Praying in the Armor

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Transcript:

I wanted to come back and look one more time at Ephesians chapter 6, where we’ve been the last few Sunday nights, last several really. And I wanted to come back and look at what’s after the armor of God. So if you haven’t turned there with me yet, Ephesians chapter 6.

And as I thought about this passage, the quote came to me that I thought it was Napoleon. and apparently it was Frederick the Great, the great German military leader, military genius, king. He wore all sorts of hats and crowns.

But Frederick the Great evidently is the one who said that an army, like a serpent, moves on its belly. And the idea of that is an army can only go so far as it can be supplied. You can’t have, you generally won’t have hungry men fighting at their, starving men fighting at their peak capacity.

You know, you want to make sure your army’s well-fed, well-supplied in order for them to go out and conquer. And that’s a lesson that the Germans learned many years later in World War II, because when they turned their armies to the east especially, they would outrun their supply lines. And it wasn’t the Poles who slowed them down when they invaded Poland.

It was the fact they did this blitzkrieg war. Y’all have heard that term, blitzkrieg. They would come in, they did something that had never been seen before, these lightning-fast attacks, where they wouldn’t wait on their whole army.

They’d send in their tanks and their airplanes, and they’d weaken the country, and then the army would be behind them. But sometimes they would move so fast that they’d have their tanks and their planes out days, if not weeks, ahead of where their army could be. And that meant they couldn’t supply the tank brigades with food or gasoline or any of the things that they needed.

And it slowed them down. And the same thing when they got into the Soviet Union, when they invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, I believe it was. They outpaced what they could supply.

And so, yes, it’s great. I mean, well, not it’s great. From their perspective, it was great that their tanks and their planes could go so far and so fast. but if they couldn’t feed the soldiers, they were kind of stuck and couldn’t fight any further.

And that’s a lesson that every general worthy of the name understands that an army goes on its stomach. I have a friend here in town who always tells me that the army of the Lord goes on its knees, and I think that is absolutely correct. You know, we can be powerful, we can be well equipped, we can have all the tools necessary to go out and challenge the darkness of this world with the gospel, but if we’re not prayed up, if we’re not prepared in prayer, if we’re not marching on our knees, pretty soon we’re going to come to the end of our reserve of strength that you and I have.

We’re going to run out of that pretty quickly, and if we’re not going forward on our knees, we’re not going forward in any kind of effective way, and that’s what it talks about in Ephesians chapter 6, as we’ve been looking at the idea of the armor of God the last several Sunday nights, the very next thing that Paul discusses after the armor of God is the need for prayer. Let’s read the passage again one more time, starting in verse 10. It says, Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might.

Put on the whole armor of God that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore, take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

Stand, therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Here he says, because we left off after verse 17 last week.

Verse 18 says, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints, and for me that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in bonds, and that I may speak boldly, that therein I may speak boldly as I ought to speak. So he goes through the whole list of the parts of the armor of God and the instructions of what we need to do and what we need to use them for, and then his very next thought is, and pray. Do all of this.

Prepare yourselves the best you can. Take all the tools you need and be trained up in them, but pray. And prepare yourselves for battle with prayer.

And folks, when it comes to putting on this armor of God, we can put it on and wear it into battle with absolutely no practice about how it works. Now, Brother Greg, did they ever send you into a combat situation without teaching you first how your gun worked? Okay, not yet.

Not as of yet. No, when they send you into battle, they want you to be trained on your equipment. They want you to understand the things that it takes not only to stay alive in combat, but to achieve your mission.

And so they want you trained up on your gear. And again, I’m probably not the best person to explain military stuff to you, because as I’ve said before in this mini-series we’ve done of messages, my only military expertise is lots of History Channel documentaries and watching Patton a ton of times. That’s all I know.

but they want you to be trained up on your equipment. They want you to be trained up on your weapon. Well, the same thing is true in armor.

They didn’t just in these days send a guy out covered in armor and say, go fight, pull some guy off the streets, put some metal on some things around him and say, go fight. No, they taught him how to move in the armor. They taught him how to put the armor on.

They taught him how to move in it, how to function in it, how to draw his sword with the armor, trained him so that he’d be able to carry that extra weight and still march, they had to practice. It’s just like anything else in life. We have to practice if we want to get really skillful at what we’re doing.

And this idea of needing to train in the armor is not foreign to the Bible. You look at the story of King David before he was King David, and when he went out to fight Goliath, and we see in 1 Samuel chapter 17 that Saul was going to send David out in Saul’s armor. It says, as I send you out to face the giant, at least let me put some armor on you.

