The Secret Weapon of Prayer

The Secret Weapon of Prayer

Ephesians 6:18-20

During World War Two, an officer was briefing his men on the objective of their mission. He demonstrated to them the way they needed to crawl on the ground to stay below enemy fire. He said to them, “If you advance on your knees, you will always be safe.”

That’s what Paul tells us in our text. [1] He teaches us that prayer is our secret weapon and it must be a priority in the life of a Christian.

We have been studying spiritual warfare for the last three weeks. We have been talking about putting on the full armor of God. We are in a battle with Satan, the world, and our own sinful nature.

And a Christian must prepare for the fight. One of the ways we fight this battle is through prayer.

The armor of God is a metaphor for our relationship with Jesus Christ. To put God’s armor on is to make Christ the priority of your life.

Jesus is the perfect example of the Christian soldier. He is the belt of truth, He is the breastplate of righteousness, He is our helmet of salvation, and we must be clothed in Him to win the battle.

Now, Paul tells us there is another resource available to us, and that is prayer. Prayer is the secret weapon of the Christian life, and again, Jesus exemplified this weapon for us.

For example, in Mark 1:35 we read, “Jesus rose very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.”

So, if we have to ask how important prayer is, all we have to do is look at the Son of God.

In the same way, many of our greatest battles will be fought in the quiet place of prayer. The Christian warrior fights with his head bowed and his hear surrendered to God.[2]

And that is what we learn from this passage; prayer is the secret weapon of the Christian life and it must be a priority. (Read)

18 With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints,

19 and pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel,

20 for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.[3](Pray)

In our passage this morning Paul makes it clear just how important prayer is to the Christian life. It is an essential part of spiritual warfare. Prayer is how we communicate with God as we face the battles of life.

Someone recently asked me, “If God already knows what I need, why should I pray?” So, I want to start by giving you four reasons why we should pray.

1. We are commanded to pray. So, even if we don’t understand it, and we can’t comprehend it, we don’t want to live in disobedience to God. So, if for no other reason we should pray because the Lord has told us to pray.

2. We pray because God hears and answers prayer. There is a direct cause and effect relationship between God hearing and answering our prayers. We see examples of that in the scriptures and we have examples of that in our own life. So, we should pray because it has an impact on the heart of God.

3. We pray because prayer changes our heart. It gives us peace, it gives us wisdom, and understanding, and it helps us to grow deeper in a relationship with God. Prayer gives us the strength to accept the things we cannot change, the ability to change the things we can and the wisdom to know the difference.

Finally, 4. We pray because of what Paul teaches us in this passage; prayer is how we fight our battles.

He said we don’t wrestle with flesh and blood but instead we pray about it. We pray for ourselves, and we intercede for others and when we do, we are fighting in the power of God.

1 John 4:4 says, “Greater is He that is within you than He that is with in the world.” When we pray, we are tapping into something that is greater than ourselves.

What we learn from this passage is Prayer is the secret weapon of a Christians life and it must be a priority.

The first thing I want you to see in this passage is the commitment to prayer. Vs. 18 says, “With all prayer and petition pray at all times.” Paul is encouraging us to be committed in our prayer life.

Some scholars have said prayer is the seventh piece of the Christian armor, but I don’t think that was Paul’s intention here. Paul intended for prayer to stand alone because he felt it was that important.

So, prayer is not just another piece of the armor, but prayer is what we do when we have put the armor on.

Charles Hodge the great Presbyterian reformer wrote, “It is not weapons that make the warrior, but it is his courage and strength and even then, he needs help.” Prayer is how we call out to God for help.

John Piper calls prayer the soldier’s “walkie talkie” because it allows him to communicate with the command center. I like that, but even that analogy falls short, because prayer brings us into the very presence of God. We are not contacting a distant General who is not in the battle with us, but the Lord Jesus Christ who stands and fights for us.

It is important we understand when Paul says, “Pray at all times.” He is not suggesting we devote every moment of our day to prayer; Jesus didn’t do that. But there are two ways we should look at this.

1. “praying at all times” means we should maintain an attitude of prayer all the time.

In other words, we recognize that God is always present with us. When we wake up, we can thank God for a beautiful day. We can give Him praise when things go well, and we can ask Him for help when they don’t.

