(Sunday school) Armor of God: Prayer

Not only from external sources, but from, you know, internal

things too, where we, where we rely on Christ, we rely on his

word and we renew our mind. And then we finished up with the

sword of the spirit, kind of the first offensive piece here, but

that we have the truth of the word, the divine word right here

in front of us. And that's that's really our

main tool as we go out to, to attack, to defend and attack

against what the devil's work is doing.

So first discussion question for you guys in your groups.

So as we think back over the last six weeks or so, what is

the piece of armor that you have the hardest time putting on, if

you will? And why might that be?

Which of these things, and I'll go back to the list here, which

of these things is maybe the hardest for us to put on or to,

to recognize that we have this to help us as we go into

spiritual, spiritual battle. So let's take a few minutes talk

about that and then we'll, we'll come back with our answers

there. All right.

So what, what are, what are some of the things that we that we

came up with here? What's, what's a challenge for

us to put on? Yeah, yeah.

We start to rely on ourselves. Yeah.

Helmet of salvation. We start to rely on ourselves

and, and, and the protection from our own works.

I think that's true for a lot of these.

I think about that even in terms like the breastplate of

righteousness. Yeah.

I guess I have an image in my head of, you know, if if you're

wearing damaged armor, say against that, you know, against

the flaming arrows of the enemy, you know, if there's giant holes

in that armor, you can get hit pretty easily.

And, and so often, you know, as a believer, all of these things

are true of us. We have all of these things.

We have the peace of the gospel, we have the righteousness of

Christ, we have the truth of his word, all of these things.

But if we're if we're living in a sense where we're trusting in

our own understanding, we're trusting in our own works,

doesn't do us a whole lot of good.

Absolutely. What else did we talk about?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, the the shoes, the

gospel of peace, we go and share the gospel that we have that

peace aspect of the gospel. And there's a natural, in fact,

we're going to talk about that later today.

There's that natural tension that we have where there's

boldness and there's, there's, you know, gentleness.

And these things work together as we share the gospel with

other people. And sometimes people are going

to hear it harshly because there is a harsh aspect.

I mean, the gospel tells you that you're a Sinner.

But sometimes, sometimes in our passion, we maybe we make the

blow harder than it has to be. I think that's sometimes true.

Yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah. Truth, truth.

Truth is one of those things. And sometimes while we should.

I mean, we, we, we rejoice in truth.

But sometimes when it comes to we should.

I don't know that we should necessarily find excitement and

joy in in sending, you know, the harshest truth to somebody and

seeing their, you know, almost as if it's like the world

deserves to hear this. I want I'm I'm finding some

enjoyment out of you hearing that you're condemned.

You know that that's that, that doesn't that seems if we look at

that tension, you know, there's going to be a spectrum there,

but we can hear that and go, well, that sounds out of balance

for for sure. But sometimes I think that is

the approach that that can be taken and sharing the gospel.

Yep. Yeah.

Heart's not in the right place. Absolutely, absolutely.

Yeah. We have to remember, remember

that where we came from and what Christ did for us.

And that should lead us to a place of of of thankfulness.

Really. So, right.

So, so as we continue on yourself, again, the first piece

of preparation, and it's an important piece.

It's something that we spent eight of the 10 verses you're

talking about is we've got to put the armor on.

And again, the reality is the armor is their present for us

believers, but we have to put it on and we have to trust in in

that's of our understanding. Yeah, sure, Yep, sure.

Absolutely. There is there is a a heavy

piece here in in, in man's responsibility to to to be

obedient to live the the life that God has called us to.

We got we right. We have to we have to put that

on. So so then verse 18 here's going

to be our next focus. So this is the second piece of

preparation. You got the armor on is the next

thing to run straight out into battle?

No, the next thing that Paul talks about is prayer.

And that's something it's it's interesting.

You know, we've just spent a few of the last sermons we've had

have been on prayer about how not to pray, about how Jesus

gives us an example to pray and, and, and here's another example

that Paul gives us. And, and I think this is 1's

interesting because we're really specifically here talking about

kind of the prayer of going into battle.

What what is that mindset? What are we praying about as

we're facing the challenges of the enemy?

So verse 18, it says praying at all times in the spirit with all

prayer and supplication to the end, keep alert with all

perseverance, making supplication for all the Saints.

So I think there's there's a few things here that I want to key

in on that verse for us to focus on.

