Because of something that was going on the other day, I feel an urgency in my Spirit to remind us all that we’re in a spiritual battle. Guy's, whether you realize it or not we're in the fight of our lives! And it’s a battle that’s never gonna let up this side of heaven. So long as we continue to live in these mortal bodies there will be no relief or rest..
But that said, it’s important that we understand not only the tactics of the enemy but also the remedies the Lord’s placed at our disposal so that we can be both ready and prepared for the fight.
What do I mean by that? Well, remember what Jesus said to Peter in Luke 22:31-32:
“Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift each of you like wheat. But I have pleaded in prayer for you, Simon, that your faith should not fail. So when you have repented and turned to me again, strengthen your brothers.” [NLT]
Now why would the Lord want to make us aware of the wiles, devices and deceptions of the enemy? The answer is really very simple and we find it in 2 Corinthians 2:11 - so that Satan will not outsmart us.
So with that in mind, I want us to analyze one of the greatest solutions God’s provided us with that’s especially potent in our hour of need.
Ephesians 6: 18 Pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers…. [NLT]
Philippians 4:6 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. [NLT]
Now, just as there are seasons of temptation, there are also seasons of prayer. But before we get to that, there’s something else I need to tell you about prayer
- sometimes, just mumbling a few well meaning words just doesn’t seem to cut it
- sometimes, we have to get serious about our prayer
- sometimes we have to show God and the devil just how serious we are
First off, know this: you have to give yourself over to prayer. That means you’ll have to take time out of your busy life and set aside time specifically for prayer. See, prayer is a discipline, and it can be a real challenge sometimes to decide to commit to make time for praying.
We have to get victory over our own flesh. We have to fight against a kind of spiritual laziness that comes over us. We have to win the battle against the sort of restlessness that stops you focusing while you’re praying. In other words, you have to do what ever it takes to help you pray more effectively. But in the end, before you can do battle in the spirit for your stuff - you have to get past your stuff - and get into the presence of the Lord. So, I’m going to give you 6 seasons of prayer. Now, the list isn't exhaustive, so you can search the Scriptures and find others to add on for yourself but at least I’m giving you a solid start. So lets examine the SEASONS OF PRAYER
#1: The 1st season of prayer is when you’re in a time of great personal difficulty.
Now, for most of us this is probably the easiest time we have when it comes to prayer, when you’ve got some impossible circumstances to deal with. But when you’ve tried everything you know to do in your own strength. Then – and often only then – do we find the motivation to pray. See, its real easy for most of us to decide to pray when we’re desperate!
So often in our Christian walk we’re faced with mountains that get in our way Jesus even said we should expect as much in Mark 11:22
Then Jesus said to the disciples, “Have faith in God. I tell you the truth, you can say to this mountain, ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen. But you must really believe it will happen and have no doubt in your heart. I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours. [NLT]
Jesus has told us that there are mountains out there that God can throw into the sea. I can hear you thinking
"now how does that work out in the real world then? Because I know that it doesn’t seem to work for me"
Sometimes, we just need to look in the mirror! See, there are some things that God expects from us before He does the mountain moving bit on our behalf.
- We’ve all been called to repentance.
- We’ve all been called to separate ourselves from the worlds way of doing things.
- We’ve all been called take up our crosses.
- We’ve all been called to mortify the flesh and deal with our sins.
- We’ve all been called to submit.
- And we’ve all been called to evangelize.
It's in these times of intense personal difficulty that our prayer life must prevail. Let me give you and example:
What about that difficult time that Esther had to work her way through? Esther felt that she just had to get into the presence of the king, but she didn’t have an invitation and that usually triggered death sentence.
Her people were already facing death because of the actions of a guy called Haman. So how did she deal with this mega challenge in her life? With a season of prayer and fasting. See, Esther knew that she knew that she knew that this was the one time in her life she couldn’t just keep her mouth shut and look the other way. So, in order to gain the victory, in order to become the head and not the tail she had to confront her season of difficulty with the force of prayer.
But Esther didn’t go to God flying solo. She marshaled the forces of those around her and available to her and called for a time of prayer and fasting for the deliverance of her people.
Esther 4:16 Go and gather together all the Jews of Susa and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. My maids and I will do the same. And then, though it is against the law, I will go in to see the king. If I must die, I must die.” [NLT]
Maybe you’re fortunate. Maybe you’ve never been between a rock and a hard place. Maybe you’ve never been under so much pressure that you felt the only thing left was prayer? But….. if you’re like the rest of us…I guess you know what I’m talking about. Whenever you find yourself in a time or a season of great difficulty, its time to PRAY!!!
#2 Seasons of great darkness
We all go thru times of darkness. Times when no matter where we go, or what we do, we’re just in a really black night. And at times like these, we need to understand just what’s going on. Now, if we go to the book of Daniel we can find a powerful key to understanding seasons like these…
Daniel 9:3 So I turned to the LORD God and pleaded with him in prayer and fasting. I also wore rough burlap and sprinkled myself with ashes [NLT]
Daniel was in the dark. He didn’t understand the very mysteries of God - but that all changed when he begin his appeal with prayer and fasting. Notice how the answer came through:
Daniel 10:12-13 Then he said, “Don’t be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day you began to pray for understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your request has been heard in heaven. I have come in answer to your prayer. But for twenty-one days the spirit prince of the kingdom of Persia blocked my way. Then Michael, one of the archangels, came to help me, and I left him there with the spirit prince of the kingdom of Persia [NLT]
Now, when you read stuff like that you can’t not believe that there is not a war going on or that you’re not the center or the object of a spiritual battle. . . So, I’m encouraging you, when you're in the dark and can't see your way - keep the faith. Keep on praying and keep on fasting. . . See, God always has a way of working it out!
