Your Prayers Supply the Ammunition for Spiritual Warfare

A young girl asked God to make Carlisle the capital of Pennsylvania. Her mother asked why. The girl said, “I wrote that on my exam this afternoon!” That story is not true, but prayer does open the door for God’s response.

How do you pray when the going gets tough? Do you ask God to remove the difficulties? That is my tendency.

What if He always did? We would be like trees with shallow roots protected from every potentially damaging wind. I could live with that, but that is not how God develops mature Christians.

Instead, we are to be like trees with roots reaching ever deeper into Him to withstand every hurricane of adversity. God usually does not deliver us from the storms of life, but through them.

We should pray for strength and courage to walk the roughest roads and scale the highest peaks on the path God has ordained.

Life contains great joys and great challenges. Do you pray more when you are facing difficulties than during prosperity? Why?

Prayer includes praise. Your praise for the mercy you have already received should be just as earnest as your prayers for needed mercy.

Believing prayer brings healing (James 5:14-16). If you are sick, call for the elders of the church. They are responsible for praying and anointing you with oil. Of the two, prayer is more important. Their prayer of faith makes the sick person well (James 5:15).

Some believe elders applied oil for medicinal purposes. James prescribes prayer and medicine for the sick. God ordains both for healing. Medicine, medical technology, and medical personnel are gifts of God’s grace. God can heal without modern medicine.

But it is presumptuous to insist He must. The opposite danger is to trust in medical science alone.

Believing prayer makes the weak powerful (James 5:17-18). Elijah was a righteous man. His earnest prayers opened the door for God’s response. He was not superhuman.

He had strengths and weaknesses. He was even depressed at times (1 Kings 19:14). Yet when he prayed, it did not rain for three and a half years in Israel. Such answers to prayer are within your reach. What difference would believing that make?

Believing prayer returns the wanderer home (James 5:19-20). We are responsible for bringing back those who wander and stray from the truths James teaches.

We are to pray for and reach out to those who have never professed Christ as Lord and Savior and those who have drifted away from Him.

Do your prayers reflect the raging spiritual battle around you? Believing prayer supplies the ammunition for spiritual warfare. It keeps the enemy at bay while God uses us to turn Satan’s soldiers into soldiers of the cross. What is your takeaway? See additional free spiritual growth resources for Christians.   #freediscipleshipresources #freeevangelismresources #freechristianleadershipresources

God has empowered me to write His Power for Your Weakness—260 Steps Toward Spiritual Strength. It’s a free, evangelistic, devotional, and discipleship e-book. Pastors have used it in Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia to lead 6,671 people to Christ and teach the basics of Christianity to 15,636 people. I invite you to explore and use it in your setting. 

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