Sermon Tone Analysis

Recap Last Week:

The greatest struggle that Christians have in the spiritual battle that is being waged is wobbly unstable legs that have no firm foothold in Christ are an easy prey for the devil.

Paul wants to see Christians so strong and stable that they remain firm even against the devil’s best attempts to knock us out.

It’s like a Rocky movie, have you ever noticed that Rocky has to get beat to a pulp before he starts to win the fight.

Some of us here this morning are being beat up against the ropes and ready to crumble.

Why do we wait until our strength is failing and we are beat to a pulp before we turn to God and take up his armor and fight back against the enemy.

Now Paul adds prayer in verses 18-20 not because prayer is an afterthought or some other unnamed weapon, but because it is and absolute necessity in our battle plans.

Equipping ourselves in the armor of God is not a mechanical operation that we just go through the motions; it is an expression of our complete dependence on God.

Two clauses built around “praying” and “keeping alert”.

Note: Prayer warriors with little understanding of the spiritual nature of the battle that we are in is like a soldier without his weapons.

We cannot know what prayer is for until we know that life is war!

Our weakness in prayer is largely to our neglect of this reality.

John Piper on wartime prayer

We have a wartime walkie-talkie for the mission of the church as it advances against the powers of darkness and unbelief.

It is not surprising that prayer malfunctions when we try to make it a domestic intercom to call upstaisrs for more comfort in the den.

God has given us prayer as a wartime walkie-talkie so that we can call headquarters for everything we need as the kingdom of Christ advances in the world.

HOW DOES PRAYER FIT INTO OUR BATTLE PLAN?

1.

We pray Comprehensively

ILLUSTRATION

Billy Graham Practices Unceasing Prayer

In 1982, the Today show in New York City scheduled an interview with Reverend Billy Graham.

When he arrived at the studio, one of the program's producers informed Graham's assistant that a private room had been set aside for the reverend for prayer before the broadcast.

The assistant thanked the producer for the thoughtful gesture, but told him that Mr. Graham would not need the room.

The producer was a bit shocked that a world-famous Christian leader would not wish to pray before being interviewed on live national television.

Graham's assistant responded, "Mr.

Graham started praying when he got up this morning, he prayed while eating breakfast, he prayed on the way over in the car, and he'll probably be praying all the way through the interview."

There are four universal indications of its comprehensive plan using the word “All.”

we pray at all times (both regularly and constantly / we drop to our knees and pray).

with all prayer and supplication (it takes on many varied forms).

with all perseverance (because we need like good soldiers to keep alert so we don’t give up or fall asleep).

making supplication for all the saints (Since the unity of God’s new society, must be reflected in our prayers).

Note: All of this points to the key of praying is prayer in the Spirit; prompted and guided by him, just as God’s word is ‘the sword of the Spirit’ which he himself employs.

Scripture and prayer belong together as the two chief weapons which the Spirit puts into our hands.

What does it mean to pray at all times?

We read in 1 Thessalonians 5:17

So what does it mean to pray with out ceasing or to pray at all times?

Obviously this does not mean that we go around all day with our heads bowed and eyes closed.

Paul is referring to an attitude of our conscious state of being that we carry with all the time as believers.

Every waking moment is to be lived in an awareness that God is with us and that He is actively involved and engaged in our thoughts and actions.

Much the way Paul describes it to the stoic and Epicurean philosophers in Athens when he proclaimed that “in Him we live, move, breath, and find our being.

When our thoughts turn to worry, fear, discouragement, and anger, we are to consciously and quickly turn every thought into prayer and every prayer into thanksgiving.

Look what Paul says in Philippians 4:6

At Colossae he told believers to devote themselves to prayer by being watchful and thankful Colossians 4:2

For Christians prayer should be like breathing.

You do not have to think about breathing you just do it everyday, the atmosphere exerts pressure on your lungs and essentially forces you to breathe.

That is why it is more difficult to hold your breath than it is to breathe.

