Soldier No.12 The Soldier's Prayer Life

We're going to read this morning from Luke chapter 18, verses 1 to 14. This is two short parables concerning prayer. The first, as you'll see, is the parable of the persistent widow.

Its message to all of us is that we should persist in prayer, even when our prayers seem to be unheard and unanswered. The most insignificant person can achieve great things through prayer and be rewarded for perseverance. That's Luke 18, verse 1. Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.

He said, in a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, grant me justice against my adversary. For some time he refused, but finally he said to himself, even though I don't fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming.

And the Lord said, listen to what the unjust judge says, and will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you that he will see that they get justice and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? The second parable, the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, teaches us that there is no place in God's kingdom for those who think that they are wonderful. We can give extra for special offerings or perform some kind of act and expect the Lord to bless us and answer our prayers, instead of remembering that we are still sinners and need forgiveness to be able to enter into the Lord's presence.

Verse 9, to some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable. Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself, God, I thank you that I am not like all other men, robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.

I fast twice a week and I give a tenth of all I get. But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breasts and said, God have mercy on me a sinner.

I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. Now let's return again to Ephesians, and we're in the last chapter.

Coming towards the last verses of this great epistle, which flowed from the pen of Paul incredibly nearly 2,000 years ago, and yet in God's remarkable grace, is so contemporary in its message for Christians of today. The Apostle has been telling us about the armor which the Lord provides for those who are his troops, his soldiers. And we'll pick up the reading from the 16th verse of Ephesians 6. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.

Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, and pray in the Spirit on all occasions, with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert, and always keep on praying for all the saints. Let's repeat that 18th verse together.

And pray in the Spirit on all occasions, with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert, and always keep on praying for all the saints. Now this is our twelfth and final study on the Christian soldier.

And you might well think that Paul, having spent a number of verses describing these six pieces of armor that the Christian should wear, that he might be satisfied. After all, you recall he's had in mind the visual aid of the Roman soldier on attendance looking after him, who is a prisoner of Caesar, having in a very wonderful way expressed to us what he spiritualizes the Christian's armor to be, you'd think that that was sufficient. You know, if you've got on the breastplate of righteousness, if you understand something about how God makes a man right with himself, if your feet are shod with the gospel of peace and you have an awareness, therefore, of what it means to have embraced the gospel of Christ, if you have in your hand the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, and you can use that right, then hasn't as much as needed to be said already been put into words.

Why, Paul, do you stretch out your teaching with one more thing, and pray in the Spirit on all occasions? Well, I'll tell you the reason. And it is simply this, that all that we have gone through thus far, important though it be, refers to the Christian faith in its doctrinal form. Now, I would be the last person in Worthing to argue against doctrine and coming to a knowledge of Scripture and being able to hold this word in perspective and handle it aright, but you will never be a Christian soldier, and you will never be a good proponent of the gospel of Jesus Christ, if all you have to contend with is an orthodox faith.

And that's why the Apostle Paul says, and pray in the Spirit, in all occasions, on all occasions, with all kinds of prayers and requests. This isn't another piece of armour, you see. There are those who have interpreted it this way, but it can't be that, because there is no piece of armour that denotes prayer.

Prayer is general. Prayer is referring to all that has gone on before, the very attitude of the soldier. Let me express it to you like this.

Let's imagine a modern military man, and he has on the equivalent of the Roman equipment, the Roman armour, he has the equivalent on it. Now, is he therefore prepared to go into battle? I would argue no. He is only prepared in a certain fashion.

What is one of the most important things for any soldier? Well, to be in contact with the rest of the troops, and also to be in contact with the commanding officer. In these modern days, we speak of telecommunication, and in the most remarkable fashion, we can communicate one with the other. And of course, all these advances, sophisticated though they be, are harnessed by military men, and they are put to the use in times of war.

