"Know the Role of Prayer" Ephesians 6:18-20
- This message was preached by Senior Pastor, Robert Dennison, on July 30, 2023.
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Audio Transcript
You.
Look a lot better when Jen’s with you, but we will put up with you. Thank you for sharing. We appreciate that we are finishing up our studies in Ephesians and also on spiritual warfare. Today, our topic is knowing the role of prayer. If you’ll take your Bibles and turn to Ephesians chapter 6, we will begin reading today in verse 10, Ephesians 6.
Beginning in verse 10.
Finally, be strengthened by the Lord and by his vast strength. Put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh, flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil spiritual forces in the heavens. For this reason, take up the full armor of God so that you may be able to resist in the evil day. And having prepared everything to take your stand.
Stand therefore with truth like a belt around your waist, righteousness like armor on your chest and your feet sandaled with the readiness for the gospel of peace in every situation. Take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Pray at all times in the spirit with every prayer and request and stay alert with all perseverance and intercession for all the saints. Pray also for me that the message may be given to me when I open my mouth to make known the boldness, with boldness the mystery of the gospel.
For this I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may be bold enough to speak about it as I should. May we pray? Heavenly Father, as we come to your word once again, we just ask that you would speak to us through it, Father, with changes that we need to make in our life and encouragement for what we’re doing right. And by your spirit, Father, and our willingness to submit to him, we ask that we would further endeavor to be more and more like your son, that we might present his gospel not only verbally, but in the way we live our lives in this world.
In his name we pray. Amen. All right. You gotta do better than the first service. They didn’t know the answers very well.
They haven’t heard this much. Know your enemy. Who’s your enemy? Much better. Know your source of strength.
Who is that? Know your armor. Here comes a hard one. You have the belt of, breastplate of, shoes of, the shield of, helmet of. And the sword.
Sword of the. Put on the armor of God. That’s the first main command. In this passage, and the second main command is that we are supposed to pray. Prayer is not just another piece of the armor that we’re adding.
It weighs as much on this side as the armor does on this side. So picture all of the armor. It balances out over here with prayer. We’re commanded to put this on and we’re commanded to pray. And if you don’t spend time in prayer, there’s no way to put the armor on.
How do we receive the gift of salvation? We do what we pray. How do we become righteous? We pray. How do we know how to use God’s word?
It’s through prayer. We’re commanded to do both. The armor cannot be placed on unless we do it through prayer. But the armor also is to no effect in our life if we’re trying to wield it on our own strength. Prayer is what empowers our usage of the full armor of God.
It’s what directs us. It’s what instructs us. Prayer empowers and directs our use of God’s armor. This now, in regard to prayer, we have the command to pray, but we also have the command to stay alert. And those are the two things we’re going to be looking at today.
Pray and stay alert. Let’s look at pray first. And there are three sets of words here. Pray at all times in the spirit. We just want to take time looking at pray.
What is prayer? What does it mean all times and what does it mean in the spirit? So I brought some quotes today from some men that are great in their prayer lives, and they express the importance of prayer much better than I can. I first want to read from EM Bounds. God has, of his own motion, placed himself under the law of prayer.
Now, we normally don’t think about God being under any law. Where is he in regard to all law? We think of him as being over. But in regard to prayer, Ian Bounds explains, he’s placed himself under this law. In other words, he has obligated himself to answer the prayers of men.
God said, I will answer your prayer. That’s the law. Therefore, now he’s the one that’s obeying it. It’s a law that he’s made for himself. He has ordained prayer as a means whereby he will do things, things through men as they pray, which he would not otherwise do.
What this saying is prayer is important. Some people could say, well, God knows everything. Why do I need to pray? He can just take care of all things. Could he do that?
Yes. But he’s placed himself under this law. And he’s commanded us to pray even in the simplest things. In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus said, we’re supposed to pray every day for our daily needs. Now, does God know that you need air?
Does he know that you need food, that you need water? Of course. And we could say, well, he’s just going to provide it. I don’t have to pray about it. But what does Jesus say?
No, you need to ask God daily for these things. Many, many things God does not do. Because we don’t pray. That’s why it says he will do things through men as they pray, which he would not otherwise do. In other words, God has invited us to join him in his work, the best work in all the world.
