The Battle In The Trenches

The Battle Ground: The Priority of Prayer

Colossians 1:9-14

Two A.M. - The phone rings. 

NO ONE wants to get a call at that time of the morning. In this case, it’s tragic news. A young woman with two little girls, learns from her mother, who has answered the phone, that her husband has been killed in a work related accident. The young woman immediately grasps her mom’s hand, falls to her knees and says, “Let’s pray.”

In Milwaukee a pastor from gets up early on Saturday morning to drive to Jackson, Wisconsin to spend four hours walking through the streets of the city – praying for spiritual victory as he and others prepare to plant a new church there.

Outside Falujah, a squad of infantrymen gathers in a huddle to pray before heading off for another day of reconnaissance.

For far too many of us, prayer has become a sort of “last resort.” If all else fails, we turn to God in prayer. We’ll first try to deny, fight, or think our way out of life’s challenges and problems. Then, when it seems that we’re up against an overwhelming situation, we turn to God in prayer. 

I have to admit that far too often, that’s me. And far too often that describes our church. 

In his book, Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, (Which is available in our church library!) Pastor Jim Cymbala shares this experience:

After I had been pastor of Brooklyn Tabernacle for about a year, the church had grown to fifty people, but we were facing problems: little money, few people coming to faith in Christ. One Tuesday afternoon I sat in my cubbyhole office on Atlantic Avenue, depressed. I knew that later that day, fifteen people, at most, would come to church to pray. “How could God call me and my wife to this city not to make a difference?” I wondered.

I walked into our empty, little sanctuary and recited to God a list of my problems: “Look at this building, this neighborhood...Our offerings are laughable...I can’t trust So-and-so...There’s so little to work with.”

Then the Holy Spirit impressed upon me, “I will show you the biggest problem in the church. It’s you.” In that moment I saw with excruciating clarity that I didn’t really love the people as God wanted me to. I prepared sermons just to get through another Sunday. I was basically prayer-less. I was proud.

I fell on my face before God and began to weep. “God, whatever it takes, please change me. I would rather die than live out some useless ministry of catch phrases.”

The Tuesday evening prayer meetings, though sparsely attended, continued. The focus on prayer changed. Prayer was seen as a priority, not a last resort. Prayer was recognized as the battleground, rather than the place to run for refuge.

The Brooklyn Tabernacle began to turn around, and twenty years later, they are still learning about the tremendous power of prayer. Every Tuesday evening many hundreds of people come together simply to pray.[i]

How often we go through life expecting God to meet our needs! And we never grasp the critical importance of our own involvement—that of prayer, constant prayer. Prayer should not be our last, desperate measure – it should be first! In the book of Ephesians, chapter 6, when Paul outlines the Spiritual armor of God – each piece is defensive in nature – helmet, shield, breastplate, shoes - even the sword, which is often seen as an offensive weapon, was used as much for defense, to deflect the blows of the enemy, as it was for offense. 

The only purely offensive portion of that passage is found in verses 18 – 20, where Paul says,

And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.

19 Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, 20 for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.

Paul has just finished describing a soldier of God, arrayed in his armor – about to battle the enemy, and when he begins to talk about engagement, and being alert, fearless and aggressive, his first and only word of instruction is “PRAY!” In those three verses, he repeats the word 5 times! 

Prayer is not preparation for battle – prayer is not restoration from battle – PRAYER IS THE BATTLE! It only makes sense – Paul says in verse 12 of Ephesians 6, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against eh spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” If that is the description of our struggle, then it makes perfect sense that our part in that struggle in also spiritual in nature.

When a newly widowed woman drops to her knees; when a squad gathers in prayer before going out into enemy territory; when a pastor prays over a community they are recognizing the spiritual nature of their fight, and they are employing the single most powerful and effective weapon in the arsenal of a believer.

On the front lines of a battle, the soldiers always have their primary weapon within reach. It is next to them as they rest in a forward bunker – they carry it with them from place to place. Their training has been such that they are able to respond to any threat without thinking – their weapon at the ready.

In the Spiritual battle in the trenches, prayer is the primary weapon of every believer, the first and most effective we have. Throughout Scripture this has been demonstrated. From Genesis to Revelation the people of God are people of prayer. There is a demonstrable connection between a person’s effectiveness for the kingdom and faithfulness in serving the Lord and their prayer life.

Godly people, both men and women, from all walks of life were people of prayer. People like Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Hannah, David, and Nehemiah, Anna at the Temple in Jerusalem, Lydia of Philippi and the entire early church. Even Jesus shows us the priority of prayer in His own life.