And it says, and Saul armed David with his armor, and he put a helmet of brass upon his head. Also, he armed him with a coat of mail, and David girded his sword upon his armor, and he assayed to go, for he had not proved it. He did not want to go in the armor, for he had not proved it.

Meaning, he had not trained to fight in that armor. He had not used that armor. It was not only not useful to him, it was at that point a hindrance to him because he had not trained in it.

The way David had trained to fight was in taking care of his father’s sheep, and he would go out and he wouldn’t be weighed down by armor and swords and all these things. He would be out there taking care of the sheep and carrying a few rocks and a slingshot. That’s how he knew how to fight.

so David in David’s hands a slingshot and a stone as we know the rest of the story was far more lethal than armor and a sword because that’s what he trained in and folks if we want to inflict pain on the enemy then we need to train ourselves in our armor and again I want to clarify what I mean when I say enemy we’ve we’ve read this passage we’ve talked about it but let me take you back to the thought that if it bleeds it’s not our enemy I don’t want anybody to think that as I’m talking about the enemy that I’m talking about the atheist down the street or the Mormon next door or your friends and family who aren’t sure whether God exists or not. I’m not talking about anybody who is not a believer in Jesus Christ being the enemy. No, folks, the enemy is Satan because it is Satan who has declared war on God.

It is Satan who has tried to ensnare as many people as he possibly could in order to try to injure God as much as he can, because that’s really all he can do to God. He can’t hurt God. He can only go after us.

So the non-believers around us are not the enemy. They’re the ones we’re doing battle for. So when I say inflicting pain on the enemy, I’m talking about pulling people out of Satan’s kingdom, lessening his influence on the world around us, pulling people out of his clutches, and translating them as the New Testament says, out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s Son.

That’s how we inflict pain on the enemy. If we want to be effective at doing that, we’ve got to be trained in our armor. And we take all of this armor that it describes in Ephesians chapter 6, and prayer, I believe, is how we train for the battle.

And with that point established, I just want to share with you a few thoughts about prayer and the concept of doing battle tonight with you before we leave from here. First of all, verse 18 says, praying always. He says, do all these things with your armor, praying always.

There is the expectation there that as believers we should be praying continually. And normally there’s at least one person who thinks, wait, that’s all I can ever do is pray. No, that’s not what he’s telling us.

Not there, not in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 when he says pray without ceasing. That doesn’t mean that you can’t ever have a conversation with anybody else because I’m too busy talking to God 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Praying continually, praying without ceasing, doesn’t mean that we never do anything else.

Praying without ceasing is the opposite of what we do too many times to say, God, I’ll let you know when I need you. And we wait until something really awful comes along in our lives. and then we’re all about our prayer life, and then we’re all about what God can do for us, and then we’re all about crying out for God to do what only he can do until things get better again, and then we go back to saying, God, I can handle this.

That’s what unfortunately is natural for us. God says, on the other hand, we need to be in a constant communication. We need to be in a constant state of communication.

I’m in constant communication with my wife. It doesn’t mean that I’ve never had a conversation with any of you because I have. It means that my wife and I talk all the time.

When I’m not home or she’s not home, we talk, we call each other, we text, maybe not constantly, but several times throughout the day, we talk. Yesterday, we went to try to finish some Christmas shopping, and almost everything’s bought. We just needed some candy and some things for stockings.

And we made the mistake of going to the store on Saturday in the city. Yeah, we were in the city for Christmas with her mother. And we walked into a $5 and less store, and I immediately just almost turned around and walked back out because of the chaos that was going on in there.

But she needed some things, so we walked in. I said, I’m going to go down this aisle. I turned around.

I could not find her yet. I walked around that whole store, and it’s probably maybe twice the size of this auditorium. I walked through that whole store five or six times, and I was calling her because I was going to let her know, you also needed bibs.

I’m going to go down to the baby store where there are fewer people and buy bibs, which didn’t happen either. But I was trying to get a hold of her on the phone. She wasn’t hearing it.

It was in her coat pocket. She wasn’t answering, and I started to panic. I don’t do that every time.

I can’t get a hold of my wife, but in that store, there’s no telling. People could have trampled her to death in a stampede over junior mints or something. And I was out of contact with my wife and it just felt wrong.

It felt unusual. It felt unnatural. Folks, that’s how it ought to feel when we’re out of contact with God. It doesn’t mean that all we ever do is sit around all day and just talk to him, but it should mean that we talk to him so regularly and we spend enough time in prayer during the day and throughout the day and each day that if we get into those periods where we go a day or two without talking to him, that it just feels wrong. It feels unnatural. It bothers us.

