We come today to the conclusion of our study on the armor of God. I trust that during our study you have been at least made aware of the absolute necessity of the soldiers in the army of God to daily put on the armor of God. Every believer in Jesus is engaged in spiritual warfare every single day. And without the armor of God we can never expect to stand against the wiles of the devil. Never can we expect to live lives of abundance and victory. Never can we expect our lives to bear spiritual fruit and bring glory to God. Without the armor of God we can only expect discouragement and defeat in this life and embarrassment at the Judgment Seat of Christ. And I want to remind you that we actually put on every piece of the armor of God when we put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 13:14 says, “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts”.
But just how do we put on the Lord Jesus Christ? We put on Christ just like we put on Christ the day we were saved – by faith. Paul writes in Galatians 3:27, “For as many of you that have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ”. The day you were saved you were baptized into Christ by the Holy Spirit, 1 Corinthians 12:13. And at the very same instant you put on Christ, you were clothed with Christ. And every day the sun arises we need to put on Jesus once again, not for salvation, but for sanctification. For holy, godly living. And I do pray that this is what each of you is doing. This is the same daily experience as being filled with the Spirit. God commands us in Ephesians 5:18 to be not drunk with wine, but to be filled with the Spirit, to be dominated by the Holy Spirit. Beloved, this is first base. Without putting on Christ, Who is the armor of God, we are without hope of winning the battles with the rulers of darkness which we are fighting continually.
But today we come to the closing, the completion of God’s message about spiritual warfare and how to win it. And the word of the Lord is this: “The armor of God must be put on with the energy of prayer”. Beloved, if you don’t remember another thing that I say this morning, please go away with this: “The armor of God must be put on with the energy of prayer”. Prayer opens the door to all of the treasures of God. And in today’s message I want God to instruct us and motivate us to enter into a life of true heaven-rending, hell-quaking prayer.
Turn in your Bibles, please, to Ephesians 6. Let’s begin reading at verse 13. In verse 18 Paul uses the words “always” or “all” four times, each with a different emphasis concerning prayer. And these are great guidelines for us if we would be mighty prayer warriors for Christ’s sake. Notice that he first says “praying always”. This does not mean, of course, that we do nothing all day except pray. We must live in the world. We must work if we can work, and young people, you can’t be absent from school and go in the next day with the excuse that you were praying. It just ain’t gonna fly. But as a sidebar I would advise some of you like Rebecca Dover and Ricky Meggs to pray in your heart just before your tests. You must go to school, and you must make some time to hang out with your friends. And we adults absolutely must make time for our kids’ and grandkid’s ball games and recitals. And just like Jesus and the disciples, from time to time we need to just get away to recreate, to rest (Mark 6:31).
But beloved, you and I should be living so close to Jesus that we can slip into prayer in a nanosecond. We should live with such God-conscientiousness about us that when something happens unexpectedly during the course of our day the first thing we think about is to pray. I had a seminary professor who once told our class that if we ever got to the middle of the day and realized that we had not yet prayed that we were backslidden. And that should not include saying grace over our cereal or sausage and biscuit. Friends, this is one of the most precious things there is about being a child of God! God is with you and watching over you wherever you are, 24-7, and He never naps on the job. The psalmist said, “The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and His ear is open to their cry” (Psalm 34:15). God is never so preoccupied with someone else’s prayers that He can’t listen and respond to yours.
So pray always. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). He wrote to young Timothy, “Therefore I exhort first of all; that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men” (1 Timothy 2). “The first thing you need to do in your ministry, Timothy, is to pray”. Jesus said in Luke 18:1 that men ought always to pray and not to faint. Did you catch that? In this old world of sorrow and strife there is only one option to fainting, to growing weary, to slacking off or dropping out of our Christian race. One option to fainting, and that option is praying. Pray always.
One of the more famous offensives of World War I took place in the Argonne Forest in France, a dense and treacherous strip of forest near the Belgium border. The American forces attacked and sought to root out the German troops from their strongholds, but their advance quickly turned into a fight for survival as they we cut off from contact with backup support for several days. They had to rely on carrier pigeons to take messages back to headquarters. And as a result history came to name this group of doughboys the Lost Battalion. And the Lost Battalion paid dearly for being lost. Of the 550 men who entered Argonne Forest, only 194 came out unscathed. All the rest had been wounded, captured, or killed, some even killed by “friendly fire”. But it happened to a large degree because they lost contact with headquarters. Beloved, without prayer you lose contact with Headquarters. The enemy has you surrounded, and you will certainly suffer. Pray always.
But we are not only to pray always, Paul writes that we are to pray always with all prayer and supplication. This means that we are to pray about everything. Paul writes to the Philippians, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything with prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6). Nothing is too big or too small to pray about. Now, we see that Paul distinguishes between two types of prayers here. He speaks of “prayer” and “supplication”. “Prayer” refers to the more general prayers that we pray. Prayers for good health, for finances, for wisdom, for political leaders, for laborers for the harvest, for the salvation of lost sinners. Prayers for the saints and for missionaries around the world.
