cable television program, the

Ghost Hunters. You know what I'm talking about, right? Yes, exactly.

Yeah, okay. No, I love the Ghostbusters. There are certain lines

I cannot repeat here in church, but that's okay. He turned off our power grid.

Is this true? Yes. I can't say it. Anyway, so the

Ghost Hunters, they did something really, really provocative.

They decided that they were going to use scientific equipment to prove the existence of the paranormal.

And you use scientific equipment in its broadest sense. So they would take very sensitive handheld recorders and they would go to a house or a hotel or a psych ward that was shut down or whatever, a place that's supposed to be nefariously known for being a haunted place.

They would take their very sensitive audio equipment and they would put it down and they would say, if you're here, do you have anything to say to us?

What's your name? When did you die? Stuff like this, right?

And so then they would take all of their evidence that they collected and they would bring it back into a lab and they would analyze it.

And then there was this phenomenon that's called EVP, electronic voice, something like that,

EVP. But electronic voice phenomenon. And they would listen.

You'd have to crank the volume way up. So how long have you been here? Well, I died last week.

You can hear it on the thing. Oh. And so these would be their ways of doing it.

And it was a hit show. It really was. It was very big in the aughties. I'm going to keep saying that.

Anyway, it's going to catch on. I'm just telling you. Right?

So that being the case, what they did is they basically broke everything because science was being used to disprove the existence of the supernatural and the paranormal.

Now, they were approaching this from a scientific method and they were using scientific devices and evidence to prove the existence of the paranormal.

Now, what did they come in contact with? Answer, the demonic.

Right? And remember, I said you don't trust the demons. So when you get a psychic who's into the occult and the psychic says,

I can talk to your dead grandmother. All right? So I'll do this kind of euphemistically.

So the psychic picks up the phone and dials the number for your dead grandmother. Is this so -and -so's dead grandmother?

Yes, this is her. And so is there anything you'd like to say to him?

Oh, I loved him so much and I missed him. And so they're conveying this message.

Now, can you see who's talking in this particular case? No. Basically, that's a demon dressed in grandma's drag.

Okay? That's what we're dealing with here.

You know, tell him I love him. I mean, I love him. Right?

So, now you sit there and go, how do you know we're dealing with the demonic? Because our worldview must be based upon Scripture, not our experiences.

And this is where a lot of people get in trouble. Because they're going to base their theology based upon their experiences rather than judge their experiences based upon Scripture.

You're going to get yourself in a lot of trouble. So you have this person who has had a near -death experience.

And they're a rank pagan. There's no way around it. And they say, and so there

I was on the operating table and I died. And I floated away and I saw my body. Bye, body.

Goodbye. And then I saw the light and I went into the light and there was my grandmother. And my grandmother was telling me how much she loved me.

And all I did, I felt, I just felt love like it was a big snuggie. And then all of a sudden, something was drawing me back to my body and I woke up.

And see, that proves that I was in heaven. Does it now? Does it?

So what happens is, you sit there and you go, alright, you're not a Christian. You went to heaven.

You experienced the warm, peaceful, snuggie thing while talking to your dead grandmother. And you came back.

So if I believe you, I have to believe that being a Christian doesn't matter.

That there is no judgment for those who persist in impenitence and unbelief. And that at the end of all of this,

Christ was a complete liar. The stories we have in Scripture are not true. You see, when you get your theology from experiences, you're going to get in trouble.

Now, they had, the near death experiences, there's something to them. But we don't get our theology from them at all.

Yeah. Yep. What'd you say? Oh yeah, the heaven is for real kid.

Yep. Yep. Yeah. No, no.

Right. And then there was another kid who, the name of the book was

The Boy Who Went to Heaven. He was in a car accident. And he's a quadriplegic as a result of the car accident.

And claimed that he had a near death experience, saw Jesus and talked to him, stuff like that. And turns out his father was the one putting the screws on him.

You know, because he wanted a best selling book too. And then a few years after the book came out, the kid said, no,

I never had any of those experiences. And it was the father who made all the royalty money.

And he's still in a legal battle to even get a penny from that. Oh yeah, and you get to pick whether or not you're going to have a bow and arrow or a sword.

Exactly. Mm -hmm.

Right. And the person most responsible for at least the movie version of that book,

T .D. Jakes, do not get your theology from these things.

Another movie to avoid the plague, The Shack. You know, so. How do we get off on all of this stuff?

Who should I blame? I'll blame myself. But Michael, coming back, the mnemonic is real.

And the devil wants to deceive us, wants to tempt us, wants to cause us to despair, wants to destroy the church, wants to shut pastors who preach the gospel up, is basically a good way of putting it.