John Wesley describes it like this, “the true Christian’s heart is ever lifted up to God, at all times and in all places … In retirement or company, in leisure, business, or conversation, his heart is ever with the Lord. Whether he lie down or rise 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 that is invisible.”[4]

Paul teaches us the same thing in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 he says, “Pray without ceasing.” He is not talking about praying every moment of every day, but practicing the presence of the Lord by communicating with God throughout the day.

2. “Praying at all times,” means to pray in every trial and circumstance. No matter what we are going through, we go through it in prayer.

Notice the phrase “with all prayer and petition.” There is a slight difference between these two words. We should think of prayer as general requests to God and petitions as being very specific about what we are asking for.

I think most of us do pray this way. There are times we make broad strokes with the brush, and we ask God for forgiveness and grace, and blessing. But then there are times we are desperate, and we come to God with a specific need.

That is what Paul is saying here. “Pray at all times,” means throughout your day practicing the presence of the Lord in your life, and learning to talk to God about every circumstance and every need.

We are at the beginning of March and by now most of have already forgotten our New Years resolutions, but the good news is it is never to late to begin a new commitment to prayer.

The next thing I want you to see in this passage is the power of prayer, Vs. 18 says, “pray at all times in the Spirit.” By “in the Spirit” Paul is pointing us to the source of our power. It comes through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

It is important we understand Paul is not talking about praying with our spirit. He is not telling us we need to pray harder and with a lot of energy.

Remember in Matthew 6 Jesus warned His disciples not to pray like the Pharisee’s. He said they were hypocrites because they like to stand and be seen, and give these long public prayers. He says don’t pray like that, but pray being led by the Holy Spirit.

Also, some people believe that , “Praying in the Spirit” means speaking in tongues, but that’s not what Paul has in mind here either. He is talking about praying under the influence of the Holy Spirit and with the Spirits help.

Paul makes this principle even more clear in Romans 8:26-27. “In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” [5]

So, if we ask, how do we pray in the Spirit? The answer is, we pray through Faith in Jesus Christ who sends the Spirit to empower us according to the will of God.

For example, there have been times in my life when I have struggled to pray. Something happened that left me in shock, and I could not even come up with the words. But it’s in those moments, the Holy Spirit is speaking for me, and He directs my thoughts and provides the power.

The next thing I want to show you in this passage is the approach to prayer. Vs. 18 continues, “with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition.”

Paul teaches us there are two important approaches to prayer here. 1. We are to be on the alert and 2. We are to persevere.

Being on the alert” reminds me of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. On the night He was arrested He took three of His closest friends, Peter, James, and John, with Him.

He asked them to watch and pray. In other words, be alert. Be on guard, but they couldn’t stay awake, not even for an hour. I think that is what Paul is warning us about here. He says, “be on the alert. Be ready in spiritual warfare.”

It is interesting that one of the most important jobs a soldier has is to man his post. A soldier can be court- martial if he falls asleep at his post and I think that is what Paul is talking about.

So many times, when we begin to pray our thoughts begin to drift away from the Lord, and Paul says, “stay focus, be aware of what you are praying about.” Be on the alert.

The second thing he teaches us is to persevere. And the idea here is that we don’t give up. We keep praying. We don’t quit because we don’t immediately get the answer.

We live in a world of instant gratification. We like fast food and high- speed internet. Well, that’s not the way that prayer works.

In Luke 18 Jesus told the parable of the widow who kept pestering the hardhearted judge, until finally he relented just to get her off his back. Jesus is teaching us that God is not like that judge.[6] He wants to answer our prayers, but He also doesn’t want us to lose heart and give up.

Sometimes that means being persistent. There have been people in my life I have been praying for, for years, but their salvation is worth me not giving up. There are people I am praying for God to heal, and their health is worth not giving up, so I continue to pray.

In Luke 11:10 Jesus said, “ask and you shall receive, seek and you will find, knock and it shall be opened.” Sometimes we need to continue to knock until the door is answered.

The next thing I want you to see in this passage is the objects of Prayer, Vs 18 says, “we are to pray for all the saints.” Paul closes out the topic of spiritual warfare by making sure we understand we are to pray for each other.