The first one being we're called to pray at all times, prayers

continually. And this isn't the only time we

see it. We see this also First

Thessalonians 516 to 18 says rejoice always pray without

ceasing, Give thanks in all circumstances for this is the

will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

So I think that begs a question, what does it mean to pray

without ceasing? Because I think that could be

kind of confusing. Sometimes we have this idea of

does that mean that I do nothing in my day except for pray?

Well, I don't think that necessarily lines up with what

we see in Scripture or what we can recognize in our lives.

There's other things we are also called to do as believers, but I

think there's there's kind of two things I think we can think

about here. First is we do need to be a

little bit radical in our prayer life.

So before we go on to maybe what this looks like, other than

spending hours and hours and hours every day in prayer, maybe

let's sit on that for a second and go for many of us, maybe

we're not really spending any time in prayer.

And so we could look to Colossians 4234, continue

steadfastly in prayer, being watchful and it with

Thanksgiving. And then he goes on from there

to talk about some other things. We're going to come back to this

first in a little bit, but it's a steadfast thing, something

we're supposed to be doing consistently.

It takes time. Just like any relationship where

you're you're, you're talking with somebody, a friend or a

family member, you know that that relationship takes time.

So for some of us, an application here, even as we're

looking at our own lives, maybe for some of us there is really

consistent prayer and praise the Lord for that.

I think for a lot of us, and I, and I can confess this in my own

heart often is that that piece of spiritual discipline is often

lacking. And prayer becomes something

that's leaned upon just when there is a need or when you know

an acute need in the moment or a situation.

But it's like we need to be in a place where that where we have

dedicated time, where we are spending with God.

And so we don't want to be legalistic about prescribing

that. I'm not sitting here to say

everybody needs to go into a closet for at least an hour a

day to pray. I don't think that's the heart

here. But before we move on, I do, I

think sometimes we have we hear something like this and we say,

OK, praying without ceasing doesn't mean 24 hours a day, but

it also doesn't mean nothing. It means that there's going to

be some consistency to our prayer life.

But the second thing here, I think, is when we, when we get

into what does it look to pray without ceasing?

There's a big piece of too, which is I think when we're in a

healthy place in our prayer life, there becomes this kind of

running dialogue with God. And so it's not so much a moment

of of, you know, I'm, I'm specifically in a, in a place in

a time on my knees and prayer about specific things.

But it's we're going through our days and as situations happen,

we're processing that with God right there at our side.

I think, I think Mike shared a story recently about, about

heading out kind of in the middle of nowhere on the road.

Deer jumps out and, and, and you say something like God is right

there because you're talking to it.

And that I think that's exactly the picture here is we're going

through life. Stuff happens around us and

stuff, crazy stuff happens in life.

And our, our, our thought, almost as if, you know, we had a

friend next to us and you see something crazy, you're going to

say, how'd you see that happen? Or you know this or that?

It's just like God's right there with you.

And so I think that's a healthy place for us to strive to be

where we do have that running dialogue.

But I think a piece of that too, is that comes after that.

Usually I think that's going to come after there is dedicated

time in prayer in the word as well.

So we're supposed to pray at all times.

The next thing is we're supposed to pray in the spirit, which

begs the question, what does that mean?

And I think we could ask ourselves how many of us find

that often when we're praying, we finished praying and we

really don't even know what we said.

It became very rude. I can raise my hand to that.

I I think that happens more often than I would like to

admit. And, and, and you know, that's

not necessarily what we're looking for here.

We see Matthew 6. We talked about this just a few

weeks ago. It says when you pray, do not

heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that

they will be heard for their many words.

This would be clearly the example of not praying in the

spirit where we're just saying words and they have no meaning.

And I, and I want to specify to hear, you know, I don't think

that means that that there's no value to a consistent prayer

that we say over and over again that has similar words.

I think there can be value in that if there is the right heart

posture with that. In fact, I think there can be a

lot of value that I think about bedtime with my kids every

night. We pray about different things,

but the prayer always ends the same for us, which at their, you

know, the kids are young, they don't yet know Christ.

And so the prayer really is that they will come to know Christ

and we pray every night that they will come to know and love

the Lord with all their heart, soul, mind and strength.

That's that's something we pray every night.

But there's meaning and thought to that.

It's not just words that we say. Now, even then, I can admit

probably some days after a long day, those words come out and I

don't think about them very much.

But the heart posture is, you know, our family type, we want

to have a consistent prayer that we're saying over and over again

over our kids. So I think there's value to

that. But at the same time, if that's

all we have in our prayer life are a set of prayers that we say

at different points during the day that are the same thing.

And, and we, it's very easy for us to lose heart in that.

