Category Archives: Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

As we walk through various trials and attacks of the enemy God is our refuge, our strength and our shield. He equips us with all we need to wrest the Kingdom back from the one who stole dominion on Earth. The effective fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much: as events count down to the return of Jesus Christ we need to focus our energy on drawing closer to God in prayer and worship.

Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

The prayer of agreement

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I think that one of the most overused verses in the Bible is Matthew 18:20 “For if two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them,” and one of the most disappointing is the verse immediately preceding it, which promises “If two of you agree on anything you ask, it shall be done for them by my Father in heaven.“

Verse 19 – if two of you agree – is often quoted to encourage people to pray together in pairs or small groups. “God promises to answer!” is the exhortation. Unfortunately, experience often proves otherwise, so the encouragement to meet is without substance. How many times do two or more pray together, yet what we’ve asked for isn’t done for us by our Father in heaven? Yet God’s word is true and His promises are trustworthy, so if our experience does not line up with the Word we must look more deeply into Scripture to see what our experience is missing, not hold up our experience as the truth and dismiss the Word.

The problem here is that the words do what they say on the tin: agree means agree, shall be done means shall be done. There is nothing in the Greek that suggests that they do not mean exactly what they say: there is not even a let out in the tense as there is in Matthew 7:7, where the tense of “ask and it shall be given” actually means ask persistently and it shall be given. The tense of “ask” means just once is enough.

So we gather, we agree, we ask, and yet nothing seems to happen. Why is that? One reason could be that we simply don’t wait long enough for the answer: we give up, and faith (if it ever really existed) evaporates. The promise doesn’t say when it will come, and the Bible has much to say about waiting. In fact “Wait” can seem like one of God’s favourite words. But although I think that can be true at times, I don’t think it is the main point here. I think the reason that a lot of “prayers of agreement” seem to go unanswered is in the first word of verse 20: “for.” Jesus says that the promise of answered prayer is a consequence of two or three being gathered in His name. Only when that is the case does He say He is present in the gathering, “there in the midst of them.“

First of all, what is it to be “gathered together?“ The Greek word means anything from being drawn together like fishes in a net, or assembled as a crowd, to the idea of those who were previously separated becoming one. Given that the heart of Jesus as He prayed in Gethsemane for us “all to be one,” and that the thrust of much of Paul’s teaching is that we are one body in Christ, I think the meaning of “gathering” tends towards the last definition. And “In His name“ does not just mean wearing our church name badges: the Greek word onoma means everything He is; His whole identity. To be in His name means to be the fullness of who we are in Christ. I think that to be gathered in His name means to be one in the spirit, not just in theory, “in faith,” or according to our theology; but experientially, in the lived reality of that moment. If this is the case, and since verse 19 (“when two of you agree…“) is conditional upon verse 20 (“For if two or three of you are gathered…”) the concept of agreement is elevated from being one of verbal and intellectual consensus to a shared understanding in the spirit of a prayer request that we know by revelation is in the Father’s will.

In those conditions we are together in unity according to Jesus’s prayer of John 17:21: “that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.”  When our hearts are in agreement like this and there is no doubt or discord, we are already in the Father’s will, so the answer to our prayer is standing right there with us.

I was in a prayer meeting this morning, when a brother mentioned that there was a photo in a ministry prayer letter from a meeting we had both attended that included me a girl that I had been praying with in. I had my hands raised in a posture of worship, and she was on her knees. I guess it made a good photo. We prodded at various things throughout the morning, then just as the meeting was ending (how often has that happened?) The Holy Spirit fell powerfully. At that moment, my friend showed me the prayer letter with the photograph. In hushed voices, we agreed in prayer that the Lord would grant that girl her petition, and we knew immediately that the prayer was answered. Jesus was there “in the midst” according to Matthew 18:20: we could feel His presence.

When Jesus promised that He would send the Holy Spirit He said “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” (John 14:18) But I think we pray like orphans far too often in our corporate prayer times. Instead of meeting the conditions of “gathering in His name,” we talk to a Father who isn’t there, and then we wonder why He doesn’t appear to be listening.

Be prepared; hold on., Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

Vigilance in the Face of Spiritual Threats

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Your enemy is prowling … Photo by Michael Parsons.