Now, it seems to me that what the Apostle here is referring to is this business of communication, and pray in the Spirit on all occasions. Why? Because it's prayer that keeps you in contact with your commanding officer. You see, you can have all the orthodoxy in the world, and I've met people who certainly illustrate this point, but they have no hotline to heaven, and they don't know what it is therefore to be Spirit-filled soldiers.

They know something of the armor, but what they have culpably failed to do is to follow through the instructions of the hymn writer, who tells us, Put on the gospel armor, each piece put on with prayer, or, if you like, to keep your armor bright, attend with constant care, still walking in your captain's sight, and watching unto prayer. Now, do you do this? I want to put it very bluntly to each one of you. I wish it were possible sometimes for you to forget everyone else who is in the congregation, and just think about the Word of God as it applies to you.

Not your friend alongside, not your husband, your wife, or whoever, but you as an individual. I sometimes get letters and comments that tell me they can't appreciate the tabernacle preaching because it is too personal. I apologize, not one little bit.

It's supposed to be a personal pulpit proclaiming God's Word to us as a congregation, but as individuals. Now, I ask you, this final order from Paul, does it really mean anything to you? And pray in the Spirit on all occasions. He's talking to soldiers.

This isn't bull. This isn't barakrum bull. You know, the sort of thing that the grenadier guards have to do that has no sense at all, but they fulfill the instructions of the sergeant major simply because, well, he wants their discipline.

And sometimes what he says is preposterous, but they're not to think, they're not to reason it through. They are to obey what he has to say. That's bull.

Now, there's nothing corresponding to bull in the Word of God. When the orders come through, they come through on heaven's hotline, and they come directly to the individual sensitive soldier who wants to do well in the service of Christ. And so here is the apostle, soldier extraordinary that he be, and he tells us, and pray.

Pray in the Spirit on all kinds of prayers and requests. Why? Well, because unless you pray in the Spirit, unless you know something about carrying out these instructions, then when you are up against it in the day of battle, fighting the powers of this dark world, against all the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms, you will be acutely embarrassed. There is only one final answer to coping with the pressures that the devil brings upon the Christian believer, and it is to be attentive to prayer, says the Lord Jesus in Luke 18.

This is why men ought always to pray, and not to faint, as though through prayer you receive something, as indeed you do. The communication is to heaven, but it's not one way. You give out, you express your thoughts, and you receive back.

And so the apostle here tells us that having done all in terms of understanding the doctrine of the faith, we are to lace putting on the armor with prayer. Prayer is not asking God to run errands for us. Prayer is a summit meeting at the throne of the universe, where God holds session with soldiers like ourselves.

That's the reason, you see, why the apostle Paul is an illustration of all that he's teaching us. Look at him in the 14th verse of Ephesians 3. For this reason, I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name, and I pray. I kneel and I pray.

The soldier who kneels before the Father can stand up to anything. Do you realize that? If you'll only bend your knee before the Lord more than perhaps some of you do, then you will be able to stand up, in better measure, to some of the pressures and the temptations that come your way. You see, ultimately, you are no more as a Christian than what you are on your knees.

Ultimately, it's not a test of your theological orthodoxy, that's important in degree. It's a test of how what you believe with your mind compels you to exercise spiritual disciplines. So if you want to quantify my spirituality, then don't go to my library, don't check any of my writings, rather find out what you can't discover for yourself, only God knows this.

What is the preacher like in his prayer life? Because he's only that and he's no more. The soldier has only the ability to resist the evil one in proportion to the time that he spends kneeling before the Father, receiving the strength that is necessary to cope with this diabolical foe that has ranged against him and the rest of the Christian community. And so Paul puts it so very strongly, almost surprisingly so, and yet we bless God that Paul was such a pastor, and he knows us, and he knows our weaknesses, he knows how we might be compelled at times to put this thing on one side, to be tempted to put it on one side, but he says don't do that and pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.

Well, what does he mean to pray in the Spirit? I'm going to take the remaining part, or the largest part of my time this morning in answering that question. What does he mean to pray in the Spirit? You come across that expression on two or three occasions in Scripture, and I haven't really time to go into them, though you could look at Jude 20 later on today when the apostle there tells us to pray in the Holy Ghost. So when the apostle Paul makes reference to us as Christian soldiers engaging in prayer, he doesn't just say pray, but he qualifies it with the expression in the Spirit.

