Fight with Diligence
If your life is hard, don’t let Satan trick you into thinking you are powerless to make lasting changes. Your prayers can impact your own life (and help to calm your anxious thoughts) and help others, if you fight while using prayer. Please don’t let Satan or your flesh coax you to pray passively, without a fight. Spiritual warfare is all around Christians, and when we fight (through prayer), we do prevail. Our fighting will eventually bring us to a place of peace of mind, so don’t fear the fight. You can find peace, even while your own heart aches and even while the world around you is chaotic and raging. You must fight for that peace. We must change our mindset to believe we have to work hard in prayer, and that we will triumph, because the Holy Spirit empowers us to do so.
Our first battle is within our own minds that tell us life should be easy. This is a lie of our flesh and Satan, because Jesus did not promise us an easy life. In Matt. 10:34, Jesus said, “Don’t imagine I came to bring peace to earth! I came not to bring peace but a sword.” Jesus knew we would have to strive against our own flesh and against the evil powers of Satan that rage in our world and in many people’s hearts. Jesus warned us of this in John 16:33, “I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” Jesus warned us of the trials but also reassured us we can have his peace.
The problem too many Christians have is that they only claim the Bible promises of peace without claiming the verses about trials and pain. We will experience so much trouble here on earth (even atheists suffer on this earth.) And to get away from those problems, Jesus never told us to run, as you can see in the spiritual armor found in Eph.6:10-18. We see the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the foot covering of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the word (Bible) but not one covering for our back side. We must stand and face our struggles head on.
This means many things, and today I’ll delve into some practical ways we can do this. For me, this means I must guard against procrastination from work I dread doing. This weakness is the bad side of the personality style God created in me, as a perceiver. I excel in being spontaneous, in solving problems, and in being easy going. But sadly I also procrastinate on some hard projects I dread. This has always caused me pain, since this is not a spiritual virtue, but a sin of mine. And it reflects areas where I am not fighting the good fight, because a strong defense is essential when any project is difficult. I must pray about all the difficult projects that I dread (and delay.) I have never celebrated a project I did not start on time. And I realize that every time I procrastinated, I did not give God enough credit, because I did not pray and ask him for the strength to better schedule the projects I delayed.
So even with seemingly small weaknesses, we might overlook the importance of prayer. I know I have neglected prayer when I procrastinated. As a weak extrovert (at times more of an introvert) I have avoided phone calls, whether business or personal. I have been tired and avoided putting in the extra emotional energy after a long day home-schooling my girls, and in doing my best to interact with my husband. I did not ask God to recharge me.
At others time, my mindset was too leisurely, and often I fell into such a mind set, after having done quite a bit of other work. I was tired and now I wanted to enjoy some rest. But a cliché jumps into my mind, “The tyranny of the urgent,” meaning we will do the chores and projects that we immediately see (as if those chores were urgent) but then neglect the ones we really needed to do. I had gotten busy doing the wrong chores. There were some very difficult chores I put off by doing the easier ones like washing dishes and preparing food. I should have admitted to God how much I dreaded a certain project or chore, so I could ask him for the strength to do it anyway. For example, if rainy season is coming and a tarp has a leak, I would do better to neglect some mending inside my dry house and instead replace the tarp that covers outdoor equipment before it is damaged by the rain. That sounds like a simple project until you find out this is no ordinary tarp. This is a tarp that is attached to the roof of our house in a system I set up with pulleys, so the tarp can be raised and lowered for me to exercise in that area outdoors (due to our home having limited space.) The tarp becomes an addition to our roof and creates an exercise area for me. The tarp is 24 feet long and 18 feet wide, and quite heavy, so replacing it requires a huge amount of effort, including moving the ladder around equipment and climbing up high, tying tarp rivets in the right place, yanking the tied tarp to get a tight hold on the roof awning, and moving that very heavy tarp and then dragging the unattached side behind the equipment, hence my dread.
But my resistance to prayer may also come out of pride when I think I can handle a situation and I only offer a simple prayer, such as, “Lord, help me better love this person.” But if the person I am praying for has a very harsh temperament and is at times rude or difficult, I cannot simply offer casual prayer for that person. If this is a person I am forced to interact with, I need to really talk to God about how to interact and not interact with that person. I need to spend time alone with God to know more about what he wants me to do. Many times God may urge me to avoid that person. But when I really need to speak to a person like that, God will guide me to act appropriately, whether God wants me to show love and compassion, or confront the person or do something else. The Holy Spirit needs to direct me, and I cannot be vague with God in my prayer. I need to ask specific prayers to guide me in how I interact with some difficult people. I need to pray more earnestly at those times.
Paul actually agonized in his prayers, as he said in Cols.2:1, “I want you to know how much I have agonized for you and for the church at Laodicea, and for many other believers who have never met me personally.” And Paul asked for specific prayer, as he said in Cols. 4:2-4, “Devote yourselves to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart. Pray for us, too, that God will give us many opportunities to speak about his mysterious plan concerning Christ. That is why I am here in chains. Pray that I will proclaim this message clearly as I should.”
Satan might mock you for how you pray. You might be tempted to think prayers should be brief and logical, with all matters coming from your logical thoughts in sensible order. But godly saints and Christ himself prayed passionately. At times we need to pray that way too, according to our strongest feelings, whether anger, sorrow or fear. We can be very angry at sin, but we are not sinning by having that anger. We can hate evil in our world and hate Satan’s cruelty and pray with godly anger against Satan’s cruel assaults on us and others (Ephs.4:26, “Be angry and sin not.”) We can sob and cry as we pray for those who are hurting. When we invite the Holy Spirit to guide us and then give our feelings permission to come out, as we pray, we can better consider the pain others suffer. If we try to only pray logically, we often do not pray for the true needs of others who are suffering terribly. We need to consider and even sense or feel their pain. Then we pray according to their true needs and not just according to what our logical mind thinks.
Even if we are not exactly sure how we should pray, we can boldly ask God to guide our prayers (Hebrews 10:29, “And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus.”) The Holy Spirit will guide us (Romans 8:26, “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know how we ought to pray, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans too deep for words.”)
We must work at our prayers and engage in a kind of spiritual effort that mirrors the effort we might use to exercise vigorously. We also need to pray throughout the day about difficult or urgent matters (1Thes.5:17, “Pray without ceasing.”) While we do need to cease praying to eat, talk to others and engage our minds in our work, we can resume praying during quiet moments all throughout the day when a situation is urgent.
We don’t pray this aggressively all the time, because God is also the Lord of rest. There are plenty of times when our prayers are joyful, reflective, worshipful and fitting to other calm experiences. There are times during the day when I am so happy, I blurt out a happy prayer like, “Oh, thank you Lord for this.” And then I might add, “I love you, Lord.”
But when matters are more urgent, we need to take on the spirit of prayerful warfare. God will guide us so we know when we need to pray urgently, or gently. We can ask God to guide us in all the ways we need to pray (Romans 15:30, “I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.”)
I pray we have blessed you with this week’s post. I have not covered all the areas of this spiritual hard work (almost like sweating as we pray) and I hope you will explore this idea more on your own. Please let me know if you would like to hear more about this aspect of prayer, and please share your own stories. I welcome your ideas.