A matter of life and death
This picture is of an oyster catcher chasing away a crow. Crows predate the eggs and chicks of birds, so for the oyster catcher this skirmish is serious: it’s a matter of life and death. Ground nesting birds like oyster catchers are particularly vulnerable to predation: I read an account recently of a goshawk taking the nearly full grown chick of another oyster catcher at one of my local sites. On that occasion the parent bird didn’t manage to chase away the predator. In the natural world the battle between predator and prey is always a matter of life and death: there is no in between layer. How different it is for us. We have so many layers of protection, whether it is our insurance policies, our security cameras, our fancy doorbells that tell us who’s outside, health, police and emergency services – the list goes on. Rarely is a potential threat immediately threatening. Or is it?


The Unseen World
While on holiday recently, I went snorkelling. Above the water, nothing of the undersea world was visible. However the hotel had made snorkelling equipment freely available to residents, and as soon as I put on my mask and flippers I saw a different reality: the reef below me was alive with a myriad of darting fish and other colourful creatures, waving weeds, canyons, mountains, sand, stones, and seashells. The small fishes were flashing away because they were constantly wary of potential threats. In some of the crevices lurked sea urchins of different sizes; their poisonous spines waiting for an unsuspecting touch from any passing creature, or indeed from my flailing hands. When I took off the snorkelling equipment and went back to my sun lounger, I was struck not only by the natural beauty that I had just witnessed, but also of the reality of an unseen world below the water’s surface that is both beautiful and dangerous, and how we live much of the time on the surface of life, completely blind to the present reality and imminent dangers of the unseen world of the spiritual dimension.


The Prowling Predator
 Yet, like the oystercatcher, we have a predator. As Peter writes, “your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking whom he made devour.“ (1 Peter 5:8) Paul writes  that we “wrestle… with the spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places.” (Eph 6:12) Jesus tells us that “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy.” (John 10:10) Because of the prowling predator, Peter warns us to “be sober, be vigilant.“ In other words, we are to keep our heads clear and our eyes open, because we don’t know where the next attack is coming from. The word Peter uses here for being vigilant is gregoreo, and it is particularly significant for Peter. It was He who was sleeping, along with James and John, in the garden of Gethsemane when they were there with Jesus just before his betrayal. Jesus said to him: “What, could you not gregoreo with me just for one hour? Gregoreo and pray, less you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.“ (Matthew 26: 40–41). We all know how the flesh failed Peter when Jesus was on trial, so his exhortation to vigilance was written with feeling. But by the time Peter was writing his letters, he also knew that God has made spiritual mask and flippers – the gifts of the Holy Spirit – freely available to the church to help us keep our eyes open underwater.

For want of a nail…
What we need to remember is that the devil plays the long game. There is a proverb, often attributed to Benjamin Franklin, that goes: “For want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost, for want of a horse that rider was lost for want of a rider the battle was lost, for want of a battle the kingdom was lost, and all for the want of a horseshoe nail.” As a rule, the spiritual hosts of wickedness are not waiting round the corner with an axe to take us out at one fell swoop: they are more likely to tempt our flesh into negligence of a horseshoe nail so that we fall all by ourselves while they are busy tempting others. How often we say, “Oh that won’t matter…“ And then we find out further down the road that it really did matter, a lot.  The little thought that we were ignoring was actually the Holy Spirit showing us where the enemy had loosened a nail.


Ultimately, we know that the kingdom is the Lord’s, and that no amount of lost nails will compromise the final outcome of the victory that He has already won on the cross. But if we will keep our eyes open to the unseen spiritual realm we can avoid the lurking sea urchins that would take us out of the battle, temporarily or permanently, even though the final outcome will not be affected.

Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

Understanding the Armour of God: Spiritual Readiness

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(An extract from “Wheat in the Winepress”)

(I said in my last article “To put on God‘s armour is to put on Christ.” This extract from the book shows in more detail how this statement is backed up by scripture.)

We cannot know “the day or the hour” of the culmination of God’s purposes on earth and the return of Christ, but we do know that we must be ready, with our lamps filled and trimmed, as the parable of the ten virgins illustrates. Some observers would say that many end-time prophecies are being or already have been fulfilled, and that the time when the Church is really thrust into end-time battle stations is nearly upon us. In our cosseted Western lives our condition is almost dreamlike: with bank loans and credit cards, who needs faith for God’s supply?  With drugstores and doctors, who needs miracles of healing? We have Google and AI: who needs words of wisdom? We see TV documentaries: who needs to see the spirit realm? Ask those who were Christians in China in the 1980s. Ask the Christians in North Korea. Ask the brothers in Africa, where sorcerers call down lightning on Christian meetings. Ask those who have seen friends and family beheaded by Islamic State jihadists. Banks can fail, medicines can run out, and electricity can be cut off. We must wake up to the reality of the spiritual battle around us: we need to be standing in the purposes of God.

