Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. Philippians 4:6

As we, as a church, begin focusing our attention on prayer and becoming a church devoted to prayer, I want to focus my attention over the next number of weeks to prayer.  I would venture to say that we all would assert the importance of prayer as well as the power of prayer. But what is prayer all about? Let’s begin to delve a little deeper into it.

Have you ever found yourself in a spiritual rut? I know I have. It’s easy to do. Life gets busy, church feels like one more thing on your to-do list, and prayer feels both cumbersome and ineffective. Beyond the fact that life itself can become overwhelming, even sapping your spiritual vitality, there is a more pressing culprit that threatens to marginalize your prayer life: You have an Enemy waging war on your soul.

Make no mistake, this is a war. You are in the fight of your life. A very real Enemy has been strategizing and scheming against you, assaulting you, coming after your emotions, your mind, your future. But I say Satan’s reign of terror stops here, now. He might keep coming, but he won’t have victory because his power starts failing when we start praying.

The Mystery of Prayer

I’m willing to admit, right up front, that I don’t fully understand this. There’s an undeniable, unknowable, invisible mystery to the power of prayer. That’s why our first reaction to prayer may be to dismiss it, downplay it, or even devalue its critical importance. Prayer, we think, is a good idea in theory—if only it would actually make a difference.

That kind of thinking is what gets us in trouble. When we underestimate the power of prayer, when we think it doesn’t work, when we choose to believe that God won’t answer our prayers or that he isn’t listening, we wave a white flag and invite Satan into our situation.

Believe me when I say that praying is the last thing Satan wants you to do. He will discourage you from doing it. He will dissuade you from it, and he will disarm you by putting a distaste for prayer in your mouth. Sound familiar? He wants to see you passionless, prayerless, and powerless. Perfectly quiet. 

Why is it so important for Satan to keep you from praying? Because he knows you’ll remain defeated and undone without it.  But we need to remember and remind ourselves that prayer is the divinely ordained mechanism that leads you into the power and victory of Christ!