Tuesday 10th December 2019 Prayer Devotion
Scripture Reading:- Ephesians 6:10-20
Topic:- How to Pray in Spiritual Warfare [2]
Text:- Ephesians 6:12
F. Pray Every Kind of Prayer and Supplication:
1. Our prayers are often limited by our small imaginations and little faith. We pray for small sinners to become Christians, but not for really big sinners.
2. We pray for victory over small sins, but don’t know how to pray about those big, ingrained sinful habits.
3. We pray for change in our small corner of the universe but not in the country at large or throughout the world. Instead of praying with all kinds of prayers and requests, we often pray with small kinds of prayers and requests.
4. One way to increase the scope of your prayers is to study the great prayers of the Bible. Think about Jesus’s prayer in John 17.
5. On the night before he died, Jesus prayed that the Father would glorify him. So too, we can pray that the Father would glorify Jesus in and through our lives. In our strength or weakness, in our health or sickness, in our abundance or poverty.
6. He also prayed for His disciples, and those who would believe through their witness, that the Father would keep them safe and united.
7. So we can pray for ourselves and for our churches that we would be kept safe and united in Christ.
8. Jesus also prayed that the Father would sanctify his disciples in the truth, so we can pray that God would grow us daily in our holiness and knowledge of the truth.
9. And Jesus prayed that ultimately we might be with him in heaven to see his glory. So we can pray for God’s sustaining power to enable us and others, weak and stumbling as we are, to persevere faithfully throughout the course of our earthly lives.
10. Our prayers are not simply to be big and small; they are also to be wide, ranging around the world, praying for all the saints.
11. In many countries the church is growing rapidly, and it needs our prayers that it will remain true to the Bible.
12. In other areas, Christians are a persecuted minority and need our prayers that they will stand firm in what they believe.
13. We also need the prayers of our brothers and sisters around the world. If even Paul needed the prayers of the Ephesians so he could be faithful in proclaiming the Gospel. How much more do contemporary Pastors and Missionaries around the globe need prayer? See Ephesians 6:19.
G. The One Who Intercedes for Us:
1. Some books I have read about prayer left me feeling crushed and inadequate, unable to conceive how anyone could pray like that.
2. But if we think of prayer as the outworking of a relationship, it becomes a different story. If prayer is simply responding to the promptings of the Spirit to cry out to my heavenly Father with thanksgiving, requests, intercessions, and sighs of confession and repentance, then all of a sudden it doesn’t seem so hard.
3. What is more, Jesus is still praying for us. We read that Christ ever lives beside the throne of God the Father to make intercession for His people. See Hebrews 7:25.
4. The Spirit too intercedes for us and with us. With company like that praying for us, how will the Father not give us exactly what we need for our spiritual warfare in this dark and dangerous world? See Romans 8:26.
Prayer Point:- I command that the power, spirit and grace of prayer, fall upon me now by fire, in the name of Jesus Christ.
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