And I want to ask you, what does that mean? Now being a teacher, at least I tried to be a teacher when I was in London in earlier days, I sometimes discover that the best way to tell someone what a thing means is by going at it indirectly and telling them what it doesn't mean. So what doesn't it mean to pray in the Spirit? Well, it doesn't mean praying in a spirited fashion. I mean by that just being self-excited, just being emotional for the sake of it.

That's not to say that emotion and excitement don't come into prayer. Sometimes they are the ingredients of prayer, but not always. The prayer that the apostle Paul is referring to here is not small letter of the Spirit, but capital letter in the Spirit.

So it's nothing to do with praying in a spirited frenzy. Neither has it anything to do with length. Some people, our Lord Jesus criticised, were those who engaged in prayer and they babbled and babbled and babbled, and our Lord said that for their much hearing, for their much speaking they thought they would be heard.

Praying in the Spirit is not necessarily, though length could be involved, but it's not necessarily a lengthy process. And what is more, it has absolutely nothing to do with performance. You go to the end of Luke's Gospel, or the 20th chapter of Luke's Gospel, you will find those who our Lord censures because they put on a show of spirituality.

You know, their approach to prayer is to show how wonderful they are and how wonderful their prayers are. Now, you sometimes perhaps are in danger, maybe not your good selves, but some within the Christian church, of thinking that because a service is particularly beautiful, it has a rich liturgy, and the poetry that is employed in the intercessions are so choice, that therefore we are praying in the Spirit. I argue we are not.

You see, oratory in and of itself is utterly unimportant, though the incredible thing is that very often when people do pray in the Spirit, they are given a fluency that they don't normally have. I was at a conference some while ago, I won't name the place, but it was in the Third World, and in one of the sessions, which happily I wasn't taking, the chairman at the end suddenly got up and he went to the microphone, or at least he went to the pulpit, and he said in a tone which was completely contrary to the way that he normally spoke, a prayer. And it really was the most dreadful attempt at concluding what had been a very, very challenging session.

You don't just offer a prayer in terms of something that's beautiful and polished, that's not praying in the Spirit. That is not to say incidentally I'm not arguing against the Book of Common Prayer, I use it quite a lot, and indeed compendiums of prayer I find very, very helpful. But this whole artistry in prayer, that it's the quality of what is said, the polished use of the English language, as though that somehow makes the prayer feet above other prayers, is to me an utter nonsense.

It's nothing to do with performance, and it certainly has nothing to do with location. Now, I hardly need to tell a non-conformist congregation this, but it needs to be said at least generally. When our Lord was speaking to the woman at the well, you remember the Samaritan lady, she tried to get him involved in an argument as to where prayer ought to be made.

Here in Gerizim, our holy mountain, on the top of the holy mountain, or at Zion, and Jesus said the day is coming when it doesn't really matter where you pray, it's not a geographical location, it's a spiritual condition. So prayer in the spirit is none of these things. It's not praying in a spirited fashion, it's nothing to do with performance, it's nothing to do with oratory, it's nothing to do with location in and of itself.

Well, let's move on and address the subject more positively. If it's none of these things, then what is it? Well, let me suggest to you that first of all, it is a condition that is bestowed and not something that's contrived. You say, what do you mean by that? Well I mean that praying in the spirit is something that happens to you, it's as a result of God's Spirit suddenly coming down in a special way.

Let me give you a dramatic illustration of this, but by no means take this as being the norm. It was very personal and in one sense it was very peculiar to the Apostle Paul. But here he is writing to the Corinthians in the second epistle and the twelfth chapter, and he goes on in the opening verses by saying this, I must go on boasting, although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord.

I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven, whether it was in the body or out of the body, I do not know, God knows. And he goes on to recount this extraordinary experience, but for our purposes I just want to emphasize the words, I was caught up. This has something to do with praying in the spirit.