When we are born into the family of God we, we enter into a spiritual atmosphere where God’s presence rests heavy on our lives and His grace exerts pressure, or influence, on our lives.

Prayer is the normal response to the pressure.

Unfortunately many of us hold our “spiritual breath” for long periods of time, thinking brief moments with God are enough to allow them to survive.

Many times such restricting of the Holy Spirits prompting in our lives is a direct result of sin.

*Praying at all times empowers us to depend on the Grace of God.

Problem: To many Christians presume on instead of depend on the grace of God.

We become satisfied with physical blessings and have little desire for spiritual ones.

When programs, methods, and money produce impressive results, there is an inclination to confuse human success with divine blessing.

THE RESULT: Our passionate longing for God and His help in our life will be missing.

What are prayer and Supplications?

The Hebrew and Greek words most often are translated to literally mean “a request of petition,” so a prayer of supplication is asking God for something.

Unlike the prayer of petition which is asking God on behalf of someone else.

“Supplication” is an old-fashioned word for request, most often used in old literature in the context of weary pilgrims or tortured prisoners.

No surprise, the verb “supplicate” originates from England in the 14th and 15th centuries as an Anglicized form of the Latin word supplicatus, which means “to kneel.”

Its Middle English definition was “to pray humbly; to entreat or petition humbly.”

Supplication is a request.

And if the request is made to God, it becomes a prayer.

We have many examples of prayers of supplication in scripture particularly in David’s psalms.

Paul instructs the Ephesian to remain alert in the spirit and to make supplications for all the saints.

Clearly the prayers of supplication are a part of the spiritual battle that we are engaged in.

We read in Philippians 4:6-7 that we are to relieve our anxieties by remaining faithful in prayer, especially prayers of thanksgiving and supplication.

He goes on to remind us that the formula for peace with God which passes all understanding is faithfulness in supplication and prayer.

Humility is Crucial in Answered Prayer

NOTE: When we are humble before God we acknowledge our sinful condition as well as God’s holiness.

Humble people pray with the right motives.

We will pray on behalf of other people, we will believe in Gods sovereign wisdom to answer our requests and in His timing because we will not presume to understand God’s overarching plan.

*Supplication arms us with the strength and courage to suffer while we wait.

What does it mean to pray with all perseverance?

One of the most difficult aspects of prayer is persevering when it seems that God is not answering.

Jesus instructed us to pray that the Father’s Kingdom would come and will would be done on earth as it is in Heaven.

However, we are almost 2,000 years later, and that prayer has been prayed millions of times by millions of Christians throughout history and it still has not been answered.

All of us have had prayers that we have brought before the throne of God for years - requests that would be to His glory to answer - and yet it seems like God is not answering His phone and He does not even have an answering machine!

In light of the problems, it is easy to lose hope and even to give up praying all together.

*Perseverance in prayer requires a proper view of God and ourselves.

Jesus gives a parable of a persistent widow in Luke 18:1-8.

In the parable He says in effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.

There was this certain city where there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man.

There was also a widow in the city who kept coming up to him crying out for justice against her adversary.

For some time he refused, but after awhile he said to himself, even though I do not fear God and I do not care about this woman, I’m going to grant her request just to get her off of my back.

Jesus then said, hear what the unrighteous judge says?

Will not God give justice to his elect who cry out to Him day and night?

Will He delay in giving them an answer.

I am telling you that He will give justice to them expediently.

However, when the son of man comes will he find faith on earth.

WE NEED A PROPER VIEW OF GOD

God is never irritated with His children’s frequent requests.

(He does not become weary of our requests like the judge did, he will honor our requests and vindicate them in due time.)

God desires to give good things to His children.

Matthew 7:7-11

Note: God never delays his answers because of a lack of care or a lack or power.

God’s delays are always for our good, even if the reasons are hidden from us.

WE NEED A PROPER VIEW OF OURSELVES

Prayer is more than asking for what we need.

Matthew 6:8 tells us that “God already knows what we need.”