The Breastplate of Righteousness
And He has provided His righteousness: it is perfect and complete; we cannot add to it with our talents, our knowledge or our religion. Psalm 85:13 tells us: “Righteousness will go before Him, and shall make His footsteps our pathway.” We cannot walk in His footsteps unless we are wearing His breastplate. If we go into battle without it, we will be mown down. If we think we’ve got it right, we haven’t: we’re embellishing  the  God-given  garment  of  righteousness and making it unwearable. We are beginning in the Spirit, and then trying to make ourselves perfect in the flesh. (Galatians 3:2)

I cannot speak for others, but I know that I have always tended to personalise the rest of the armour of God when reading Ephesians 6. I have listened to, or read, teaching that paints a picture of Paul in his prison cell, looking at a Roman soldier on guard duty and likening the various aspects of our Christian walk with the armour he can see. We imagine Paul pondering on how the knowledge of our salvation is like a helmet that keeps our thinking on a godly track. We think of our faith extinguishing fiery darts of doubt and fear. We buckle our belt, keeping all our garments in place as we declare the truths of the word of God. Our faith, our helmet, our belt and so on – not so much the armour of God, but the armour of godliness.

But Paul’s pen is not the only one that the Holy Spirit used to tell us about His armour. Hundreds of years before Paul was writing to the Ephesians, Isaiah wrote prophetically of Jesus:

“He saw that there was no man,
And wondered that there was no intercessor;
Therefore His own arm brought salvation for Him;
And His own righteousness, it sustained Him,
For He put on righteousness as a breastplate,
And a helmet of salvation on His head.” (Isa. 59:16-17)

The helmet of salvation
We have already explored how we cannot wear our own righteousness, or do anything to add to what the Lord has provided; and we have seen that it is the Spirit, not us, who wields the sword of God’s word. It is clear from these verses that the helmet, too, belongs to the Lord Jesus. We do not wear “our” helmet of salvation: we wear His. Is this not a different level? The strength and the very existence of the helmet we wear does not depend on the level of our certainty, our detailed knowledge of the Scriptures or our understanding of theology. It is not just a symbol that came to Paul to illustrate the condition of our renewed mind: the helmet of salvation is what Jesus wore when God’s “own arm brought salvation for Him”. It’s His helmet that He has given to us. As we face the enemy, the protection over our thought-life is the same as Jesus was wearing when He won the victory at Calvary. He removes it from His head and offers it to us, saying, “Here you are. This is for you.” It isn’t going to fail.

The shield of faith
God’s righteousness is our breastplate. The Holy Spirit wields His sword, the word of God. We wear the Lord’s helmet on our heads. The faith, our shield, is also not our own. The Greek used for Jesus’s words in Mark 11:22, “Have faith in God”, is better rendered as “Have the faith of God”. Ephesians 2:8 tells us: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.” The faith that led us to salvation comes from God. We do not create faith in our minds: all faith is God given. We learn in Romans 12:3 that “God has dealt to each one a measure of faith”. When Jesus tells us to “have faith in God” He is telling us that God is giving us a measure of His faith – the faith that called the universe into being at the speaking of His creative word; “the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). This shield of faith, which extinguishes the fiery darts of doubt (“Did God say . . . ?) and fear, tells us that God’s word is truth and life. Like the helmet of salvation, the shield of faith is fashioned entirely by God: it is made of the very fabric of God’s creative power (the faith of God), and it is provided for us as a gift. We cannot go into battle without it.