Sometimes it's a phenomenon that occurs almost immediately when a person starts to pray. You know these aircraft that have vertical take-off? And there they were on the deck of a ship, let's say it's an aircraft carrier, and the mission plane just took off vertically, and they were airborne. But if you go to Heathrow or Gatwick, then you've got to go down a long runway, and sometimes if you're in a mission plane, as I alas have been from time to time, you have two or three goes down the runway, and if you're anything like me, you're terribly neurotic at the end.

In fact, if you're like me, you were at the beginning, you're even more so at the end. And so it is in prayer, there are times when you go down the runway once, and twice, and three times, and then blessed occasion, perhaps not always, but sometimes you get airborne, and you're in another area of thought, dimension. Suddenly you find that prayer is no longer irksome.

Suddenly you find that there's an ease in prayer. Now struggle in prayer is something that I'm not arguing against at all, and I'm not saying that all prayer must of necessity be prayer in the spirit, but this is something that we are to desire above more than anything else, that we might as Christian soldiers, at least occasionally and perhaps frequently, know what it is to pray in the spirit. Feel this divine empowering, something that's bestowed upon us, not something that's contrived and worked on.

And it brings with us, I argue, its own stimulus. It brings its own stimulus. I've almost touched on this.

Now my reasoning for suggesting that is, well, if you go back to the 17th verse, what do you discover the apostle saying? Well he refers to the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. And then he says, pray in the spirit. No, the sword of the spirit is of course the Bible.

How is the Bible written? Well it was written, you remember my explaining it last time, by the inspiration of the spirit. The spirit came along, and he stimulated men over a long period of time to compile the books which we now call the Old Testament and the New Testament. Now I'm arguing from that, that when you pray in the spirit, the spirit stimulates your prayer.

He enables you. In your prayer, there's this unusual awareness of a modicum of inspiration. There's an illumination that takes place in your mind, which leads me to argue this.

It causes an enlargement of the mind, an enlargement of the mind. The apostle Paul, writing to the Philippians, Authorized Versions Translation, Philippians 2.5, talks about this mind being in us, which was also in Christ Jesus. He uses exactly the same expression when he's writing to the Corinthians, no time to go to the reference, 1 Corinthians 2 and 16, when he speaks about we have the mind of Christ.

And this is what we need my dear brothers and sisters, when we come together in prayer, not just our faculties, with our limited ability of operating them, but knowing that the dwelling of the spirit playing upon our minds, stimulating us, enlarging us. And strangely enough, I can't feel that there is a more adequate way to express this, preparing the agenda for our prayers. I mean, Paul, always the pastor, tells us, and we agree with him, in the eighth chapter of Romans, when he's speaking about the Holy Spirit and interceding, he tells us that we don't know what to pray for.

We find it very hard, verse 26, in the same way the spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray. Do you ever find it like that? Very hard sometimes to know just at the natural human level what you ought to pray for.

But then the spirit comes along, and he enlarges your mind, he stimulates you. Here we are in corporate prayer, and the agenda, far from being spelt out by the man who is technically in charge of the prayer meeting, it's spelt out by the Holy Spirit. And he directs the congregation into this area of prayer, and then into the other area of prayer.

And there is a connection. It's not just throwing one topic in after another in a random fashion. There's an agenda, the spirit leading.

You see, this is what the Christian soldier is to know more and more. You see, the Christian has this as a common denominator with his fellow. He should have the same intelligence.

You know that military word intelligence, if you have some idea as to what the commanders of the armed forces want to disclose to you, it's in one sense confidential, they don't want the rest of the world to know, they certainly don't want the enemy to know. So they have their intelligence, and they communicate their intelligence down the lines. Now I understand prayer in the spirit as being in this area.

The spirit preparing his agenda, informing the mind. You see, the mind is the greatest thing that I have. It's the thing that is more in the image of God, the likeness of God, than anything else about me.

