Prayer: The Conflict Is Real

We’ve been learning more about prayer in our devos during music practice on Tuesday nights.  And we’ve been learning by doing more than by talking.  I think prayer is much like the arts in that you can talk about it until you’re blue in the face, but you can’t say that you know much about prayer until you do it.  I want to share a little bit about what we’ve been learning week to week.  First, we talked BRIEFLY about the Reality of the Conflict.

In Matthew 6:9-13, the disciples come to Jesus and ask him how to pray.  He gives them a model that many of us pray and use as a template for our own prayers.  But more than that, the life of Jesus shows us other important aspects of prayer such as intensity, specific times, locations, and content.  As I think about these characteristics,

I get a sense that Jesus was aware of the presence of the enemy and the ongoing conflict with the evil one.
This is seen in all the gospels, but especially in Mark, I think.  Later in the New Testament, it’s obvious that there is a battle going on.

In my own life, I’ve found that when I am facing serious disease, trouble, sin or evil, my own involvement with prayer is also ramped up.  The spiritual forces are present everywhere, but most of the time we are unaware.  The society we live in today doesn’t really acknowledge it except in the making of horror films that dabble in the occult.  But we must see the world with different eyes.

After traveling to Haiti, I think that believers in other countries have a better sense of this battle.  In ’98 and ’99, my wife and I led mission teams to Haiti.  While we were there we helped with a VBS program in a local village.  In one of the villages, we were hit with a strong sense of evil…a heaviness all around us…I don’t know how else to describe it.  As we walked through the village, we saw a hut in the middle with colored flags of all colors.  We found out later that voodoo was actively practiced there and much of it centered around that hut.  I suddenly had a strong sense of the battle around us and was led to pray that God’s Kingdom would come on earth as it is in heaven.

After we talked BRIEFLY, we walked over to the large REACH map of the world in the lobby.

Some of us stood.

Some of us knelt.

Some of us touched specific countries on the map.

And we all prayed for brothers and sisters around the world who face the forces of darkness everyday.  Let me encourage you to do the same.  The cosmic battle around us is real.  It has been going on since the Fall and will continue until Jesus comes again.  It is in this context that prayer begins to take it’s place in our lives.