So in the spirit means that, you know, we're going to have prayer

where we are dialoguing with God again.

And, and often times we can look right into his word to find the

words to pray. If we're struggling with that, I

have found much value and I know others have too.

And praying the Psalms, you know, you can open a Psalm, you

can read it. You can see the heart of the

prayer there. And even if you maybe maybe you

start just verbatim saying the words and then, and then as you

start to do that, your heart starts to open up, you start to

expand on it and you start to to key in on something that David

or one of the other psalmist said.

And, and the Spirit works through that, works through his

word. And so all that to say, praying

in the Spirit certainly means, I think a correct application of

Matthew 6-7, which is it's not heaping up empty words.

However, exactly what that looks like really is about the heart

position. Are we, are we really

communicating with, you know, through the Spirit as we're

doing this, or are we just saying words as they come to

mind? The next one that he pulls out

is with supplication. We try to model this on a

Sunday. Supplication is one of the, it's

the S in the Acts acronym that we that we pray through.

And the idea here, this is the part of prayer where we request

things of God. Now, the interesting thing is I

think for a lot of us sometimes for a lot of us, supplication

is, is really all there is in the prayer.

And so that's not a healthy balance, but at the same time,

God asks us to ask things of him.

And so it is clearly in here that one of the things we're

supposed to do, even as we're heading out into battle is to

pray, request to God, request that he is with us in that

request that he will provide us the strength to fight that

battle. And, and, you know, as I think

about this, it's just one of those crazy things about, about

how God has chosen to work with us as his people is, is that we

are actually commanded in Scripture to ask the God of the

universe of all things. We're commanded to ask him for

things. And that is just wild.

Now, of course, we've got to, we have to put this in perspective,

right? We aren't called, you know, the,

the, the call here is not request something and it will

automatically be given to you. Ask for the bigger house, the

bigger car, for, for health, this or that.

Not to say that you can't ask for those things in the right

heart mindset, particularly I think about health.

You know, we, we certainly can pray for health.

But you know, I've, I've heard it said often times when it

comes to, to prayer requests, we can, we can get a yes and no or

a wait. And often times, I think we see

this in scripture too. Often times there's a wait and

maybe in Scripture it's, it's something is prayed and then it

comes through a chapter later. And in our mindset, you know, as

we've read it, that was a 10 minute difference.

But for them, that was decades. I think of Abraham and, and,

and, and Sarah, I asked him for a child.

I mean, that was decades long process that played out.

But God answered that prayer. It just took time and sometimes

we pray things and that's not in the will of God.

And, and there is certainly we could spend a whole bunch of

time trying to think about, you know, that God calls us to pray

that he already knows what's going to happen.

That that Scripture in places talks about the kind of almost

as if God's plan changes based on the prayers that we have.

All of those things are really tough to fit together.

And again, we're not going to spend much time there this

morning, but we can, we can recognize that tension and we

can be encouraged by the fact that somehow, someway God

chooses to have us pray and somehow, someway those prayers

matter in the grand scheme of things.

And so that's something that we can find encouraging and it

should lead us to thankfulness. This is a verse that comes to

mind for me often. Philippians 4/6 do not be

anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and

supplication with Thanksgiving. Let your request be known to

God. I think that's a good, healthy

place for us. It's not necessary specifically

in this in this passage to the in Ephesians, but we see it

elsewhere in Paul's writings that supplication is very often

paired next to Thanksgiving. We're asking for things, but

we're also coming to that with with a thankful heart.

The last one we're going to focus in on here is this call to

be alert and to persevere. Yeah.

When when we're talking about spiritual warfare, again, the

mindset here is essential. And often times, I think why we

don't put on the armor is that we have been lulled to sleep.

We're not being watchful and alert.

And so we're talking about a prayer going into battle.

We're supposed to be praying at all times.

We're praying in the Spirit, we're asking for things of God

with the right heart mindset, but we're also supposed to be

alert because just like a watchman, you know, waiting for

an attack to come, you know, you can't fall asleep on the job.

We could go back to Colossians 4, two to four, continue

steadfastly in prayer, being watchful, and it would

Thanksgiving at the same time. Pray also for us that God may

open to us a door for the Word to declare the mystery of

Christ, on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it

clear, which is how I ought to speak.

This is really taking us on to what our next point is going to

be, which is where do we go in spiritual battle?

Where do we go with this armor? You know, he's saying pray for

us with all of these things steadfastly in prayer, watchful

and Thanksgiving, requesting things of God so that we can

open doors to go share the gospel.