The belt of truth
The item that “girds up our loins”, ready for action, is one thing that our post-modern world says does not exist: absolute truth. Paul writes to Timothy: “Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons .” (1 Tim. 4:1). In his second letter, Paul returns repeatedly to the topic of sound doctrine, encouraging Timothy to remain faithful to the truths that he has learnt, to continue walking in them, and to commit them to other trustworthy men who can pass them on (2 Tim 1:13, 2:2, 3:14). He tells the Galatians: “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:8). This gospel of the grace of God through Jesus Christ is outrageous; it is astonishing; but it is clear and straightforward: God really did so love the world “that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). We buckle “these truths” round our waists and we run with them in place, shod with the message of reconciliation that God has given us – “the shoes of the gospel of peace” – His peace (John 14:27), not peace as the world gives.

The point is this: all of the items in our armoury are not only God-given; they partake of the actual nature of God. Psalm 93:1 says, “The Lord is clothed, He has girded Himself with strength.” The armour that He is wearing is the armour that we put on. This is the Armour of God.

So like Gideon’s men, we take our provisions. We do not go into battle empty handed, but we take all the divine amour and every spiritual weapon that God has made available. We can ask for spiritual gifts like words of knowledge or gifts of healing, and by faith we can “take them in our hands”, believing that they will manifest when they are needed. We know that the righteousness of God is ours by faith in Christ, and we can go out and love our enemies wearing that righteousness as our breastplate, knowing that we have been freely forgiven and justified, and that nothing can separate us from the love of God which is ours in Christ. We equip ourselves with the word of God, and we allow the Holy Spirit to wield it. We take the helmet and the shield that He has fashioned and provided, clasp the belt of His truth round our waists and prepare ourselves to walk in His peace. Thus clothed in God’s strength, we look down onto the Midianites below us in the valley, and we pick up our trumpets.

(From “Wheat in the Winepress” by Bob Hext, published by MD Publishing)

Living by Faith, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare, The word of God, Walking in the Spirit

The God of David’s deliverance.

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One of David’s great psalms of faith is Psalm 18, which he wrote, according to 2 Sam 22: 1, “on the day that the Lord delivered him from his enemies and Saul.” Many of the truths expressed both in Psalm 18 and in the book of Psalms as a whole – not to mention the rest of the Bible – are encapsulated in the section from verses 28-34. I wrote last week about the walk of faith. If we can allow the Holy Spirit to write the following promises on our hearts, as He did for David, I believe our walk will be strengthened. Here is the whole passage, followed by a few thoughts on each verse.

For You will light my lamp;
The LORD my God will enlighten my darkness.

For by You I can run against a troop,
By my God I can leap over a wall.

As for God, His way is perfect;
The word of the LORD is proven;
He is a shield to all who trust in Him.

For who is God, except the LORD?
And who is a rock, except our God?

It is God who arms me with strength,
And makes my way perfect.

He makes my feet like the feet of deer,
And sets me on my high places. (Psalm 18: 28-34)

He teaches my hands to make war,
So that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.

(Psalm 18: 28-34)

For You will light my lamp;
The LORD my God will enlighten my darkness.

This is a promise. Sometimes we find darkness has descended on us like a cloud. It seems like the Lord is enthroned in another universe – if He even exists at all – and all we have is the experience of our flesh and our immediate circumstances. But the Lord promises that He will light our lamp. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. If we can keep this word in our hearts, believe it, speak it out, and ask the Lord to manifest its reality, it will strike the match that lights the lamp.

In addition, He promises to give us direction when we are lost or confused. His word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path: he will show us not only where to put our feet next, but – although sometimes we have to wait for this – He will shine a light on the direction of our path ahead.

And finally, this is a promise of revelation. We can, and do, read the word diligently; we can quote promises of healing and provision, or whatever else we need, but our lamp can remain unlit. If the Word of God is the  sword of the Spirit, we need the Spirit to wield it; it’s not enough to quote it mechanically. And if it is a lamp unto our feet we need the Spirit to light it: a memory verse that is not breathed into us by the One who wrote it is not likely to guide our feet anywhere. We need the Word, and we need the Spirit. This applies as much to our personal devotions as it does to our church services.

For by You I can run against a troop,
By my God I can leap over a wall

Jeremiah 12:5 says “If you have run with the footmen, and they have wearied you, Then how can you contend with horses?”  As deep darkness spreads across the nations (Isaiah 60:2) we will need to be moving in the opposite direction to the troop of the world. Temptation, persecution, hardship, financial pressure are all “horses” that we could face. But God promises that He will be with us in our trials, and if we do not allow ourselves to be swept along by “the troop” but trust in His faithfulness and the power of His Spirit, we will see the glory of the Lord appear over us as He promises in Isaiah 60:2.