He doesn’t just do it himself. He could, but he’s invited us to experience the joy of doing that with him. I read from R.A. torrey. This is what he wrote. Prayer is the key that unlocks all the storehouses of God’s infinite grace and power.
All that God is and all that God does is at the disposal of prayer. But we must use the key. Prayer can do anything God can do. And as God can do anything, then prayer is omnipotent. And then lastly, I read from Hudson Taylor, who was an English missionary to China.
He said, it is impossible to move men through God by prayer alone. If you think it’s difficult to move a mountain to pray about that, what’s even more difficult is to move people’s wills and their desires and their plans. But God says what we feel like we cannot do physically, what we cannot do with our words. We can pray that God will change hearts and move people. That’s how powerful it is.
I want to take some time to look today, just a few things that prayer can accomplish in our lives. If we spend time in prayer. The first thing that prayer can accomplish is it can save the lost. I read from Luke chapter 18, verses 13 through 14, where we have the publican that’s praying with the religious man. And here we have the tax collector.
Jesus said, standing afar off, he would not even raise his eyes to heaven, but kept striking his chest and saying, God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Jesus says, I tell you this one went down to his house justified rather than the other, because everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. The tax collector was justified. He was saved after he did what he expressed his desire to the Lord in prayer. God could have justified him without even telling him Anything.
But here God requires prayer that men might be saved. James 1:5 tells us that prayer gives us wisdom. Now, if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given to him. What can prayer accomplish? It can help us to overcome temptation.
I Read from Matthew 26, verses 40 through 41. Then he, being Jesus, came to the disciples and found them sleeping. He asked Peter, so couldn’t you stay awake with me one hour? Stay awake and pray so that you won’t enter into temptation. The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
Jesus was telling his disciples that you may want to do what’s right, you may want to resist temptation, but the desire is not enough to accomplish that. You need to spend time in prayer. Prayer can also cure illness, and it can forgive sin. We go to James 5, 13, 15. Is anyone among you suffering?
He should pray. Is anyone cheerful? He should sing praises. Is anyone among you sick? He should call for the elders of the church, and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.
And the prayer of faith will save the sick person. And the Lord will raise him up. If he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him. Prayer can accomplish also an increase in evangelism. Jesus said in Matthew chapter nine, the harvest is abundant, but the workers are few.
Therefore pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest. So glad to have Ben speaking here today. We send him money. But you know what’s more important than sending him money? According to this, it’s praying for his ministry, praying that more workers will go and join him there.
His work has no end. The amount of human trafficking out there is tremendous. We need more workers. And the way to bring that about, Jesus says, is to spend time in prayer. What can a prayer accomplish?
The last thing I just want to point out today, it can accomplish what seems impossible to us. And I read from Mark, chapter 11. Jesus replied to them, have faith in God. Truly, I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, be lifted up and thrown into the sea. And does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.
Therefore I tell you everything you pray and ask for. Believe that you have received it and it will be yours. You may not literally have a mountain in your life to move, but there are often things that are as big as mountains. To us. They’re impossible.
Again, I point to Ben. When Jen had a wreck, it was impossible for her to be Healed except by prayer and God’s work, she’s been restored. The same story comes from Dave Padley, who was in the earlier service. Those of you know that he was run over by the tractor. God restored him, and healing comes through prayer.
And what can seem impossible to us can be changed by prayer.
Jesus told them a parable in Luke chapter 18 about how we’re supposed to pray at all times. There was a judge in a certain town who didn’t fear God or respect people. And a widow in that town kept coming to him saying, give me justice against my adversary. For a while he was unwilling, but later he said to himself, even though I don’t fear God or respect people yet because this widow keeps pestering me, I will give her justice so that she doesn’t wear me out by her persistent coming. Then the Lord said, listen to what the unjust judge says.
And will not God grant justice to his elect who cry out to him day and night? Will he delay helping them? I tell you that he will swiftly grant them justice. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? Jesus isn’t comparing God to this judge.
He’s contrasting God with this judge. This judge was an ungodly man. He didn’t care about this widow. He just wanted to have some peace in his house. Whereas God, on the other side, he’s attentive to our needs.
He’s our loving Father. He is our good God. So when we come to him in prayer, Jesus is saying, if that judge was willing to do something for the woman, he didn’t care for God more so is going to answer our prayers. But what he’s comparing us to here is, are we continually praying like we should like the woman? Or do we not pray?