And that's where we're going to go here in just a minute.

But before we do that discussion question for your group, what is

something from verse 18 that it can encourage your prayer

habits? I'll stick this list back up

here. We're talking, you know, and

maybe it's something else, but here's a place to start.

When we're when we're looking at our prayer habits, the

disciplines that we have there, what do we see in this verse

that can be something maybe we recognize that needs a little

work. And I can be encouraged by this

passage in my prayer life here. So let's take a few minutes

there and we'll come back and talk about that.

All right, in the in the interest of time, we're going to

keep rolling here, but I hope that those conversations were

helpful for you guys in your groups there at.

So we've talked about the preparation.

Now we're talking about we're going on on offense here.

And so again, what are we supposed to do?

We've put on this armor. Do we put on the armor just to

sit back? Well, we can take the example of

Paul in this past and say, OK, Paul's put on this armor.

What's what's he doing? What is he asking for prayer

here is as as he's talking to the Ephesians.

And so that really takes us to to verse 19 and 20, which I'll

read real quick here. It says and also for me that

words may be given to me and opening my mouth boldly to

proclaim the mystery of the gospel for which I am an

ambassador and change that I may declare it boldly as I ought to

speak. A couple things as we kind of

close our time out here, we think back on again, we've got

the armor on. We've talked about that.

Where do we go with this? We're called the boldly proclaim

the gospel. And the first piece here is that

we've, we've got to open our mouths in order to do that.

You know, I, I've heard it said, you know, you know, you could

share the gospel and when necessary use words.

And, and I to, to be clear, I, I mean, I, I understand the heart

position there is to say that if we're going to go share the

gospel, that we have to have the actions to back it up, that we

have to love people well. And I would completely agree

with that. However, I think where that gets

off track is Scripture says that how are they gonna hear if we

don't tell them There there is a point where the general

revelation of what is around us is not enough for somebody to

come to salvation. They need the special revelation

that is in the Word and they need somebody to to do that.

And, and in God's Providence, he's decided to use, you know,

broken vessels like us to be the ones that go and proclaim that

in ordinary circumstances. Not that he doesn't act

miraculously in some cases, but the ordinary process by which

God takes the word to those that don't know it is through us.

And so we, we see here Romans 1014 and 15 it says, how then

will they call on him and whom they have not believed?

And how are they to believe in him and who they have not heard?

And how are they to hear without somebody preaching?

And how are they to preach unless they are sent as it is

written? How beautiful are the feet of

those who preach the good news. So that's the first thing here

is in order for the, for the gospel to go forth, we have to

be bold in the way that we speak.

The second thing I wanted to to key on here a little bit is just

this boldness in the 1st place. Again, we talked a little bit at

the beginning. You know, there is we're we're

going to talk about that tension between boldness and love.

But I do think in a lot of ways in our culture, a boldness has

been put to the, to the back in the sense that we're kind of

told, you know, like, what are the two things that you don't

talk to other people about? You don't talk about politics

and you don't talk about religion.

And the politics is a whole another question.

We're going to at least talk. About religion here, which is to

say absolutely we should be calling others to Christ and the

fact that we as the church have fallen into a place where we say

we don't want to offend people, so therefore we're just not even

going to try that. That's just a complete

dereliction of duty. Again, there's a tension here

where we can have some hard conversations about where does

boldness fit in with with doing things with gentleness and

respect. But certainly the answer is not

to just do nothing. So we see that we talk about

Proverbs 28, One, the wicked flee when no one pursues, but

the righteous are bold as a lion in some ways.

You know, as we see on one hand, the world around us is going to,

you know, the world is going to do what the world does, which is

sin. So it shouldn't be shocking to

us that the world around us does things that are not in line with

Scripture. At the same time as we see

culture moving so many, I think blazing directions that are

against Scripture, we can look and see maybe part of that's

because the church has not been bold.

You know, they flee when no one pursues.

And so we are called to be bold as a lion in this passage.

But we also have first Peter 315 and 16, a verse that maybe it's

pretty familiar to us. But in your hearts, honor Christ

the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to

anyone who asks you for reason, for the hope that is in you.

Yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good

conscience so that when you are slandered, those who are value

or good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.

So we're called to be bold. That much is clear in Scripture.

We're also called to share the gospel with a measure of

gentleness and respect. You know, as even as the passage

we have today talks about, we're ambassadors for Christ.

We are, we represent him here on earth.

And so we ought to represent him in a way that that properly

reflects his character. And we can look all through the

gospels in Jesus time and ministry here, we see both.

