On Guard In Prayer

Ephesians 6:16-18,
Over the last few months we've been going through Ephesians in the Sunday school hour, the adult class, and it begins on a glorious note of salvation where Paul enumerates many of those blessings, not all of them, but many of the blessings that are found in Christ. He starts with election, we are made holy, we are adopted, we are forgiven, and we have a future inheritance. But when he comes to the back end of this epistle, he moves from the indicatives that you find in chapter one to the imperatives and the commandments in chapter four, right through into chapter six. And here in chapter six, we have an exposé of the devil and the battle we must gauge as the army of God. The picture here is not an individual, it's a corporate picture. It's a picture of the church, the church is waging this war. The whole church is fighting. And the devil has sometimes been called, I think it's right to say, the greatest adversary of the Christian.

Now, over the years, there are two extremes when it comes to the devil. Either you go the way of some of the charismatics where you see a devil behind every blade of grass, or you go to the other extreme and you don't even mention him at all. But he's always active. He can be on our doorstep, in our backyard; he can be visiting our own hearts at any moment, any time with his fiery darts. And Peter, in one of his letters, likens him to a lion on the prowl. Peter knew something of his power and his subtlety firsthand, didn't he? Jesus had warned him twice, and Peter knew there was a real devil.

And Paul spoke of the devil quite a few times, and he even attributes his thorn in the flesh as a messenger of Satan. The devil is actively involved, probably more than we realize in our suffering. In an excellent commentary, you've probably seen it, huge, huge, probably 20, 30, 40 sermons preached on this one text by William Gurnell, the Puritan pastor called The Christian in Full Armor. And towards the back end of that huge volume, he deals with the devil's attacks when it comes to prayer. How does he try to attack us with regard to our praying?

He seeks to keep us from praying. He doesn't want us to pray privately, he doesn't want us to pray publicly, and he can employ a whispering campaign just like he did with our first parents. And he can try and pull us away by way of all kinds of inducements, attractions, and other responsibilities. Plain and simple, he doesn't want us to pray.

He can take advantage of our own sin, our pride, our selfishness, our envy. We can be in danger of praying for the wrong things and for the wrong reasons. We can end up just praying for ourselves. There can be a selfishness with regard to our prayer. Not that we shouldn't pray for ourselves, but we can pray for things that we will consume upon our lusts. Isn't that the warning of James? James 4, “You ask and receive not because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions.”

Another big strategy of the devil is the strategy of interruption or distraction, like the birds of the air. He's a great distractor. He doesn't want us to get focused when we read our Bibles. You may find it hard sometimes just to be focused when you read your Bible. He doesn't want us to be focused when we pray with regard to private praying or public praying.

Dr. Piper uses four little words to help us when we go to read our Bibles or when we begin to pray. I won't mention all four little words, but the very first word he uses is the word incline, that word is used by asking God to incline His ear towards our prayers, but also asking God to incline our hearts in the right direction towards God. David prays that kind of prayer, asking God to incline his heart toward God. We need to ask God (one person put it this way) to demagnetize our hearts from the preoccupation with this present world and from self; and to re-magnetize them towards God and towards spiritual realities.

The devil also wants to keep us from praying by trying to convince us that God doesn't hear our prayers or He doesn't care or He won't answer. But we have all kinds of promises in our Bibles with respect to God answering prayer and all kinds of examples, not just prayer promises, but we have examples. God never sits back passively. He's always caring, He's always answering. Maybe not in the timeframe that we would like, but He will answer one way or the other. Elijah prays, fire comes down from heaven; later on he prays and the rain falls down. And then you have Daniel when he's in that lion's den, he prays and he's preserved from the lion. Jonah in the belly of a fish, he's praying and he's released by God onto dry ground. Esther the queen, her faith prayers affect the deliverance of the Jewish people. Paul and Silas, remember they're in jail, they're singing and they're praying and an earthquake opens the door.

And all of us, all of us, if you think clearly, go back to years ago, months ago, you can all point to some specific answer to prayer. When it comes to our marriages, when it comes to our extended families, we often pray for our families in terms of conversion, our own children. When it comes to difficulties and trials at work, when it comes to health issues. That's why we continually have to persevere. We never, never know when God will answer those prayers. That's why he says what he says. Look again at Ephesians 6:18, “Praying at all times in the spirit,” and then he goes on to say, “with perseverance.” We must stay the course, keep on keeping on praying.