All right? So we must continue to be vigilant in that sense.

And you'll note then that in the great passage of Scripture, we'll take a look at that real quick while we're on the topic.

Here's Ephesians 6. And this is why I think that at the end of the day, spiritual warfare is not a sexy thing.

And Ephesians 6, starting at verse 10, says this. And this is important.

The devil is a schemer. He's a liar. He's a plotter. He's always up to scheme and to deceive and to wreak destruction that way.

Now, somebody might be your enemy because they've made themselves your enemy.

But as Christians, we do not retaliate or think of them as such. So 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 in the heavenly places.

Now, you know, this all sounds really scary, and it is. So here's what we have to do.

Ready? Take up the whole armor of God so that you may be able to withstand the evil day.

In other words, evil days are coming. And if you're thinking, well, it's been a while since I've had one, you're overdue.

All right? They're coming. So you want to be able to withstand the evil day. So here's what you do. Having done all to stand firm.

Stand, therefore. Notice what it was. Stand, stand, stand. Now, most armies, the way they operate is you advance.

Advance, that means you're winning. Retreat means you're losing or you're

French. Okay? Sorry. Sorry. I always have to do that.

Okay, but we're not called to advance. We're not called to retreat. We're called to stand.

We stand on the word of God. We preach Christ. We stay in our lane. We proclaim him, and we're not to be moved off it.

The schemes of the devil is to get us to move one way or another. We're not to do that.

We're to stand. The evil day is going to come, so what do you do? You stand your ground. All right?

So we're going to stand. Stand firm. Having fastened on the belt of truth. Truth. Aletheia.

It's an important thing. We do not stand with the belt of lies. Lies are straight out.

Not a weapon that we get to engage in, period. We speak the truth. Having put on the breastplate of righteousness.

And the breastplate of righteousness is a gift that is given by us by God. We are declared righteous by grace through faith.

And so we recognize then that that breastplate that protects our vital organs is the very faith that Christ has given us, and the righteousness that has been imputed to us as a gift.

That protects our vital organs. Your shoes for your feet. Having put on readiness given by the gospel of peace.

Notice the gospel of peace is what prepares you for spiritual warfare. Isn't that interesting?

Peace. The gospel of peace. So in all circumstances, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one, and then take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.

Here's your one and only offensive weapon. Anybody fighting with lies, slander, gossip, anything like that, they're fighting with weapons they're not authorized as Christians to use.

Those are the weapons of the devil. Those are the swords of Mordor. Right? Yes, yes, ma 'am,

I did. Yes, I did. I do that. I'll weave in good archetypal stories like that from time to time.

Glad you're paying attention. Okay? So, sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.

And then here, are you ready? Here's our action plan. Praying at all times.

And it says in the spirit. What does that mean? In faith. Literally, in the spirit means that you pray in faith. With all prayer and supplication.

Okay, so we're ready for action. I've got my shield. I've got my breastplate helmet on.

Sword of the spirit. And first thing I'm going to do is, Lord, have mercy.

Protect us. I pray for these people. I pray for myself. I pray, pray, pray, pray, pray. See, that's where the action is at.

The action is in the prayer. Dump. With prayer, supplications. To that end, keep alert.

With all perseverance. And keep alert. Making supplication for all the saints. So there you're standing your ground.

And something has come into your area of combat. And you recognize, ah, that person needs help.

Or that person is under the dominion of darkness. Ah, are you ready? I'm going to take action. Lord, please help that person.

This is what we're to do. You stand your ground and you pray. But wouldn't it be more sexier if I, like, figured out who the demonic force was there and, like, pulled out my ninja moves and, you know, let them have it?

No. Get on your knees and pray. Huh? Yeah, right. Yeah.

Curved in on yourself. That's the thing. We as human beings, we're just bent in on ourselves. And here's the other thing.

You can always tell demonic theology because it's all about self -glory. At the end of the day, you know, it's like,

Oh, look at what a... I am a demon slayer. I've taken the heads off of five legions of demons.

Nonsense. When did you become the Savior? Right? You notice that true spiritual warfare requires you to sit there and go,

You want me to stand here? And you want me to do what? Pray?

Yeah, it's a real tenuous situation. And the only thing you got as far as offensive weapon is the

Bible. What kind of combat is this? This is the combat that Christ tells you to engage in.

Any other combat is not legal. You become a war criminal when you engage in any other kind of combat as a

Christian. You see it? Yeah? So praying.

Praying at all times. So that end. Keep alert. With all perseverance. Making supplication for all the saints.

So I hear that Don is in trouble. I'm going to engage in spiritual warfare.