Or do we only ask a few times? We’re supposed to be like the woman. And then God responds to us like the loving Father he is. When we cry out to him at all times, day and night, we’re supposed to pray. We’re supposed to pray at all times.
But the third thing here is that we’re supposed to pray. And in the spirit first John 5, 14, 15, we read, this is the confidence we have before him. If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears whatever we ask, we know that we have what we have asked of Him. The key to answer prayer here is that we ask according to God’s will, that we ask according to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Will I don’t always know what the mind of God is. I don’t claim to know what the mind of God is. Do you ever feel that way, God? What are you thinking? Why didn’t you do this or that?
His ways are above our ways. His thoughts are above our thoughts. The only way that we can pray knowing what God wants is when the Holy Spirit is fills our life daily and he helps us to understand what it is that we’re supposed to pray for. So then we know what God’s will is and we pray it. We know that he will answer.
But certainly if we are not praying for God’s will, on the other hand, we know that he will not answer. Let’s look at Romans 8, 26, 27 again talking about we’re supposed to pray in the Spirit. In the same way, the Spirit also helps us in our weakness because we do not know what to pray for as we should. But the Spirit himself intercedes for us with inexpressible groanings. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit because he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
The he here is Jesus. He knows our hearts. He knows the mind of the Spirit, the Spirit knows him. And when that all comes together by being filled with the Spirit, we know what to pray. But it also talks here that sometimes we don’t know what to pray.
We’re confronted with a circumstance or a situation and God I don’t know even what to ask here. I don’t know how to pray for this person or for this situation. There are times like that that the Holy Spirit himself, if we’re filled with him, he will pray through us, even if all we’re doing is uttering a moan or a groan. This is akin to the verse in the Old Testament where it says, be still and know that I am God. Sometimes we don’t need to be reading our Bible.
Sometimes we don’t need to be singing or listening to the Christian radio. We just need need to sit and be still in God’s presence and allow the Holy Spirit to pray through us with the time that we’re giving. Especially in these circumstances where we’re at complete inadequate knowledge of knowing what God wants. I’d like to read a story about Major Ian Thomas and Rob Mattoon shares this in one of his books and it talks about how Major Ian Thomas had to learn that he was doing all this work. He was doing all this work, he was doing everything he could and he didn’t see any fruit in his ministry until he realized that he needed to Guess what?
Pray and you’re going to hear through this excerpt how God worked in his life. As a university student in London, Thomas had exerted all his energy for Christ, becoming a windmill of activity, packing every day with preaching, talking and counseling. But nobody was ever converted, he said, the more I did, the less happened. And I became deeply depressed because I really loved the Lord with all my heart. But I discovered that forever doubling and redoubling my efforts to win souls, rushing here and dashing there, taking part in this campaign, taking part in that campaign, preaching in the morning, preaching in the evening, witnessing to this one, counseling with another did nothing, nothing to change the utter barrenness of my activity.
Near total exhaustion, Thomas prayed this prayer to the Lord one evening. Oh, God, I have tried to my uttermost and I am a hopeless failure. Suddenly, a verse flashed through him that he didn’t even know that he knew. He couldn’t remember hearing or reading it before, but now it rang in his mind like the Big bend clock tower. Christ, who is our life.
Thomas realized he had been trying to do for Christ what only Christ could do through him. His own efforts were useless. He needed the power of Christ in him. By the Holy Spirit, he told the Lord, you are the one who is going to go out now clothe with me to do all that I do so hopelessly had been trying to do in the past. The following Sunday, as he prepared to teach his 90 boys, he prayed, well, now, Lord, thou art going to speak to that boy’s class.
Isn’t it wonderful? Yesterday I thought I was going to, but thou art going to now.
Thomas shared. That day, 30 boys trusted Jesus Christ as savior, and Thomas had learned that all that God is is available to the man who is available to all that God is. May we learn to tap into the Lord through prayer and our submission to him. He was fully wearing the armor of God, but he wasn’t doing what he wasn’t spending time in prayer.
In knowing the role of prayer, not only are we supposed to pray, but the command is here also to stay alert. Pray at all times in the spirit with every prayer and request and stay alert with all perseverance and intercession for all the saints. What does it mean here to stay alert? It means to abstain from totally from sleep, to be watchful and attentive to spiritual things. Now Jesus is using hyperbole here because I need at least two hours of sleep at night.