We can apply the second part of this verse to many metaphorical “walls,” but one wall that the enemy is always trying to fortify is that of division within the body of Christ. Jesus wants us united so that the blessing can be commanded (Psalm 133); Satan will do all he can to prevent this from happening. The flesh will always seek to protect its own interests, so it is only by the Spirit, in the love of Christ, that we can be one with our brothers and sisters in Christ and attain to “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” (Eph 4:3)

As for God, His way is perfect;
The word of the LORD is proven;
He is a shield to all who trust in Him.

God says: “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with my eye.“ (Psalm 32:8) As I have written elsewhere, if someone is going to guide us with their eye we need to be looking at them in order to see what they are looking at. In general terms His way will always be the way of Love, and because love fulfils the whole of the law it will always be perfect, but in the specific context of our own daily need for direction, His way will always be our perfect option when we follow his guidance. Man’s wisdom at best is relative and incomplete, whereas God’s word contains no impurities: the Hebrew word translated as “proven” has the connotation of smolten metal that has had all the dross removed. So His proven word can always be relied upon to give us perfect direction: our part is to trust Him. It is not the words themselves that are our shield, like some sort of spell or mantra; it is the God who speaks them. When we look to Him and trust Him to be our shield, it is not so difficult to follow in the direction that He gives us.

For who is God, except the LORD?
And who is a rock, except our God?

There is one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, world without end. Salvation, deliverance, Life itself, an only be found in Him. Is God the rock on which we build our lives, or is it our career, our family, our wealth, our status, our marriage, our ministry? This verse needs very little comment, except the concluding words of the first epistle of John: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” (1 John 5:21) An idol is anything that takes the place of God in our hearts. Only He can have the place of lordship.

It is God who arms me with strength,
And makes my way perfect.

The word translated here as “arms” actually means “clothes,” or “girds,” as in being girded with armour. The verse actually speaks of the strength provided by the armour of God. Another meaning of the word translated here as “perfect” is “complete.” When we have put on the Ephesians 6 armour of God we are complete in Christ. Putting on the armour is the same as putting on Christ.  Psalm 93:1 says, “The Lord is clothed, He has girded Himself with strength.”  The armour that He is wearing is the strength that He arms us with. “Putting on the armour” isn’t a ritual to go through in our morning devotions: what we need to do regularly is to check that we have never taken any of it off. When we are “armed with” faith, salvation, righteousness, truth, and peace, wielding the Word of God, our way is perfect and we stand clothed in Christ. If any of them are missing we are less than complete.

He makes my feet like the feet of deer,
And sets me on my high places.

Have you ever seen a deer slip on a mountain path? Exactly: they don’t.  Ephesians 2: 6 tells us that we are seated with Christ in heavenly places; and Zechariah 3:9 tells us that, in Christ, we will  have “places to walk among those who stand here” (in the courts of Heaven). We are called to walk after the Spirit and not after the flesh (Romans 8:4), and to walk after the Spirit is to walk in the high places where God has set us. He wants us to be sure-footed, not taking a couple of spiritual steps then falling into carnality. He gives us those deer’s feet, and He lifts us to our high places: the truth of these words only manifest in our lives when we are yielded to His Spirit. And it is “my high places” where He sets me; not someone else’s. Each of us has a place of authority, the place of our call, where His anointing will flow. If you don’t know yet what your “high places” are, ask the Lord to show you.

He teaches my hands to make war,
So that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.

Finally, we are called to battle, whether we want to recognise it or not. A bow of bronze would have been a formidable weapon in David’s time, but you couldn’t use one effectively without training. And this isn’t all theory and interesting ideas: after we had studied this passage in School of Prophesy recently, Anne and I went for a walk on Cannock Chase (an area of wooded heathland near our home). While we were there we saw a small group of people – four or five – join hands round a tree and appear to pray, but they looked, and felt in our spirits, shifty and dark. If they were praying, they were not praying to Jesus. When they had gone, we went to the tree to investigate, and found a couple of memorials there to people who, presumably, had died. We prayed, for light to come into the darkness there, and for curses to be broken. God was teaching our hands to make war.

He will lead us into victory, and His glory will rise over His church as the times get darker; but we will need to fight for it.

Prayer and Spiritual Warfare, The word of God

“Lord, teach us to pray!”

