January 12
WITH ALL PRAYER AND PETITION
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
The mother of one of my seminary students was a psychic. She said to him once, "Jim, have you been praying for me?" "Of course I have, Mother." "Well, don't," she insisted, "because you're disturbing my aura."
I say pray on! We never know completely the effects of our prayers, but we do know that God includes prayer as part of His strategy for establishing His kingdom and ensuring our spiritual victory.
One of the most dramatic deliverances I have observed happened in a man who was a high priest in the upper echelons of Satanism. Six months after he was set free he gave his testimony in our church. At the close of his testimony I asked him, "Based on your experience on 'the other side,' what is the Christian's greatest strategy against demonic influence?"
"Prayer," he answered forcefully. "And when you pray, mean it. Fervent prayer thwarts Satan's activity like nothing else."
What is prayer? It is communication with God by which we express our dependence on Him. God knows what we need in our battle with the powers of darkness, and He is more ready to meet our needs than we are to ask. But until we express our dependence on Him in prayer, God may not act. In prayer we say, "You are the Lord, not I. You know what's best; I don't. I'm not telling You what to do; I'm asking." Prayer is a means by which God guides and protects His children.
Praying in the Spirit is God's way of helping us pray when we don't know how: "The Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us" (Romans 8:26). Helps (sunantilambano) depicts the Holy Spirit's role of coming alongside us in our condition of human frailty and spiritual vulnerability and bearing us to the other side of spiritual protection and victory.
Prayer: Thank You, Lord, that prayer is such a powerful weapon in my arsenal against the powers of darkness.
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