Things are off. We prepare ourselves for battle by staying in constant communication with the Father. Then it tells us to pray in the Spirit, because he says, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit.

All of our prayer and our supplication, which just means taking your requests to God, should be in the Spirit. And that means that we as Christians need to follow the leadership of the Holy Spirit in prayer, not just rely on our own desires. Although I think it’s okay to tell God the things you want.

I’ve gotten to where I’ve listened to so many people teach on prayer that I would feel guilty asking God for anything I wanted. And I think it’s the attitude that we do it in is the problem. And so I’ve gotten to where I’ll say, God, you know what I want.

You already know my heart, so I might as well be open and honest about it. But at the same time, it’s really more important what you want. So it’s okay to ask God for things we want.

It’s even more important to ask God for things we need, and most important to pray for the things that God says we need. Because God is more than willing to give us the things that we need, especially when it comes to serving Him. God is more than willing to give us those things, and I think often waits until we ask, because prayer is more about changing our hearts than changing His will.

If you didn’t pick up on that last line, I’m going to say it again. And prayer is more about changing our hearts than it is about changing his will. And that’s important because that’s taken me a lot of years to learn.

And I’m so glad that I did. Because I notice when I pray, God often, instead of changing the circumstances or the situation, changes my heart about it and helps me to deal with it. Instead of taking it away from me, helps me to deal with it more in the way that Jesus would.

And that’s the goal here. But we pray in the spirit. We let the spirit lead us.

We don’t rely on our own eloquence either, as much as we don’t rely on just, God, I want this. God, I want a new truck. God, I want, I want, I want, I want.

We also don’t rely on our own eloquence. Oh, I’m a good talker. I can say a lot.

I’ve got lots of things I can say to God in big flowery language. Again, there’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve heard people in church pray with the these and the thous, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

But prayer’s got to be something more than that. Prayer’s got to be more than just a grocery list, all the stuff we want. It’s got to be more than just a formula of words that we heard and memorized.

And so we pray in the Spirit. We let the Spirit move us. We let the Spirit guide us into things that we’re going to pray.

And we may wonder, well, why would we have the Holy Spirit of God guide us into the things that we’re supposed to say to God the Father? Because that’s the way He set it up. That was His idea.

That was His design. That’s why the book of Romans tells us that the Spirit helps our infirmities. Chapter 8, the Spirit helps our infirmities, for we know not what we should pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God. If I’m listening to the Holy Spirit of God and following his lead, it’s going to change the things that I pray about. I’m going to start praying a lot less selfishly, and I’m going to start praying for the things that I know he wants for my life, and praying for him to do things that I know he wants to do.

And what that does, it’s not about changing God’s will, it’s about changing my heart, remember? What that does is pull me into line with what God wants me to do, with what God’s calling me and what God’s expectation is. And then there are going to be those times, even then, even following the leadership of the Holy Spirit, where we just don’t know what to pray.

And sometimes it’s going to be because a circumstance is hard. You know, there’s no good answer. There’s no easy answer.

Sometimes it’s going to be because we are just so distraught over what has just happened that we don’t know what to pray. Maybe you’ve been in those times of emotional turmoil. You’ve suffered a tragedy in your family.

You’ve suffered a loss. And the hurt is so bad that you don’t even know what to say to God in that moment. The Holy Spirit intercedes for us.

No matter what the reason is, no matter what the reason is, why we don’t know what to pray. In those moments when we know that all we can do and all we should do is cry out to God, but God, I don’t even have the words, I don’t even know what to say to you, I don’t even know what to ask you for. The Holy Spirit intercedes on our behalf and has this wonderful ability to take what’s in our heart that even we don’t understand.

the needs, the desires, the hurts, the challenges, to take all of those things and voice them to the throne room of God in ways that words cannot express. So we follow the leadership of the Holy Spirit. We pray spiritually, trusting that even if somehow we are deficient in our prayers, if we’re not praying, if we’re not asking for the right thing, if we don’t even know what to ask for, trusting that the Holy Spirit is connecting our heart to the heart of God the Father and making that connection and making intercession for us.

So he tells us, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit. He says, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints. That phrase, and watching thereunto, he wants us to pray vigilantly.

He wants us to be vigilant in the way that we pray. So we not only look for opportunities to pray, look for things that need to be prayed for, but we also need to be on guard about areas of weakness that we need to pray for, things that the enemy might exploit. So I’ll give you an example of what I’m talking about.

We take the blinders off. Take the blinders off, these things that, if you’re like me, you get tunnel vision. You go about your day, and I’ve got my list of things that need to do.