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When they disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, what did He do? The standard answer is “He gave us the Lord’s prayer.”

Indeed He did, but the Lord’s prayer wasn’t all the teaching. The Lord’s prayer in Luke 11 finishes at verse 4 with “Deliver us from the evil one,” but the teaching continues in verse 5:

“And He said to them, “Which of you shall have a friend, and go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has come to me on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him.”

The parable of the Importunate friend follows, concluding with the exhortation from Jesus, transcribed  in the Greek present continuous tense, to “Ask (and keep on asking), and it will be given to you; seek (and keep on seeking) and you will find; knock (and keep on knocking) and the door will be opened to you.” We are not told why we need to persist, but we are told it is important: Jesus repeats the point in the parable of the unjust judge (Luke 18:1-8). We can hazard some guesses as to why: maybe our persistence demonstrates our love, maybe it builds our faith, and God certainly needs to see both our love and our faith when we come to Him in prayer. And sometimes we need to persist because we have an enemy who is interfering with the process, as Daniel discovered (Daniel 10:13-21) when the answer to his prayer was delayed. But persist we must.

There is still more to this than an encouragement to persist in prayer. The friend isn’t asking for bread for himself; he is asking for bread for “a friend who has come to me on his journey.” Jesus is teaching us to persist in our prayers for others who are on their own journey, and whose need has come to our attention. So as well as being persistent, prayer here is about the needs of others. A distinction between the old and new testament models of prayer is that old testament prayer – primarily the Psalms – is about seeking God to meet personal needs; whereas the new testament model is about “us,” whether we are looking at the Lord’s prayer (forgive us, lead us, deliver us, give us) or Paul’s prayers for the churches. Love flows through new testament prayer life. We pray for our friends; our friends pray for us.

Living Bread
Now we come to the prayer itself. The friend asks for bread. As we know from Matthew 4:4 the “bread” that we are to live by is “every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” The importunate friend asking for bread represents us going to our Friend, Jesus, and asking Him for a word from the mouth of God that will meet the need of our companion. God “watches over His word to perform it.” (Jer 1:12) God’s word is “living and active” – it is imbued with God’s life and energy (the Greek translated as active is energes). We find the same “energy” word when James is writing about the prayer of a righteous man: “Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” (James 5: 15) Again, prayer here is not asking for bread for self, but for others.

 God says of His word

“It shall not return to Me void,
But it shall accomplish what I please,
And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:11)

It is the word itself that carries the power to heal, provide, deliver. Jesus cast out demons with a word. The nobleman who came to Jesus for “bread” for his sick son “believed the word that Jesus spoke to him,” (John 4: 50) as did the centurion with the sick servant. (Luke 7: 1-10) Jesus tells us that the words He speaks to us “are spirit, and they are life.” (John 6:63) And not only do the words – the “bread” – that we receive carry the life and power of God, they also carry the weight of His authority. His word is forever “settled in heaven.” (Ps 119:89) The Strong’s entry for the Hebrew word translated as ”settled” is “to stand, take one’s stand, stand upright, be set (over), establish.” The rule of God’s word over creation, and over the prayer need that we have sought it for, is established forever. Jesus told the nobleman “Go your way, your son shall live.” When we receive a word from the mouth of God that our needy friend can live by, that word has the authority of heaven to bring God’s rule into their situation, and the life and energy to transform it. We have to persist until we receive it.

Stones and Bread.
Jesus finishes His teaching on prayer with a final set of illustrations:

“If a son asks for bread  from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” (Luke 11: 11-13)

The “bread” is always delivered by the Holy Spirit. Jesus said of the Holy Spirit “He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.” (John 16:14) We cannot receive a word from God by looking in a Bible index to find an appropriate scripture, unless the Lord sovereignly leads us there. We cannot quote a healing verse that we know and apply it to someone’s sickness unless the Holy Spirit has quickened it to us.  We cannot recite learned verses of God’s provision and expect our bank accounts to suddenly go into credit. We cannot wield the sword of the Spirit, the word of God, other than by the Spirit. It is always “by my Spirit,” never “by might nor by power.” (Zech 4:6)

Our Father in Heaven is longing to give us bread: He doesn’t give stones. And He wants us to ask for bread until we get it: the Greek word aiteō, translated as “ask,” suggests the confident requisitioning of items that the giver expects to release; or “insistent asking without qualms,” as one commentary puts it. James makes it clear that prayers with selfish motives are not answered when he writes: You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. (James 4:3) But I think there may be many cases of unanswered prayer that come about because we are not waiting for the Spirit to deliver the bread, and we are not persisting in our asking. Instead we pick up the nearest stone, and wonder why it doesn’t bring life.