In the biographies of Jesus that we have from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, we see Jesus again and again in prayer to the Father. It was a almost always in a pro-active role, not in reaction to some problem. He spent 40 days in the dessert in prayer and fasting before beginning his ministry (Matthew 4). He spent a night in prayer alone on a hillside before selecting the twelve followers who were to be his closest disciples (Luke 6:12). Before heading to Jerusalem for the last time, and facing the cross, He took Peter, John and James to a mountain to pray (Luke 9:28). And on the night before His crucifixion, in the ultimate battle of his earthly life, he spent the evening in prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. Prayer was a priority for Jesus, and it must be for His followers.

For Paul, prayer is shown to be a priority even in his letters. Each of the letters from Paul that compose nearly half our New Testament begin with a prayer. The letter to the church in Colosse is one that I want us to look at in particular this morning. The letter of Colossians is unique in that it is written to a church that Paul did not start and that he never visited. Paul had led a man from Colosse named Epaphras to Christ, who returned to his city and told others about Jesus – soon a church started there that met in the home of Philemon. Epaphras had at some later time, come to visit Paul, who was by now in a Roman prison, and told him about the church there. 

Paul writes in verse 9 of Colossians 1,

For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of His will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please Him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience…

Now that is a great prayer! In fact, a couple of years ago, in my personal reading I came across that prayer, and it resonated within me so powerfully that I emailed it to my three children and told them that this was my prayer fro them – that God would “fill them with knowledge of His will through spiritual wisdom;” that the would, “live a life worthy of the Lord, and please Him in every way…” and that they would be “strengthened with all power according to His glorious might so that they would have great endurance and patience.”

It’s a great prayer, and I challenge you this week to read it over several times and pray it not only for yourself, but for your kids, or your spouse, or your parents, or even your pastor…

But for today’s purposes, I don’t want to look so much as the content of the prayer as the context – the circumstances – because the speak to the priority of prayer. So just a couple of quick observations:

1. Paul’s Prayer Was Immediate – “Since the day we heard about you…” Paul was in prison. He heard about a group of believers that he had never met, in a city he had never visited, and whom he would never see. And we see Paul’s first response – “Since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you…” Paul is a warrior for Christ. He understands the nature of the battle, as we pointed out earlier, and as such, when he hears of a new church, he instinctively goes to prayer for them.

2. Paul’s Prayer Was Incessant – “We have not stopped praying for you…” Not only did Paul immediately go to prayer for this group of believers, he never stopped praying for them. So how do you pray without ever stopping? Does that mean that Paul walked around with his head bowed and his eyes closed all the time? Obviously not – while in that prison in Rome he wrote many letters, witnessed to guards, and actually led people to Christ from the household of Caesar himself! Being in prayer without ceasing is a spiritual reality that is absolutely possible. Prayer can be going on even while doing other things – I often will pray for people in the congregation that I make eye contact with while I’m speaking - just in an instant. You can pray all through the day:

Ø When you wake up, pray a prayer of thanksgiving for rest, for a day to live and breath.

Ø As you wash, ask the Lord to cleanse you from sin and the dirt of the world

Ø As you eat, ask the Lord to nourish your soul

Ø When you put gas in your car, ask the Lord to fuel you through the day by his Spirit – and pray for your financial state!

Ø At work, pray for coworkers, your boss, clients, customers. When someone comes to mind, pray for them! Especially if it seems out of the ordinary.

Ø Pray as you home, pray while watching the news, pray for your children or spouse

Ø We become people of incessant prayer when we recognize that virtually every event, every individual, every circumstance can be a call to spiritual arms.

3. Paul’s Prayer Was Inspired. The things Paul prayed for were not motivated by the flesh – they were in line with the priorities of God Himself. You don’t find Paul here praying that they will be kept from persecution, or that they will have plenty of volunteers for AWANA, or that they will have a new plush building. His eyes are not on the things that so often we pray for in the church of the 21^st Century – the prayers for this First Century church are for things that really matter:

Ø Knowledge of God’s will

Ø Spiritual wisdom & understanding

Ø Results: A life worthy of the Lord

a. Fruitful

b. Growing

c. Strong

d. Enduring

e. Joyful

This is the prayer that needs to be a priority in our church today! Not so self focused that it barely sees beyond it’s own troubles – but prayer that is pro-active, that anticipates the battles ahead, and takes an offensive posture of prayer – doing spiritual battle in the heavenly realms.

Two A.M. - The phone rings. 

It’s tragic news. A young woman with two little girls, learns from her mother, who has answered the phone, that her husband has been killed in a work related accident. The young woman immediately grasps her mom’s hand, falls to her knees and says, “Let’s pray.”

Those prayers did not bring her husband, my brother Ed, back to life. Her prayers did not change the fact that she would be left to raise her two girls alone. Those prayers did not remove the pain or reduce the financial and emotional strain in the days, months and years ahead. 

Some would look at the circumstances and say, “Prayer changes nothing…” But in fact, prayer changed everything. 

By dropping to her knees on that early morning, Cheryl placed herself in a position to victoriously face the battle that lay ahead. Just as those infantrymen in Flujah, and that pastor in Jackson do. We must do the same.