This doesn’t mean that we stop praying for ourselves. We should always be praying for our family and friends. But we need to remember we are a part of the universal body of Christ. We are in this spiritual battle with Christians everywhere.

At this very moment there are missionaries on every content of the earth and they are doing their best to share the gospel with lost people. They need our prayers because they are under constant attack from the enemy.

Many of them are risking their lives and the lives of their families, just to talk about Jesus. We want to remember them in our prayers.

What a great opportunity we have this week. This week we are celebrating the Annie Armstrong week of prayer, and we are going to provide you with missionaries to pray for. These are families who are on the ground right here in America.

These are saints of God who might not be risking their lives, but they are sharing their faith with our family and friends. And we need to pray for them. America has become a mission field.

We also need to pray for our church family. You are surrounded by people right now, who have needs and some of those needs are too sensitive to share. And I need you to pray for me, because I get discouraged easy, and my family is under attack.

So, we should absolutely pray for ourselves, but we need to remember to pray for each other. We are serving on the front lines of the Christian faith with all the saints around the world.

That brings me to the final thing I want to show you in this passage; The humility of Prayer. In Vs. 19-20. Paul says, “pray for me.” Pray that I can stand strong and boldly proclaim the gospel. And he reminds us in Vs. 20 that he is in prison for doing just that. He says, “I am an ambassador in chains.”

Paul teaches us an important truth here all Christians need to understand; we can ask for prayer for ourselves. We don’t have to be isolated as Christians in our faith. Paul was one of the greatest Christian men to ever live. As he writes this he was at the height of his spiritual prime.

Next to Jesus Christ, it is safe to say that no one ever had a greater impact on Christianity than the Apostle Paul. Yet Paul was humble enough not to be afraid to ask for prayer.

What does that say about you and me, accept that we should be humble enough to ask for prayer. James 5:16 says, “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for each other so that you may be healed.”

Sometimes the answer to our prayers and the healing we need comes through our ability to humble ourselves and ask others to pray for us.

I am reminded of the story in Exodus 17 when Israel went to war with the Amalekites. Moses stood on a hill and if he held his staff high above his head Israel prevailed in the battle.

But as the battle wore on, and the day grew long, Moses hands became heavy, his staff began to drop, and Israel began to lose.

Moses’ brother Arron and his friend Hur rushed to his side. They put a stone underneath him to sit on and they stood by his side and held his arms in the air until Israel won the battle.

The lesson for us is sometimes we need our friends around us to hold us up in prayer, until we can win the battle.

I want to close with this. In these three little verses, we learned some incredible truths about prayer.

We learned about the commitment to prayer. We are to always pray. We learned about the power of prayer. We are to pray in the Spirit. We learned about the approach to prayer. We are to be on the alert and persevere.

We learned about the objects of our prayer. We are to pray for each other. And we learned about the humility of prayer. We are to be humble enough to ask others to pray for us.

I have one more thought I want to share with you in the form of a story. Prayer is a great privilege in a Christians life and should never be neglected.

I have a neighbor who is Roman Catholic, and when his daughter was young, he would punish her by making her go to her room and pray. What an incredible travesty. Instead of teaching her the privilege of having a relationship with God. He taught her that prayer is an obligation and a punishment from God. Now she is an adult and I wonder how often she prays today. My guess is not at all.

We should never take prayer for granted. We have been given this great privilege of communicating with God and sharing our life with Him. Just the fact that He is concerned about us, and our thoughts is amazing.

So, I want to encourage you today to make prayer a priority. It is the secret weapon of the Christian life.

[1]Cole, S. J. (2017). Lesson 62: How to Fight for God (Ephesians 6:18–20). In Ephesians (Eph 6:18–20). Galaxie Software. [2]Phillips, R. D. (2016). Ephesians(p. 449). Mentor. [3] New American Standard Bible: 1995 update (Eph 6:18–20). (1995). The Lockman Foundation. [4]Phillips, R. D. (2016). Ephesians(p. 450). Mentor. [5] New American Standard Bible: 1995 update (Ro 8:26–27). (1995). The Lockman Foundation. [6]Cole, S. J. (2017). Lesson 62: How to Fight for God (Ephesians 6:18–20). In Ephesians (Eph 6:18–20). Galaxie Software.