Be prepared; hold on., Living by Faith, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

For the Trumpet Will Sound -And We Will Be Changed

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This is a guest blog by Helen Mitchell, a Christian who lives in Israel, published here with her permission. For Helen’s own site, visit Higher Than Me – What It Means To Be Strong

“For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.”
1 Corinthians 15:52

I don’t believe it’s any coincidence that Iran decided to launch 181 ballistic missiles into Israel the day before the Feast of Trumpets, or Jewish New Year.

The Feast of Trumpets is all about waking up from slumber. Jewish tradition says that this was the day when God finished creating the world. Although the Bible doesn’t make a direct link between the Feast of Trumpets and creation, the Hebrew month of Tishrei – where this feast falls – was generally seen as the beginning of the agricultural year in Ancient Israel. After the long, hot Middle Eastern summer, this was the month when the first rains began to fall.

To this day, the Feast of Trumpets, or Rosh Hashanah as it is known in Hebrew, is seen as a highly significant holiday in Israel and the Jewish Diaspora. Jewish New Year is not a day of frivolity and parties like New Year’s Eve in the Western calendar. It is a holy day where the sound of the trumpet or the shofar (ram’s horn) ushers in ten days of soul searching and repentance in preparation for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

Just as the first rains of the year wake the ground from slumber and prepare it for the planting of new seed, the sound of the shofar wakes the Jewish people from spiritual sleep and ushers in ten days of tilling the soil of their hearts to get ready for God’s mighty work of atonement.

I have lived in Israel now for more than 15 years as a non-Jew grafted into the Jewish nation. During these years, my feelings towards my adopted homeland have shifted at different times between love, despair, exasperation and pride.

But on Tuesday night I experienced a new feeling towards Israel. I felt in a real and tangible way the grace and mercy of God over this land. It suddenly became real for me, after all these years, that I am living in the middle of the world’s greatest love story, dating back thousands of years, between the God of all creation and His chosen people.

If I’m honest, I’ve often struggled with the idea of God having a special relationship with the nation of Israel. Sometimes it has felt unfair, even racist. I find it particularly hard when God’s name gets tangled up with an ugly sort of religious nationalism – when hardline religious groups believe they have the right to behave unjustly towards non-Jewish inhabitants of the land. I also struggle when I hear Christians in other countries idolising Israel and the Jewish people as though they are without sin.

Colin and I spent the first ten years of our lives in Israel living in an Arab village. Our beautiful adopted children are both Jewish and Arab by descent. We have experienced God’s compassion for the Arab people and other non-Jewish groups in the land. We know on the deepest, most intuitive level that God’s purposes for Israel must also bring blessing and prosperity to non-Jewish people living in the land.

Now, maybe for the first time ever, I am beginning to understand things that never really made sense to me before.

This past year has brought Israel to the lowest point in her history as a modern nation. Long before the events of 7th October, the land was torn apart by political and religious division. Then 7th October happened – a monumental intelligence failure leading to the darkest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust. Since then, Israel has been defending itself against drones and rockets on multiple fronts while being cast as an international pariah and vilified by the world media.

Israel today is a country in deep grief and trauma.

But yet, out of these ashes, something new is beginning to be born. It’s hard to put it into words. It is like an embryo that is not yet fully formed. It is a sound barely louder than a whisper. But if you put your ear to the ground and listen hard enough, you will hear that there is the faint cry of collective faith rising up.

And God, in His mercy, is responding to this cry.

Tuesday night was a miracle of biblical proportions. Yes, Israel used advanced military technology to intercept those rockets, but the fact that 181 ballistic missiles resulted in not one single death within Israel (sadly, one man living in the Palestinian Territories was hit by shrapnel and died) took more than just military might.

I can’t explain it in any other way than the God of Israel listening to the cries of His people as they sheltered in their homes and called out to Him in whatever way they knew how.

These last few days, I have been reading testimonies of October 7th survivors. The thing that strikes me most about these stories is the faith. These people – both Jews and non-Jews, both secular and religious – found themselves face to face with wicked and murderous terrorists, and they responded with prayer.

