February 27, 2011 In Second Kings 6:15 we read: “When the servant of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning an Army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. Oh my Lord what shall we gave the sermon and don’t be afraid the prophet answered those who are with us are more than those who are with them and Elisha prayed oh Lord open his eyes that he may see and then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes and he looked and saw the Hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.” God has means available to him to utilize in Spiritual Warfare on our behalf to which you and I are absolutely and totally oblivious. We don’t see God’s means, often we don’t perceive them and seldom do we ever broach enough courage to talk about them. We are afraid that if we do speak of God’s means to combat evil someone may think that we are one of those religious nuts. Remember Jesus prayed for us to be safe from the evil one. In the last sentence of the Lord’s prayer (or the Our Father if you were raised in the Catholic tradition) we ask God to keep us from temptation and deliver us or protect us from evil. So all of your life, any time you have prayed the Lord’s prayer, you have been praying a warfare prayer. A spiritual warfare prayer is a prayer in which you pray and ask God to protect you from Satan or to bind Satan or in some way restrict Satan. In his model prayer Jesus taught us to pray for protection from the evil one. In His priestly prayer Jesus prayed for us to be protected from the evil also. He taught that the best position from which His church would be most able to mount this defense was by maintaining our unity in the pattern of the Father the Son. SO we have learned that in His priestly prayer Jesus also prayed for spiritual outcomes as well as future reality. In this post I want to examine the spiritual protection and unity aspects of His prayer and use them as a model for our spiritual warfare praying. Each of us are constantly under attack from the evil one. It is time that we realize and acknowledge this and come together and battle these forces of hell. Jesus’s blood was shed for everyone. The testimony of Scripture is true so for what are we waiting. I yearn for a church family to be prepared to make the difference; to be prepared to take on to the enemy. This is the necessary first step for us to make an eternal and temporal impact in our community. I want to prove to you that you and I are under the influence of the enemy. I offer as evidence the way in which most churches occupy their seating capacity. Recently a group from our church attended a Hill Song concert. At that concert as at most venues the most valuable seats were those on the front row, yet in the church the most prized seating is the back row. Why is that? It is the influence of Satan. He blinds us to what is important in life. Why is it that you have no problem telling people for which team you’re a fan, but find it difficult to bring yourself to tell anyone that you’re a Christian, or to speak to them about the eternal truths of Christ. Again it is the influence of Satan or spiritual warfare. Satan does everything he can to discourage you from sharing your faith. Why is it that it is so easy to sin, and so difficult to live holy for God? Once again it is the influence of Satan. Everything in this “world” system is influenced by Satan. This Satanic influence is why John’s gospel speaks about the “world” in negative terms. We are not to love the world. We are not to be like those in the world. This idea of a world system which is aligned against Christians must be understood before we can become the spiritual warriors we each need to be.