The mind, my mind, distinguishes me from my pet animals, distinguishes you. The mind is a very noble thing. It's also a very difficult thing to control.

But the man who is in the spirit, you see, he's praying in the spirit, his mind is offered to the power of the spirit, and the stimulus of the spirit enlarges the mind, and this agenda comes through that enables the person to pray as he ought to pray. Now don't let the random use, well I hope not random, but the terms that I use frighten you into thinking that this is something just for, well you know, the specials, the great preachers, the people in monasteries. This praying in the spirit is something I thank God for.

I have known amongst the most ordinary people in our prayer meetings at the tab, occasion being when you came along you didn't want to come out on a Thursday night or the Wednesday night or the Monday night or the morning or the afternoon or whenever the occasion, but when you got there you offered your mind to the Lord and you started to pray. Maybe it was stuttering and stammering as you commenced, but suddenly the Lord enlivened you, he lifted you, he helped you to do it, and you started to pray in words that, well, you perhaps wouldn't have thought that you could have engaged in just half an hour or so ago. You see this praying in the spirit is not something, though it's extraordinary in that it comes from the Lord, it's not peculiar to a few people.

It's something that's part and parcel of the equipment of the soldier. To pray in the spirit, I have the intelligence from the Lord and I want to bring to him those things that require my intercession. My friend, I put the challenge to you again, do you really take the Apostle Paul seriously when he tells you to do this? Pray in the spirit on all occasions, you see he's not just speaking to an individual, he's speaking to the whole church.

This isn't a personal letter, Paul did write personal letters to Timothy and Titus and Philemon and so on, but this is to the whole church. I haven't checked the verb, so let me not be exaggerated in my comment, but my guess is that it's a plural verb and you all praying together for one another, for the Christian saints in various parts of the Roman Empire. Why am I stressing this? Well you see, because I have come across that breed of Evangelical Christian who doesn't believe in prayer meetings.

You know there's a legion of reasons why you don't come to a prayer meeting, it's not conducted quite in the fashion that you want it to be conducted. But maybe if you made the contribution it would go down the line that you believe the Lord wants it to go down. Do you understand that the early church, as they came together, having committed their lives to Jesus Christ, came into a fellowship where prayer was at a premium.

They were a praying community. And pray in the spirit on all occasions, with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying.

What's a man trying to say? I mean if there's any sense left in words, he's asking us to pray, wouldn't you agree? Of course you would. Then do you do it? Do you do it as an individual, on a personal basis? The secret of prayer is praying in secret. Do you pray in secret? I hope you do.

Will you join us in praying together? It's not always easy to pray together, but sometimes it's a delicious experience when God comes down in power upon His children. Will you pray as the Apostle Paul? Will you pray on all occasions and with all kinds of prayers? You see, there's great variety. You can pray personally, you can pray communally, you can pray as you're walking down the street.

You don't need to show everyone else that you're praying by keeping your eyes closed. It could be rather disastrous if you did. But there are such things as ejaculatory prayers, the sentence prayer that you direct to heaven.

Do you pray when you're singing hymns? Oh my friends, sometimes, allow me to say this with great tenderness. These choice 17th and 18th century hymns, of which this hymn book is so replete, are full of wonderful sentiments. How in the name of Jesus Christ can you sing them sometimes without an expression on your face and a quickening in your voice that indicates you're really home and dry? This is really what I mean, Lord.

Well, let's take an example, not a 17th, 18th century one, one that's more modern than that. What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear. The greatest friend in the world is our Lord Jesus Christ.

Is that not so if you're a Christian? Then should we not sing sometimes a little bit more enthusiastically? As I've quoted before from a Benedictine monk, actually, if your heart is happy, why keep it a secret from your face? Even the monks can teach us, can't they? Some of them can teach us quite a lot, actually, with all kinds of prayers and requests. That's a great word, request. I think the authorised version, of which I haven't got a copy here, but I believe it's got supplications.