Lord, I pray for Don. Help him. Protect him. Have mercy upon him. Sustain him.

And note that in this context when Paul wrote it, he said also pray for me. At the time you want to do spiritual warfare, pray for Paul at the time.

So that words may be given to me to open my mouth boldly proclaiming the mystery of the gospel. You'll note that when we pray every week for the missionaries that are in hostile regions, we pray for boldness.

That's the same prayer that Paul asked for when he was doing his missionary work. Pray for me that I would have boldness.

Right? To proclaim the word. Protect them. Sustain them. So, I mean, if you really want to get really technical,

I mean, during our church service every week, during our prayers at the church, we're doing mortal combat, man.

That's when we're doing it. You sit there and go, really?

There's nothing sexy about that. And not only that, when Dave passes the microphone, sometimes people just ramble on.

You know, that's some good warfare right there. But that person didn't even sound really confident.

They just sounded like they were just asking God because they were so needy. Yeah, no, isn't that great? That's the best warfare ever.

Right? So you'll note that the great spiritual warfare passage, is it any wonder then that when

Christ says, when the disciples come to Jesus and say, why couldn't we cast that one out? Oh, that kind only comes out by prayer and fasting.

The super serious spiritual fighting going on there. Right? Yeah.

So, hopefully that revolutionizes, then, your thinking. Your daily prayers are not nothing.

Your daily prayers are like everything. And I mean it. I mean, over and again, it's fascinating to me as somebody who watches and comments on and critiques so much of the crazy stuff that's going on in the name of Christ in the visible church today.

One of the things that really stands out to me is that the devil seems to go after the doctrine of prayer very early on in any movement that's very deceptive.

For instance, I'll give you an example that we can all sit there and go, that makes sense. Rome. Let's just be blunt.

You've got people praying to the Virgin Mary. You've got people praying to a plethora of different saints.

I learned about a new saint that I didn't even know was a saint. Have you heard of, what was the name, Joseph of Cupertino?

Apparently he was a monk who could fly. He could levitate. And he is now the patron saint of airline pilots.

So if you're an airline pilot, he's your patron saint and you need to be praying to Joseph of Cupertino. It's like, what?

Why on earth would I pray to anyone other than Christ because scripture says there is one mediator between God and man and that's

Christ. He's our mediator. Not Joseph of Cupertino.

Not the Virgin Mary or anybody else. So you've got a lot of people who are engaging in a whole lot of prayer but the person they're on the line with isn't even answering the phone.

So what kind of prayer is that? And then with an evangelicalism, you have this whole movement now that if you really want to supercharge your prayers, you don't ask

God for nothing and don't you upset God with your small little micro prayers by saying to him, if your will be done, not my will be done.

That's going to really upset God. So they teach you a whole new way to pray. This is the super spiritual, supercharged way of praying nowadays.

You don't pray anything. You don't ask for anything. You say, Lord, I command wealth to come my way and I command that disease to leave that person and I step in and I declare that this thing is going to happen and that thing is going to happen.

That's not praying. I don't know what that is. I mean, talk about ego driven.

Okay. Scripture tells us prayer and supplication. A supplication is not a decree.

It's not a command. A supplication is a humble request made to God.

Real prayer says, I got nothing. Jesus, you got everything. You're my

God. I'm your creature. Everything I have comes from your hand. So I humbly pray.

Get this. Jesus taught us to pray so humbly that we don't even pray for a week's worth of groceries.

We pray for daily bread. And that's a humble petition.

That's a supplication. Give us this day our daily bread, Lord. That's a small prayer right there, right?

No. It's a big one. So you'll note then that, you know, doctrinal emphases that get you off in the weeds doing things that are called prayer that aren't prayer, that's a deception of the devil.

Because now that's a soldier who's not even able to fight. Who's not fighting. They might as well be like swinging their sword at the air.

Good luck on that. You know, or bad theology of prayer will get you to think that your prayers are nothing.

Or that prayer is only something super special you wait for until circumstances get really bad. You know,

I always love it when, you know, somebody says, I think we should pray. And the other, somebody else responds, have we really gotten to that point?

Has it really gotten that bad? We're gonna pray? Oh my goodness. You know. You know.

And then the other, the other thing is, is that there's a lot of misinformation about prayer in this sense.

And that is that there's a disdain for a willingness to pray prayers that are pre -written.

It is a good idea to write out your thoughts ahead of time before you pray. You know, a lot of people say, well if you do it that way then you're gonna put the

Holy Spirit in a box. Where in Scripture does it say you can put the Holy Spirit in a box? Okay, seriously.