Learn to pray in such a way that empowers God to use angels to work in your life. Now: we don’t ever pray to angels – any more than we pray to saints and we don’t ever worship angels but there are numerous events that took place in the Bible where God used angels to accomplish His will in the Kingdom. Just understand that everything that has to do with angels and prayer has to be clearly backed up by Scripture. And if you study your bible carefully, you’ll find seven divisions of angels that can help every apostolic, Spirit-filled Christian to fulfill the will of God.
#3 The Third Season of Prayer is during times of affliction either in body or spirit.
James 5:13 Are any of you suffering hardships (afflicted) ? You should pray.
Psalms 18:6 But in my distress I cried out to the LORD; yes, I prayed to my God for help. He heard me from his sanctuary; my cry to him reached his ears.
When affliction and pain settles on our lives and tries to overwhelm us there’s passion that comes through in our prayers and whenever there’s no passion or feeling in our prayers, little ever gets accomplished. Let me show you what I mean from the psalms:
Psalms 116:3-6 Death wrapped its ropes around me; the terrors of the grave overtook me. I saw only trouble and sorrow. [overwhelmed or what?]
Then I called on the name of the LORD: “Please, LORD, save me!”[get the impression there was some emotion here?]
How kind the LORD is! How good he is! So merciful, this God of ours! The LORD protects those of childlike faith; I was facing death, and he saved me.
Look at Jacob wrestling with God in Genesis 32:28. He spent the whole night, literally fighting for his life. He strained, he sweated, he twisted, he turned, and he fought for his place of prayer. In Ex 33 – you find Moses wrestling for the glory of God. Hannah wrestled in prayer in 1 Sam. 1:10-17. Look at how Jesus prayed in Luke 22:44
He prayed more fervently, and he was in such agony of spirit that his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood
Don’t tell me there was no passion or feeling there! It was the greatest praying ever done in the face of affliction. His agony was over the top. His affliction had a cold hard grip on Him. His praying was marked by sighing and crying.
And that’s what we have to do when our world is literally falling apart around us. We have let our afflictions move us into a place passion because that’s when incredible strength gets added to our prayers. See, you never know what levers you are pulling that’ll move mountains until you start praying during your pain!
#4 The 4th Season of Prayer comes when we’re enduring great temptations.
We have to battle in prayer to overcome the weaknesses of our own flesh. Words like mortify, kill, and destroy leap to the mind when thinking about fighting the temptations of the world.
Romans 6:13 Do not let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin. Instead, give yourselves completely to God, for you were dead, but now you have new life. So use your whole body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God.
Romans 8:13 For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
Colossians 3:5-6 So put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you. Have nothing to do with sexual immorality, impurity, lust, and evil desires. Don’t be greedy, for a greedy person is an idolater, worshiping the things of this world. Because of these sins, the anger of God is coming.
If you remember from Matthew 17:21 Jersus said that there are certain things and spirits that can only be cast out through the work of prayer and fasting.
This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting. . .
#5 The Fifth Season of Prayer is when you are on a slippery path.
Jude 24 Now all glory to God, who is able to keep you from falling away and will bring you with great joy into his glorious presence without a single fault.
I’m not sure there’s ever been a time or a generation in which there’s been more blatant sinful living both inside and in and outside of the church. The pressure is on each and every one of us. We’re under tremendous pressure just to quit, to throw in the towel, to give in to what the devil wants to do in every one of our lives. But the times when everyone else is sinning is the very time that the man or woman of God should be praying. Ezra had a heavy heart when he was confessing the sin of his people in Ezra 9. Jeremiah wept in his soul for the pride of the nation (Jeremiah 13:17).
Whenever, you get deep into intercession, when your intercession is marked with genuine tears, something powerful happens. See, tears have a way of breaking through the hardness and allowing repentance into our hearts.
Finally, The 6th Season of Prayer is at the very moment you’ve experienced great faith and spiritual accomplishment.
And this is often the hardest time of all to pray. Wwhen you’re high on faith and on the brink of seeing God do something mighty. It gets real easy to forget God during those times when we’re ecstatic with what’s going on in our personal lives or we’re seeing some great breakthru about to take place.
It was as the walls were just about to fall in Jericho that the Lord told them to shout.It was just about the time that David was about to take Goliath down that he shouted.
Moments of victory require times of prayer and worship. When our faith is at its highest pitch there ought to be prayer of exultation pouring out of our hearts!
My take on this is that too many of us don’t feel the need to pray with passion or feeling. I see it by the way some of people don’t worship when the rest of us do. I see it by the way some people never come to prayer like a few of us do. And I see it when those who do usually come, allow other things to take priority…
And God sees it to…..
Now, if we could ever get past our lack of commitment.........
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