Some say that we should not pray such “shotgun” prayers, because they require no faith and no burden. But I heard a preacher years ago rebut that logic with this question. He asked, “How would you react if you heard someone pray this general prayer in a kidding way, “Satan, I pray that you will curse us with poor health, financial ruin, and ignorance”? Would you laugh? Would you discount it as tom foolery? No! You would rebuke whoever would dare the devil to do such things, because you would be afraid he would. But in the very same way, God hears and answers the far reaching, general prayers of His children if they are prayed with sincerity. This is how we pray when we pray, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven”.
Now, supplications are prayers of a more specific nature, such as “Give us this day our daily bread”. And as we said before, no request is too big or too small. Most of you have heard of George Mueller. He was the man that founded four orphanages in England in the second half of the 19th century that fed and clothed a total of 10,000 orphans without ever soliciting one nickel of support. All of the support for the orphanage came through prayer, mostly through George Mueller’s prayers. And you know that he had to pray big prayers to meet the needs of so many children.
But he also prayed little prayers. One day Mr. Mueller was being visited by another spiritual giant of his era, A.T. Pierson. During the conversation George was writing a letter, and Dr. Pierson noticed he was having trouble with the pen point. And then, right in the middle of their conversation, for just a moment Mr. Mueller just checked out and bowed his head in prayer. When they resumed talking Dr. Pierson asked him what he was praying about. And Mr. Mueller said, “Perhaps you noticed I was having trouble with my pen. I don’t have another one and this is a very important letter, so I asked the Lord to help me”. And Dr. Pierson remarked, “Dear me, a man who trusts God for millions of pounds also prays for a scratchy pen point”. But George Mueller was just doing what God told all of us to do. He prayed about everything.
But there is another thing that we must understand if we would be mighty in prayer. Paul says in our text that we must pray in the Spirit, that is, we must pray under the leadership of the Holy Spirit. Jude 20 says that we are to be praying in the Holy Spirit. Now, to pray in the Spirit means that we are praying in the will of God. And John writes in 1 John 5:14-15, “And this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we pray anything according to His will He hears us, and if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have desired of Him”. When we pray in the Spirit we pray in God’s will, and when we pray in His will we know that He is going to answer our prayers.
But beloved, I must tell you that there is a condition that you must meet to pray in the Spirit. You cannot pray in the Spirit unless you walk in the Spirit. God says in Galatians 5:16, “Walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh”. To walk in the Spirit is to obey the Spirit when He speaks to you. You see, beloved, if you are truly saved then the Holy Spirit is leading in your life. Paul writes in Romans 8:14, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God”. If the Holy Spirit is not leading in your life, then friend, you are not saved. And I didn’t say that, God did. The Holy Spirit works in the lives of God’s sons. He convicts God’s sons who are sinning, He comforts God’s sons who are hurting, and He guides God’s sons who are seeking to live for Him. And when you obey the Holy Spirit you are walking in the Spirit, and then you can pray in the Spirit. The Holy Spirit will guide your prayers and you will be praying according to the will of God and you will see God regularly answer your prayers.
Now, most of the time the Holy Spirit speaks to us in a still, small voice, as He spoke to Elijah in the cave. But softly or loudly, when the Holy Spirit speaks, you will know it. I have a friend who told me recently how the Holy Spirit spoke to him through a dream. Two or three years ago he had a dream one night about his nephew, and in the dream his nephew was about to be enveloped in a huge, dark, foreboding cloud. He awoke, then woke up his wife and told her that they had to immediately pray for him. So they did. The next day or two my friend was talking to his mother and he asked her if she had heard from his brother and if his nephew was alright. And his mother said that his nephew was alright, but that the very same night that my friend had his dream his nephew all of a sudden took strangely ill and his brother thought that he was dying in his arms. They rushed him to the hospital, but before they could even see a doctor he recovered as quickly as he had fallen sick, and the doctor had no explanation for the whole matter.
Friends, that man was praying in the Spirit. Now, let me say that you do not have to have such definite impressions to pray in the Spirit. Paul writes in Romans 8 that we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Holy Spirit makes intercessions for us with groaning that cannot be uttered, that cannot be understood. And many of you know what Paul is talking about. Sometimes you are so burdened you don’t know how to pray. You don’t know God’s perfect will in a situation. He has not revealed it to you. But as our Lord Jesus prayed in Gethsemane you cry out to Him, “Lord, not my will but Your’s be done”. And sometimes you don’t say anything. You just fall on your face in silence before God and wait on Him. But while you’re waiting the Holy Spirit is working! You are praying in the Spirit and He is praying for you.