I’ve got my calendar of appointments. I live my life off of lists and spreadsheets and charts. I do.

Otherwise, I would not remember where I’m going or what I’m doing. And so with that, it keeps me where I’m getting stuff done and I’m accomplishing things, but it has the negative of allowing me to get so focused on what I’m doing that I don’t look at, I don’t always look at what’s going on around me and see what other people are doing or what God is doing with them. And there may be times that we’re out taking care of our day.

We may be at the store. We may be at the bank. We may be out working in our yard.

And a need is brought to our attention. We need to be looking for those things and opportunities to pray and ask God to do what only he can do in the lives of people around us. We look for opportunities to pray.

But also part of vigilance is not only looking for those opportunities. It’s also looking for those weaknesses. And we all seem to have, because we have this sin nature, we all seem to have some sin that causes us more problem than others.

Anybody else have that? I’m sure it’s not just me. If you admit it, I’m not going to ask you what it is.

There are some sins, and I don’t say this pridefully, this is just the way we’re wired, there are some sins that don’t bother me at all. I’m not tempted to go out and get drunk every night of the week or ever. I’ve seen what it did in generations of my family, plus the stuff smells awful.

I have no temptation in that area. I don’t feel tempted at all to do drugs. But there are other areas where I’m tempted.

There are other areas that I’m tempted and I give in way too quickly and way too easily and way too often. We all have that sin that just seems to get us all the time. I think the book of Hebrews is talking about that when the author of Hebrews says, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us.

There are sins that more easily beset me than others. Those are areas of weakness. And believe you me, those are areas of weakness that the enemy would love to exploit.

Satan doesn’t typically go after us where we’re the strongest. Why would he? He’ll typically go after the areas where we are the weakest. he’ll look for where the holes are in our defenses he’ll look for where the the walls are down or where the gates are down gates are up I should say he’ll look for those areas that he can exploit because you go where somebody’s strongest they’re ready for you you go for somebody where somebody’s weakest you stand a good chance of breaking through the defenses and so watching means being vigilant to our own spiritual condition, watching our own spiritual condition, and knowing where those weaknesses are that can be exploited. And it’s not enough just to know what they are, because I can’t withstand the full onslaught of Satan on my own, even if I know it’s coming.

It’s about praying for God to shore up those defenses. So as you’re praying, as you’re praying in the armor, as you’re preparing to do battle, look for those areas where you’re the weakest, where you know Satan just seems to get you every time. And God, no matter how hard I try to fight it, no matter how hard I try to avoid it, I just, I get tripped up by this same stupid sin over and over and over.

Pray for God to shore up the defenses. And realize that it’s not just about whether you do right or wrong, it’s about your usefulness to do battle for the kingdom. And ask God to shore up those defenses, watching thereunto, being vigilant.

Jesus even told his disciples in Matthew 26, as the night before his crucifixion, as he’s praying in the garden, he told them, watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. Now I think in their specific context, that was the temptation to deny him, the temptation to run, the temptation to hide, the temptation to lose hope when he was crucified.

But I think the principle applies to all of us. Watch and pray that you fall not into temptation. He says, be careful.

That’s why Peter tells us to be sober and be vigilant because our adversary, the devil, is like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. He’s out looking. And so the Lord tells us we’ve got to be watching.

Fourth of all, pray persistently. Now, this is a little different from pray continually. Because we can pray continually.

We can stay in constant communication with God, but not always be persistent. There’s a difference. Because I can pray, I can pray all the time about all sorts of things, but I can also let myself get discouraged because God didn’t answer that particular prayer, so I’m just done.

I prayed it once, he should have answered it, he didn’t, so I’m moving on and I’m going to pray about other things. He tells us to pray in verse 18, to pray with all perseverance. To persevere, to keep going.

Don’t give up just because God doesn’t say yes to your prayer the very first time. Because God does things in his own time. And it may very well be that God is saying, wait, because not only is he going to grant the request, but he’s also working on you at the same time.

And I’ve seen women who have prayed for their husbands or their children for 20, 30, 40, 50 years, that they would come to Christ. And in a few cases, I’ve seen those loved ones pass on without ever having done that. In many cases, though, I’ve seen where they get up there after 20, 30, 40, 50 years of this godly woman praying for them, and they finally, God breaks down the barriers and softens the heart, and they trust Christ, and they’re changed. And we wonder, why is God, why did God wait so long?

Well, first of all, God gives us free will. God’s not going to force anybody at gunpoint to accept salvation. So there’s an element of responsibility in the person that’s being prayed for as well.

