Warfare Prayer

We have been talking about prayer as a weapon. We learned that God expects us to be "in prayer" pretty much all of the time, in season and out of season. We also learned that, no matter what type of prayer we are doing, we are to be Spirit-led in our prayer. That is what the phrase "praying in the Spirit" refers to. Praying in the Spirit can be praying in tongues, but it is not limited to that. The Holy Spirit is to be involved with us in whatever type of prayer we are doing. He is to lead us in prayer and we are to cooperate with Him in it.

Once as I was talking about cooperating with the Spirit, somebody said that every time we pray we are cooperating with the Spirit. And I said, "No, you are not." There are a lot of times that we are praying in the flesh because we don't know anything else to pray.

Now if you have been up here and I have prayed healing for you, sometimes God gives me a word and sometimes I just say, "I don't know what your will is Lord, I'm just praying what I want to pray." I don't know if that is Spirit praying or flesh praying then. But the key is that we keep praying as much as we can with the Holy Spirit. The bottom line is that we pray in the Holy Spirit and in cooperation with Him.

Only the Spirit can discern true needs. I don't know everyone's true needs. And you don't either. How are we going to know? We have to pray in the Spirit. The Spirit always knows. Now if I am praying for healing for someone, that may not be his or her true need. It might be an emotional healing or a spiritual healing. But I am going to go with what I see first and let the Spirit lead me into praying for something else. The Holy Spirit knows the true need. Eventually we want to get down to the true need as we pray.

Another thing is that only the Holy Spirit can discern spiritual things. We need to know spiritual things if we are going to pray effectively and land some punches against the enemy. Where is your battle taking place? Is it in the natural or in the spiritual? Just as a reminder, a few verses earlier in Ephesians 6:12 says, "For we are not fighting against people made of flesh and blood, but against the evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world. Against those mighty powers of darkness that rule the world and against wicked spirits in the heavenly realms." It says that our fight is not against flesh and blood. It is against the unseen world. How are you going to make a dent in that one? You need to fight in the Spirit. You need to pray in the Spirit. The Holy Spirit knows where all the demons are. He knows their names, knows what is going to pull them up, and He knows how they got there. You pray in the Spirit, in alignment with that, and it is going to be a very effective kind of praying.

You can't discern all of the spiritual problems, but the Spirit of God can. You can't always know the strategies of the enemy, but the Holy Spirit knows all the strategies. Backing up one more verse to Ephesians 6:11, "Put on the full armor so that you will be able to stand firm against the strategies and the tricks of the devil." The spirit knows. The Spirit understands every strategy and reveals it.

Only the Spirit can discern the will of God and direct prayer precisely. Romans 8:26: "In the same way the Spirit helps our weakness, we do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings that words can not express."

The Holy Spirit is like one of those smart bombs. We are beginning to look at the way warfare takes place in the in the 21st century. In past ages, they did what they called carpet bombing. They loaded planes up with as many bombs as they could and took them over the target. They tried to estimate it and laid out tons of bombs over the target. With today's technology, they are using these smart missiles. They don't carry a bunch of them, but the few they do carry are guided with laser technology and GPS devices to be able to find the target and hit it.

God wants you to use smart missile prayer and not carpet bombing. And that is what we do all of the time. We just start in, "Oh God ..." and we just start rattling. We pray everything and kind of hope we hit it. And if we just keep going -- "and anything else Lord that I forgot about, would you just cover it?"

That is how we sometimes pray. Let me give you a few examples:

• "Lord forgive all the sins that I know about and all those that I don't know about." If you sinned, you will know about it! You confess it specifically.
• "Lord bless this and bless that."

God wants you to pray very specifically. He wants to give you understanding in how to pray. Ask Him, He will tell you. So that whenever you fight, you will fight in such a way that you will land a punch. If you don't have specific prayer targets, you will just be beating the air and saying "I hope I get him this time." God wants you to be able to hit the enemy. And you can as you pray in the Spirit.

The bottom line is we need to get our prayer lists from God. We need to be able to come to him and say, "God show me what you want me to pray. Reveal what you want me to be lifting up in prayer." And to do that, it is going to require that you have communion with that Holy Spirit. Worship is an important part of communing with God.

I don't know what you did during the worship time last Sunday. I don't know if you kind of sat back and thought, "When are we going to get on with the show? When are we going to get to the teaching of the Word?" Or something like that. The Lord was right there in the service. His presence was in the room whether you felt it or not. He was there in the room and you need to learn what He feels like. You need to learn how to stay in the presence of the Lord. That is where the power is and that is where the Glory is.

That is where you get changed from the inside, and that is where it just flows out of you. You've got to get next to him and get filled with Him and His glory in order to go out there. The Lord was in the room. You need to learn to just enjoy His presence and who He is. You need to get used to that if you are not. You need to get used to enjoying the Lord and enjoying His presence. Don't get caught up in singing a song, get caught up in communing with Him. That is where you change from Glory to Glory. You are transformed. That is where you get empowered. And it shouldn't just be on Sunday mornings when you go to church. Daily learning to come into His presence. To enter into His presence, enjoy His presence and to commune with the Lord.