Y’ all need that, okay, What Jesus is saying, he’s saying prayer is so important. You should be continually involved in it, you should stay alert. In particular, it means to be watchful and attentive to spiritual things. The battle that we fight is not a physical battle. It’s what it’s a spiritual battle.
And we can’t see what’s going on in the spiritual world. But by the power of the Holy Spirit living in us, we can learn to be attentive, to be watchful for spiritual things. So when somebody offends you, instead of being offended, you should stop and think, is there something spiritual going on? That there’s a battle against me? If something goes wrong with our sound system on Sunday morning, we try to fix it, but we really should stop and pray.
God, is there something spiritual going on today that’s trying to keep us from sharing the word of God? Stay alert, be watchful and attentive to spiritual things. I read From Luke chapter 21, verses 30, 34 through 36. Jesus said, Be on guard so that your minds are not dulled from carousing drunkenness and worries of life, or that day will come on you unexpectedly like a trap speaking of the Lord’s return. For it will come on all who live on the face of the whole earth.
But be alert at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are going to take place and to stand before the Son of man as Jesus return approaches. The world is just going to get more and more evil and we’re tempted to see all the physical evil things that are going on. But there’s a great spiritual battle that is increasing and we need to be on our guard because the only way we can fight against these spiritual forces and resist them is like Jesus said, to be spending time in prayer. Stay alert, be aware of the spiritual world going on that we can’t see, and pray. Pray at all times in the spirit with every prayer and request, and stay alert.
The next word here is with all perseverance. What does that mean? It means to stick with and not quit, even if discouraged or disheartened or tired. To stick with and not quit even if discouraged or disheartened or tired. Sometimes we pray about something and we ask and we ask again and we ask a third time.
It’s like, well, God’s not answered. I’m just going to give up. God tells us, be like the persistent widow. Pray always and not give up some things. God just wants us to grow in our faith.
He wants us to continue continually be praying, not just to ask for it. Once you know how it is in your life. If Somebody has an ability to give you something and you really, really want it. You’re willing to ask how many times over and over and over and over again. Some of us as parents, we have had kids, they wanted something, and how much do they ask us?
Over and over and over and over and over again? That’s how God wants us to approach Him. Him. Not to get discouraged, not to get disheartened or tired.
I read from Michael Youssef about perseverance. Most Christians pray sometimes with some prayers and some degree of perseverance for some of God’s people. But to replace some by the word all in each of these expressions would be to introduce us to a new dimension of prayer. And that’s what the passage is telling us. Don’t say some in any of these things.
We’re supposed to pray at what all times. Ariana, give us one more slide so we can see it. Thank you. Pray at all times, not sometimes. Pray with all or every prayer and request the text says, not just with some prayers and requests.
Pray with all perseverance, not just for some length of time. And pray for all the saints, not just the ones that are near and dear to us. Perseverance in all these things at all times. This is what we are commanded to do. This brings us all to a question.
Why are my prayers sometimes not answered? Simple answer is, sometimes God says yes, sometimes he says no. And we think that the no is not an answer. We’re only looking for the positive. And sometimes God asks us just to wait longer.
But there are some other reasons why prayer might not be answered in your life. We go first to James, chapter four, verses two through three. You do not have because you do not ask. That’s pretty simple. Some people just.
They don’t even go to God when they need something. God doesn’t answer them. But then he goes on to say, you ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives so that you may spend it on your pleasures. God sometimes doesn’t answer our prayer because we have wrong motives. Hunter often asked me, what can I do for you today, Pastor Robert?
And I say, you can get me a 1967 blue Ford Mustang convertible. Okay, he hasn’t gotten me one yet. My motives, they’re not bad motives, they’re just not right motives. That’s not something that I would ask God to do for me, because my prayer would be so that I could spend it on my own pleasure instead of focusing on more important things. Sometimes our prayers aren’t answered just because we don’t ask.
Other times they’re not answered because we ask with the wrong motives. John 14:12, 14. Look for the repeated phrase here. Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in My name, I will do it.
What is the repeated phrase there? In My name, I will do it. And it says it again. In My name, I will do it. What does that mean, to pray in Jesus name?