I mean, I always laugh at this thing as if somehow, you know, like Superman allergic to kryptonite, it could kill him.

The Holy Spirit box shows up and goes, ah! You know, this is nonsense. You know, if you want to learn how to pray, you pray the

Psalms. All right, that's, this is where you learn how to pray. And these are some rough prayers too. Whoa. All right.

But the Psalms are where you're gonna learn how to pray. The Psalms are the hymn book and the prayer book of Scripture. And we learn to pray

God's words back to him. And it gives us a good order for it. And so you'll note that in the prayers that we have in our congregation, we do have spontaneous prayer.

We allow that and we recognize that's a good thing. But we also have prayer where it's thought out ahead of time and it's written out so that very specific things are addressed in our prayers and handled properly and not in a sloppy kind of fashion.

And so in evangelicalism, I mean, it's become such a mess where prayer becomes like an uncomfortable thing.

Where, okay, we're gonna get together and we're all gonna hold hands in a circle and we're gonna pray. Which is always awkward because like if the guy next to you is a guy, you know, it's like, well, who's gonna have the hand on top?

And your hands are sweaty. It just grosses me out. I don't like praying that way. So, sorry.

But you know what I'm talking about, right? Okay. And then everybody's in the circle and then somebody, it's like now you got, everyone sits there in the awkward silence.

Do I go first or I wait? Who's gonna go first? And then finally somebody breaks the silence. And usually when they break the silence, it goes like this.

Lord, I just wanna thank you, Lord, that you just, that you're just,

Lord, you're so great. And Lord, we just wanna, and they cannot finish the sentence without saying the word just.

You know, it's like, and I always feel like in that context, I wanna pray, Lord, I pray that you would destroy the word just so we don't pray like this anymore.

Okay. Because it drives me nuts, right? And so, and as a result of it, you know, prayer becomes something very awkward and it's not a positive experience.

It actually is something that you dread. At least that was my experience of it when

I was an evangelical. And it's like just, you know, it's like, what am I supposed to say? I don't know what I'm supposed to say.

It's like, it's like, you know, and so this is where a good prayer book helps. One of the best on the market is a book called

Stark's Prayer Book. Stark's Prayer Book. Concordia Publishing House puts that out and oh my word, that thing is atomic.

It is so amazing how it teaches you to pray and the different things that it has. And if you own a copy of the

Lutheran Service Book, there's a whole section in there of prayers that you can pray under certain circumstances.

And it anticipates just like a whole lot of like common things that we go through. Natural disasters, natural calamities, somebody is sick, somebody is dying, you know, things like this.

And you don't have to pray the prayers word for word. You can just pray it and go, okay, I can see how the shape of this prayer is.

You can even make it your own. But we've got to get away from this idea that somehow

God hates prayers that are written and then read. That's nonsense.

Because God's taught us to pray and God teaches us to pray in the

Psalms and through the prayer that Jesus taught us, the Lord's Prayer. And these things we have rote memory, you know, and so we learn to pray by paying attention to what

Scripture teaches on these matters, not what people's opinions are. So, yes. Vein...

Mm -hmm. Yeah. I will say this.

Every day. Yeah. Yep. And so what's funny is that you, what Don pointed out, there are people who will sit there and go, you can't pray the

Lord's Prayer exactly the way Jesus taught you to pray it. Because if you do that, then it turns into, ready, vein repetition.

That's ridiculous. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And the congregation...

Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I know that Psalm.

I don't know the number, but the refrain is, the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. Okay? So I would say, let us glorify the

King of kings and Lord of lords for his steadfast love. You see what

I'm saying? And then that just goes back and forth. That's not vein repetition. Because that's in scripture. Vein repetition has a particular context.

And there were pagan practices associated with idolatry that had to do with vein repetition. Right? Yeah, exactly.

Yep. Yeah. Mm -hmm.

Yeah. Yep. Mm -hmm.

Yep. Yep. And I think about, you know, in church history, there was a really dangerous heresy called the

Pelagian heresy that came up at the time of St. Augustine. And, in fact, it was

Augustine who wrote definitively against Pelagius. But the Pelagian heresy denied that we are born sinners, that we're actually good.

And funny enough, the primary argument used against Pelagius to overthrow his whole heresy was the

Lord's Prayer. It was fascinating because those who argued against Pelagius said,

Jesus taught us to pray every day, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And he said, no, that's not because we need to be forgiven every day. Pelagius said, he taught us to pray that way so that we would stay humble.

And people saw his life for what it was. No, no, no, no, no. I need to pray every day. Forgive us our trespasses.

So you can kind of see the idea. But the Lord's Prayer itself was used against him. Alright, we'll end there today.