We see boldness that would make people blush in the church a

little bit today. We also see kindness and mercy

extended in ways that would challenge us today.

And so we we have to recognize that tension.

And I think back in our passage in verse 19, it says also for me

that words may be given to me and opening my mouth boldly to

proclaim the mystery of the gospel.

That gets to a bit of that here. There's a mystery here in

exactly what the exact balance here is.

And then part of that, you know, this passage talks about having

a good conscience. And and that's to say, you know,

that that we align our conscience to God's will.

But we know all through Scripture it talks about this,

we know that we may not even find a place where we all as

believers can, can agree on exactly where that line is.

Our consciences may be a little bit different on that.

But as we seek to align that with Christ, we have to know

that there is boldness. We have to go.

We speak the gospel, but we also have to do it with love,

gentleness, respect. And some thoughts I just wrote

down as I was thinking through this.

You know, we, we don't just get when we're sharing the gospel,

we don't just share the love of Christ, although we should

certainly share the love of Christ.

We don't just help people see the depth of their sin, although

we definitely need to help people see the depth of their

sin. We don't just teach people how

how Jesus taught us to live in in, in kind of a way where

Christianity becomes a moral list of codes where we say live

like this and everything will be OK because that's not the

gospel. However, we should certainly

teach people how Jesus taught us to live as believers.

We have to share in a sense the the whole truth and nothing but

the truth, right? We have to share all of that

together with the death, resurrection of Christ and the

call to repentance that comes with it.

And the thing here too is, as Paul says here, there's a

mystery to the gospel. And that should be encouraging

to us in the sense that as we go out to share the gospel, we may

not have all the answers for any question that anybody will ask.

And that's OK because there's some things that we don't know

the answer to, but we can in humility point them to Scripture

and say, this is what I believe. And this is where the, you know,

the bedrock of my faith and, and I and there is faith involved.

We don't know every little bit of in peace to it, but also we

can be encouraged that God is in complete control over over the

results of our evangelism. And that's not to say I think it

is a good just like any other spiritual discipline, it is a

good and worthy endeavour for us to seek to improve upon how we

share the gospel. Try to become more clear in the

way that we explain the gospel. Try to have a deeper and deeper

knowledge of, of the theology behind the gospel.

All of those things are absolutely things that we should

try to improve upon. However, I could look back in

evangelism in my life, there have been times where I felt

like I barely got the gospel out and there might have been some

heresy in there, I don't know. And God worked in that.

And there have been times where I'm sitting there like, that's

the clearest presentation of the gospel that I've ever given.

And God, you know, has chosen not to work in that act.

And, and that is that is up to God.

So all that to say, good for us to, as we grow in our faith and

become more mature believers to try to be better and better at

sharing the gospel. But we also have to know that it

does not depend upon us. God will do what God will do,

and He will work through us as we are faithful, even when the

results aren't necessarily the results that we're looking for,

that we don't get to see the results.

Maybe it's one of those times where we share the gospel with

somebody and 10 people later sharing the gospel to them, they

come to know Christ and God used that to plant a seed.

We don't know how he's going to work in that.

The last thing that I wanted to point to today as we look is we

have to remember here Paul is in prison as he's talking about.

He's an ambassador in chains and that's a reminder for us to

count the cost. That's the place we're going to

end today. I heard a quote this week from

Joel Beeke, who I think the men have been reading through a book

that he wrote. And he said he's somebody that

writes a lot of books, does a lot of seminary work.

He's travelled around the world and met thousands and thousands

and thousands of Christians. And he said he's met thousands

of Christians around the world, many different situations and

cultures, but he's never met a Christian who said they wish

they had lived their lives for Christ less.

Many times we find situations where we say, I wish that I had

been more faithful. I wish I hadn't had a season of

my life where I backslid as I focused on other things.

We will not be put to shame by spending more and more of our

time trying to and more and more of our effort trying to put this

armor on, pray and share the gospel.

Those are fruitful endeavors and and that leads right into the

sermon today. We're going to be talking about

treasuring Christ and the fact that there is there is a

heavenly reward, not an earthly reward for what we do in

faithfulness as believers. And so that's something that we

can look forward to as we count that cost.

So last thing, I will pray for us here in a couple minutes.

We aren't going to come back together on this question, but

in your groups, let's just take a couple minutes.

What is something that we've discussed today that you can

apply to your life this week as you think about getting real

practical? What is something in your life

this week that you you can do in light of what we've read in

Scripture this morning? So let's do that and then I'll

pray for us here in a couple minutes.