Learning Practical Spiritual Warfare
2008 Edition
Part Two
Page 8
Ephesians 6:18 “
Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the
Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and
supplication for all saints; “
[7] Praying with all prayer
&supplication in the Spirit: the forgotten piece.
This is the most vital 7th part of the armor, it
is how that you take the whole armor of God to begin with.
Without spiritual prayer, you cannot arm yourself in the
Lord.
Prayer is the force that binds the armor together and makes
it work. Prayer is how that you take the armor in the first
place. It is impossible to take the whole armor of God
without prayer. You will find that most of spiritual
warfare is actually prayer. Prayer brings God into our
lives with power.
That is why just getting on top of a mountain and building
and claiming a city for Jesus is not sufficient by itself to
bring any kind of change.
But most spiritual warfare is done in
real effective prayer time together with others of the same
accord. And it
is won soul by soul as you win your community to Christ.
You have to get the personal battles won first.
If you are eaten up with LUST or
TEMPER or HATE or JEALOUSY, then forget about ever stepping
into the ring with the devil. You are already
defeated. You have to win the personal battle of your own
mind and life before you can take your city.
You will never have the spiritual authority without time
with God in prayer. And you will never win the local drug
dealers, and the local drunks, and the local occultists, or
anyone else for that matter until you spend time with God in
prayer. It just won’t come to you. It actually takes some
work.... that’s why very little evangelism takes place
anymore. It requires some work.
You cannot resist evil and the devil without submitting or
subjecting yourself to God through prayer first. It just
will not happen. We must pray to take the armor of God.
And we must pray to effectively use it.
1 Timothy 2:1 “ I exhort therefore, that, first of all,
supplications, prayers, intercessions, [and] giving of
thanks, be made for all men; “
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 “ 16 Rejoice evermore. 17 Pray
without ceasing. 18 In every thing give thanks: for this is
the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. “
So we are to always pray, but the exhortation of Ephesians 6
with the whole armor of God said praying in the Spirit. Our
prayers are more effective when we pray in the Spirit:
Romans 8:15 “ For ye have not received the spirit of bondage
again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption,
whereby we cry, Abba, Father. “
Romans 8:26-27 “ 26 Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our
infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we
ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with
groanings which cannot be uttered. 27 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. “
Jude 1:20 “ But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your
most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, “
Praying in the Holy Ghost will build us up in our most holy
faith. We need the Spirit of God to get involved in our
prayer and in our day to day fight with evil [that’s what it
is] if we want to be more than just getting by. God wants
us to take land for Jesus and we can only do that through
the Spirit.
The devil cannot get in to do us any damage if Jesus is
covering all of us. And the painful truth is that when we
get really wounded where we cannot go on, there was some
area Jesus did not cover.
And why wasn’t He covering it? The armor is the whole armor
or the complete armor, and if we will submit to God and
really take it, it will cover all of us. If we weren’t
covered, then we didn’t submit to God in that area.
1 Thessalonians 5:7-8 “ 7 For they that sleep sleep in the
night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night. 8
But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the
breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope
of salvation. “
A last days exhortation, don’t be caught up in the darkness
of this life, but put on the breastplate of faith and love
here. The point is that faith
and love are also weapons that protect us along with
righteousness.
Faith has been covered by the shield of faith, but love
should be shown as to have a power as a weapon as much as
anything else.
That should not be surprising considering that love is the
very nature of who God is.
Love is a very powerful weapon.
When the devil raises up people against you and your flesh
wants to give into the same trap that they are in,
the love of God is a
breastplate protecting your heart from falling into sin.
Love is a power that when men do evil to you,
keeps you from falling into that same
evil and possibly through that love, win them to Jesus.
Love is a power that defeats fear.
Fearfulness is unbelief personified. And that kind
of fear causes anxiety and worry and cowardice about
standing up in faith. Love destroys fear’s power:
1 John 4:18 “ There is no fear in love; but perfect love
casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth
is not made perfect in love. “
Fear is a weapon used against the children of God. But when
our love is perfected, we have a perfect shield around our
hearts protecting us from that torment of fear. I’m not
speaking of reasonable fears, such as don’t play in
traffic. But the fears or
worry that comes from not trusting God.