Is that right, someone with an authorised version? All kinds of prayers and supplications. The word supplications, I prefer to request, actually. It's a much more powerful word.

It's got the original very much at the background. It's the idea of pouring oneself out. You see, here's this soldier and he's afraid.

He's afraid for himself. He's afraid for the rest of the Christian community there, shall we say, in Italy or in Greece. The times are difficult.

And so what does he do? Well, he pours himself out before the Lord. It's desperate, Lord, that you come to our aid. Here's Zechariah.

Do you remember that man and his elderly wife that you meet in the beginning of the Gospel of Luke? They're childless. And so the man comes before the Lord and he prays, Lord, let me have a child. And he pours out his heart.

This is what he wants more than anything else. He wants to father a child. He wants his own son.

So he pours it out. Here is the Apostle Paul. He's writing to the Romans, the 10th chapter, but he's thinking not of the Romans, he's thinking of the Jews.

Paul is a Jew. What does he want? Well, he wants the conversion of his own people. Brethren, my heart's desire before God is that Israel might be saved.

And in the very word that describes Paul praying, you've got this one, supplication, pouring out one's soul before the Lord. Well, here is the Apostle and he tells us, he tells the Ephesians and he tells you and me by extension, pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. I'm asking you, will you do that? Will you do it more? What a man is, I repeat, on his knees before God, that he is and he's no more.

Yet the Christian on his knees, he's more than the philosopher on tiptoe. Did you know that? When you bow your knee before the great God and Father, as Paul is doing in Ephesians 3 and also in Ephesians 1, you're getting a glimpse into the purposes of God. And as a result, you're more equipped as a soldier.

My final words. Here we are, my friends. You've listened to me for three months, well over a period of 12 addresses on this vital aspect of Christian truth.

I would go so far as to say that in all my time at the tab, there's nothing that's been more important that I've tried to share from the pulpit than these past 12 occasions when we've come around these verses. I've tried to give you an insight into the full panoply of the doctrine of salvation as I've taken each one of the pieces of armor. And now I've come and sort of sealed the whole thing up as the Apostle Paul enjoins me to do by the power of the Holy Spirit and shown you that the most important thing of all, not as an option but to be taken alongside with putting on the armor, is to have an attitude of prayer, constant prayer.

I find it easier to get people to praise than to pray. I was interested to hear that the Anglican preacher Colin Urquhart some while ago has moved one of his praise sessions to prayer sessions and realizing that he's risking getting a much smaller turnout of people. See, praise is in vogue today and there's nothing the matter with praising the Lord, but there's even greater need to bring before the Lord the problems of a sin-stained world, the unreached in India, the un-evangelized in our own country, your father, your mother if they're unsaved, your boy, your girl, to spend time in agonizing prayer.

You can get people to meetings. You can even get people to hear the exposition of Scripture, but to get people to come together in the way that Paul asks them to come together and to pray and to pray in the spirit, the agony of prayer, ah, that's difficult. But that is what I believe God is calling us to more and more here in our fellowship.

So onward Christian soldiers, let's go out to war and let's put our armor on, each piece put on with prayer. Amen. Let's go to the last time of singing this hymn for a while.

At any rate, 383, sung it before, but it just pulls together the teaching that I've been trying to share. Soldiers of Christ arise and put your armor on. Now you dare not, after my rudeness, sing this in any other way but lively, dare you.

But it's not just the liveliness of our singing, but it's the resolve with which we'll go into this week, which will determine whether this word has been effective in communicating what I believe to be a burden from the Lord. 383. Now Father, send us on our way, believing that what's been shared this morning is for every ordinary Christian.

Help us to appreciate what it is to pray in the spirit, to respond to those little promptings that you give that should then compel us to engage in intercession. Keep us in prayer always, each hour of the day, knowing that you're with us. Help us, Lord, to appreciate the throughput of this teaching into the way that we live tomorrow and the next day and so on and so forth.

Keep us a praying, a praising, and a loving community as with our fellow soldiers in the town we go out to war. In the name of Jesus the Lord, amen.