But for God’s Holy Spirit to move in their heart in such a way that they understand it and they get it and they’re willing to trust Christ, why does God sometimes wait so long? I think it can be because God intends to answer that request and say yes, but he’s also working on the person who’s praying. And I’ve seen people embarrassed because their spouse or their child or their grandchild was not in church was not a believer, was not serving, and almost embarrassed about how long I’ve been having to pray for them, when often those are some of the godliest people I’ve ever been around, are those who’ve spent 20, 30, 40, 50 years praying intently day after day after day, God, would you please do something in the heart of my husband, my son, my grandchild, whoever it may be.

And I don’t doubt that part of part of that godly character that I see in them has been the fact that God has worked on them day after day after day as they prayed to him as they poured out their hearts to him day after day after day for 20 30 40 50 years and so we’re taught in scripture to pray persistently for something with all perseverance because God doesn’t always say yes the first time sometimes God says wait sometimes God’s plan in mind is yes I’m going to grant this but I want you to keep praying because I’m working on you in the process so we don’t give up because our prayer isn’t answered for the very first time we ask it we keep praying and I don’t think that that shows a lack of faith in God I’ve heard some people say well I prayed for it for a little while and God knows the prayer and I believe he can handle it and so I don’t pray for it anymore because I don’t you know it’s hard to even describe, but their thought is, well, if I kept bugging God about it, I’m indicating a lack of faith.

No, no, Jesus tells us, keep praying. Luke 18, he gives the parable of the unrighteous judge, and I’m not going to read it to you tonight, but there’s a judge in a city, an unrighteous judge who is bothered by a little old lady, it sounds like in the story, a widow in that city, who came to him because somebody had done her wrong and she needed justice, and this corrupt judge didn’t care to listen to her or do anything because she wasn’t one of the rich or powerful. But she just kept coming to him, just kept bugging him constantly, crying out for justice.

And finally, the corrupt judge said, okay, all right. And he didn’t give her justice. He didn’t step in and intervene in the situation because he was good or on the strength of her argument.

He stepped in and intervened so she would leave him alone. And Jesus’ point in saying that is if even this corrupt judge granted her request simply because she wouldn’t leave him alone in the meantime, how much more can we trust God who loves us and actually does care about granting our requests? How much more can we trust God to grant our requests that are proper requests if we persist, if we persevere?

He says at the end of that passage, shall not God avenge his own elect which cry day and night unto him though he bear long with them? Saying if even this corrupt judge gave in, can’t we trust the God who loves us and cares about us even more as he’s patient to go through this with us, even as his plans require that maybe this takes some time? Jesus tells us to don’t give up praying, to not give up praying.

And finally tonight, he says, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints. supplication for all saints. Make requests for all saints, for one another.

We are supposed to pray for one another. We need God to strengthen our fellow soldiers in this fight. Most of the time, people don’t fight alone.

We hear the heroic stories of, you know, the one man who charged into a German machine gun nest and captured 70 people single-handed. And those stories are incredible, but most battles are fought by soldiers working as a team with the soldiers to their left and their right and front and behind them. They worked together.

There was no one man who established the toehold at Normandy. There were thousands and thousands of Americans and British and French and Poles and Canadians and Australians and others who went ashore, not only on D-Day, but in the days after, and fought their way through Normandy and across the Rhine and into Germany to end Hitler once and for all. And that wasn’t one guy who did that.

And for them to be at their best fighting strength, they needed to not only prepare themselves, but they needed the guy next to them to be at his best fighting strength. They needed the guy next to them to be prepared. They needed the guy in front of them and behind them to be prepared to do battle.

Because you don’t want to go out there to face the enemy and find out that there’s nobody around you who has your back. You don’t want to go out and face a ferocious enemy and find out that you’re doing it alone. We need to be willing to stand alone if necessary.

But God’s design for us is to have brothers and sisters on our left and our right flank and to stand shoulder to shoulder against the enemy. So he says to pray for one another. Pray for all the saints.

We should be lifting each other up in prayer. All these other things that we’ve talked about, take those and apply those to prayer not only for ourselves, but for our brothers and sisters with us. If we know that there’s a need, we pray for it.

If we know that there’s a weakness, something that somebody’s struggling with, we pray for them. And we ask God to strengthen our fellow soldiers in this fight so that we can rely on each other. So that when the day of battle comes, we’re prepared.

So that when the day of battle comes, we’re all tested in our armor and we’re ready to go. Folks, that’s what God intends the church to be. Not just sit around and sing songs and wait for Jesus to come back while the world dissolves into chaos around us, but

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