So we are to pray always; we are to live in such God-consciousness that we can slip into prayer at any time. We are to pray for general needs and specific needs, and it matters not how big or small. And we are to pray as we are led by the Holy Spirit. But Paul says that we are to pray in this manner with all perseverance and supplication. We are not to give up in our praying. We are not to quit. The same Greek word for “perseverance” in our text occurs in Romans 12:12 where Paul says we are to “continue steadfastly in prayer”. And the same word occurs again in Colossians 4:2 when he says, “continue earnestly in prayer”. We are to have a prayer life like Epaphras, who Paul said was “always laboring fervently” for the Colossians in prayer (4:12). And the root Greek word is a-ga-ni-zo´-my, from which we get our English word “agonize”. Epaphras agonized in prayer for the Colossians and he didn’t quit.
Beloved, I could never emphasize strongly enough the fierceness of spiritual warfare when you get down on your knees to pray. Because it is prayer that calls down the power of God from Heaven. It was through Elijah’s prayer that fire fell from Heaven and consumed the sacrifice on Mt. Carmel (1 Kings 18:37-38). It was through Hezekiah’s prayer that 185,000 Assyrians were killed by the angel of the Lord in one night (2 Kings19:35). Talk about a blow to Satan’s kingdom! It was because of prayer that Peter was miraculously delivered from death in prison (Acts 12). And when you and I get down on our knees to call the power of God down on our lives and on the lives of God’s people and on the lives of people who are perishing in their sins, all of the arsenal of hell takes aim at us, to blow up our prayers even before they leave our lips. And when our prayers do reach the throne of God, Satan’s weapons are turned toward the sky to prevent the answers from coming down.
You say, Bro. Mike, where are you getting all of this? The Bible. James 4:2 says that we have not because we ask not. We just don’t go to God and ask. Who puts that stupor in our hearts that causes us not to pray? But when you go to prayer, what spirit is it that often causes your mind to wander to a million other things when you begin to pray, and causes you to cut your prayer time short and fail to ask God to do something miraculous? The Holy Spirit? I don’t think so. James 4:3 says that we ask and do not receive because we ask amiss, that we may spend it on our pleasures. Much of the time we ask for the wrong things or we ask for the wrong reasons and get no answers. Now, who do you think would inspire us to put up those wet match prayers that God ignores? Jesus? The angels? I don’t think so. And when your prayers do get through, Satan fights to keep the answers locked up in Heaven. In Daniel 10 we read where Satan blocked God’s answer to Daniel’s prayer for three weeks before it finally reached him. But Daniel didn’t quit praying! He went into mourning and fasting until the answer came. Daniel was persevering in prayer.
So beloved, if God puts it in your heart to really get serious about the work of prayer, then just get ready for some serious Satanic opposition. And in just a few moments we are going to see the steps to Spirit filled, God honoring prayer. But first let’s look at the last truth about prayer. We are not only to pray with all perseverance, but we are to pray for all the saints. How much do the suffering saints of God need our prayers! I heard just this past week of three Haitian pastors who were recently kidnapped and murdered. How their families and churches need our prayers! How much the persecuted church all over the world needs our prayers. But it is so easy to forget those who we do not know personally. But beloved, they are our brothers and sisters. They are fighting the good fight of faith for the advancement of the same Kingdom that we are fighting for, fighting against the same enemy. And we will spend eternity with them in Heaven one day, praising Jesus together. And we need to stand together in prayer now.
Now, as we close I want to give you a simple, two step plan for mighty, God-honoring, mountain moving prayer. I am not big on formulas, but I do believe that if you will do these two things you will see your prayer life flourish as never before. And I’ve distilled it down to five words to help you remember it. It is put on and put away. Look at Romans 13:14.
By faith put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Pray and ask Him to clothe you afresh with Himself, for He is your spiritual armor. Then as you kneel to pray, lift Him up as faith’s shield against all the fiery darts of the wicked one that would burn up your prayers. Ask Him to make you a mighty man or woman of prayer. If ever God will answer your prayer, it is this one!! PRAY!
But as you put on Christ, you must put away (14b). Beloved, so many of us have so much in our lives that hinders our prayers! We have weights that are not sinful in themselves but occupy so much of our time, and in eternity they count for nothing. And we have sins which so easily defeat us. And God says make no provision for the flesh. Put away these things that draw you away from God.
Jim Cymbala is one of the spiritual giants of this generation. Some of you know that he is the pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle, which has an attendance of about 10,000 each week. It is one of the most Spirit-filled churches in America. But it was not always so. Forty years ago when Jim and his wife Carol went to pastor Brooklyn Tabernacle, they had about 30 people. Jim testifies that in a few weeks he had grown it to less than twenty. The services were so bad that Jim says that there were times that even he did not want to be there.
But Jim got a word from God that if he would lead his people to pray, to really pray, that he would never lack for something to preach, that there would always be finances to support the church and also his family, and that they would never have a building big enough to hold all the people that would come. Forty years later, the church has grown from less than twenty to around 10,000 worshippers every Sunday. Beloved, God honors Spirit-filled prayer. Lord, teach us to pray!
