“Thy Kingdom Come” Session 7 – wielding prayer
“…praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit,
being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints” (Ephesians 6:18, NKJV).
I enjoy playing tennis and have since my days in college. At one level it is a very simple sport, just hitting the ball with a racquet over a net, but on another level it can be quite complex. There are different ways to hold the racquet and different strokes that can be executed. Different situations call for different strategies. Another factor is the opponent. What threat do they present? What are their strengths and weaknesses?
Just as a racquet is necessary for playing tennis, so prayer is necessary for life in the kingdom of God. Prayer can be defined as the divinely appointed means through which we commune with the living God and advance His kingdom.
Like in tennis, prayer can be very simple and uncomplicated. It is simply talking to God. Yet prayer can also be quite complex to understand and a challenge to do well. God’s word equips us for its use.
Prayer is always timely but it can find a variety of expression in different situations. Just look at the prayer book of the Bible, the psalms. There we find praise, confession, lament, thanksgiving, petition, and whatever else a situation warrants. All these are expressed through faith, in communion with God.
We look at prayers recorded in the Bible and we note that they are quite different from what we might hear in a prayer meeting. They have a kingdom bent to them. Take, for example, Paul’s prayer for the Colossians.
For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. (Col. 1:9–14)
Through the discipline of prayer we commune with our Father, the Spirit forms Christ in us and ministers to us in our every need, and the kingdom of God is advanced.
Just as in tennis, we who are in Christ’s kingdom have an opponent. We must become well-versed in his game plan, his tactics, and his intentions as we take up the weapon of prayer to combat him.
Where do you need to become more faithful and adept in the discipline of prayer?
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This course will involve self-paced study under the direction of a mentor. Each lesson will feature a video interview related to a book I have written and will include a study guide. Links to books and supporting materials will be provided.
The course is free. Watch for an announcement about the availability of Thy Kingdom Come later this summer.
The featured books for this session of Kingdom Disciplines are two primers: Why Do We Pray? (Stanley D. Gale, P&R, 2012) and What is Spiritual Warfare? (Stanley D. Gale, P&R, 2008). Click here for an article on prayer and here for an article on spiritual warfare.