It means we’re calling upon his authority. We’re calling upon his command for things that we pray for. And we’re not going to pray for something that he doesn’t want to happen. We’re not going to pray for something that dishonors his name. It’d be like a policeman standing out in his uniform and putting out his hand to stop you on the road.
He’s giving that command to you in the name of the government, and he has every right to do that. So we are going to stop. That’s doing it in the government’s name. That’s what the policeman is doing. But if that same policeman says stop, you roll down your window and he says, hand me all the cash in your wallet.
Is he now asking you to do something in the name of the government? No, he doesn’t have a right to do that. And so it is. When we pray, we have to make sure we’re consistent with what God wants in his word. We’re praying consistently with what His Holy Spirit bears in our hearts.
Or don’t expect him to answer your prayers. Isaiah 59. 2. But your iniquities are separating you from your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not listen. Sometimes we have sin and iniquity in our life and it tells us that God does not listen.
Now, does that mean he doesn’t hear here? No. Again, it’s an exaggeration. This is like the dad who’s come home from a grueling day at work and he sits down in the chair and a little kid walks and says, hey dad, can you do this? Hey dad, can you do this?
Hey dad, can you do this? And the dad just sits there, mesmerized, watching the tv. It’s not that he doesn’t hear the child, he’s. What? He’s not listening.
And so it is that when we have sin in our life and God hears our prayer, but sometimes he just chooses not to listen because he wants us to get our life in line with him first before we continue in prayer, I want to leave you with three necessities for life. The first group are about necessities for physical life. They’re food, water and air. How many of you think we need food? How many of you think we need water?
How many of you think we need air? Tom Mittoon’s a doctor. I asked him earlier, do people need these three things? And he said yes. So I know I’m not going outside of my bounds of knowledge.
If we don’t have food, we get weak. If we don’t have water, all types of awful things happen to us. And if we don’t have air, we know what happens. Well, you know, in your spiritual life you need three things there too. You need the word of God and that’s like food.
You should be in God’s word every day if you want to have a strong spiritual life. Feeding yourself with God’s word. The psalmists talk about how they ate the word of God. The prophets said that it was sweet to their mouth. The reference to God’s word being food in our life is over and over and over.
And just like if you don’t eat one day or two days or three days or four days, it’s starts to accumulate. If you’re not eating God’s word, you’re not going to grow spiritually. And if you eat a lot of God’s Word, you’re going to grow and be really large spiritually. And that’s a good thing as opposed to food and physical life. But water in the physical life, it’s like the filling of the Spirit because every day we’re like an empty pitcher.
And we’re supposed to pray and ask God to fill us with his spirit so that when people bump us, the Holy Spirit comes out. And if the Holy Spirit is filling you day by day, there isn’t room for other things to come out of you. You need water every day. You need the spirit filling you. And the third thing we need is air.
I compare that to prayer. You breathe out and you what? You breathe in. You breathe out and you breathe in. Prayer is two sided.
It’s like any conversation. When I sit down, I talk with my wife. I don’t talk what to my wife. The old saying is we have two ears and one mouth because we’re supposed to listen twice as much as we speak. And that’s how prayer is.
Prayer shouldn’t just be a saying, God, do this, God do this. God do this. God do this. Amen. And you get up and leave.
You need to give time to God to speak to you. It’s awkward. Just like silence with another person. You know, you can sit down and somebody doesn’t say anything for, I don’t know, three seconds, five seconds, and you don’t say anything for three or five seconds. And eventually somebody just gets nervous and they just blurt out something unusual or something that’s not important.
It’s hard for us to. To sit and listen, but we need to do that in prayer. We’re breathing in what God says to us and we’re expressing back to him. Necessities for life, the word of God, the filling of the spirit prayer. And we end all this on talking about the armor of God.
It’s useless. We can’t put it on unless we spend adequate time in. What’s the answer in prayer? Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we ask that you would impress upon us the absolute necessity for prayer.
And Father, I would venture to say that all of us here need to spend more time in prayer than we do. Satan knows the great power of it and its purpose, and he is continually distracting us with activities and thoughts that keep us from doing this thing that you’ve asked us to. So we ask that you would instruct us that you would cause us to desire this and empower us, Father, change our wills, that we will think about spending more time in prayer with you. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.