I read one story of a young man who had grown up as an ultra-orthodox Jew but had become disillusioned with religion. On 7th October, he was at the Nova music festival with a group of friends. While running away from Hamas terrorists, he found himself hiding behind an abandoned tank with a group of other festival-goers.

As terrorists closed in on them, a car exploded nearby and several people in the group were wounded by shrapnel. Everyone was shouting, screaming and panicking. This young man, who had long since abandoned his faith, shouted into the chaos, “Quiet! Everyone! Quiet! Some of us are wounded, and some of us are fighting. Everyone else – pray!” He describes how the little group of people – religious and secular Jews, as well as two Bedouin Arabs – quietly began saying the “Shema” (“Hear O Israel”) and reciting the Psalms.

This young man survived the 7th October massacres, but many of his friends did not.

(Source: The Miracle of the Jar of Vaseline: Daniel and Neriya Sharabi’s Story in “One Day in October” by Yair Agmon and Oriya Mevorach, 2024).

God’s purposes for Israel are not like unfair privileges bestowed upon sheltered and spoilt children while the rest of the world is left to starve. The Jewish people are not finely dressed princes and princesses feeding off the fat of their father’s estate.

God chose Israel to be a servant nation. He has called her to lay herself down to bring peace, hope and restoration to the rest of world.

The world media has twisted the narrative of this war to make it seem like Israel is the aggressor and the orchestrator of injustice. Certainly, Israel has made mistakes. There have been occasions where she has fallen short of the high moral standards that she seeks to achieve. But we mustn’t forget that, right now, Israel is standing on the front line against an axis of terror fuelled by a murderous and hateful ideology that poses a threat to the entire world.

Israeli soldiers and civilians are shedding their own blood to free the world from terrorists who care only about inflicting death and destruction.

Don’t be deceived. This isn’t a matter of Jews versus Arabs, or Israel versus Gaza or Lebanon. We have Arab friends living in the Palestinian Territories who we are exchanging messages with and praying as the missiles explode. We have dear Arab brothers and sisters in our own congregation who we are standing together with, shoulder to shoulder. We know of Christians in Lebanon who are crying out to be free of the bondage of Hezbollah. We are aware of secret believers in Iran who are drawing strength right now from the God of Israel.

This is not a war being fought along racial or national lines. I believe with all my heart that Israel – for all her sins and flaws – is fulfilling her call right now to be a servant nation. I believe that she is being used as a tool in the hand of the living God to bring freedom to the world and a revelation of God’s glory.

On Tuesday night, as God delivered Israel from 181 ballistic missiles, I don’t believe that I was the only one in the land who heard a sound over and above the blaring of sirens and the interceptions of rockets in the night sky. I don’t believe that I was the only one in Israel that night who heard the sound of a trumpet.

As we enter into the Days of Awe leading up to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, I believe that a trumpet is sounding all across the land of Israel. I believe that God is calling His people to awake from their slumber. I believe that the Father is calling His firstborn back into His arms, and that He will show them that He has already made atonement for their sin.

Christian Life, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare, Pursuing Love, Walking in the Spirit

Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven

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“Assuredly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again I say  to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven. For if two or three are gathered together in my name I am there in the midst of them.“ (Matthew 18 : 18 – 20)

Symphony
To agree is to be an accord, in harmony. The Greek word is where our “symphony“ comes from: sum (together) and phoneo (to sound), so to sound together. This is more than just intellectual assent: it is hearts in harmony. We regularly quote verse 20 at our gatherings as evidence that Jesus is “in our midst,” particularly if only “two or three” have turned up at the prayer meeting; but I think we also have to remember the significance what it is to be in His name. The Greek word onoma means a lot more than what is written on our birth certificates. Strong’s defines it like this: “the name is used for everything which the name covers, everything the thought or feeling of which is aroused in the mind by mentioning, hearing, remembering, the name, i.e. for one’s rank, authority, interests, pleasure, command, excellences, deeds etc.” It doesn’t mean we’re in His name because we’re Christians or church members: to be in His name because is to be sharing in His identity. We are part of who He is. He is love and truth and grace. If, on earth, we are not gathered together in love and truth and grace we are not in His name.

I can’t say I really understand the dynamics of just how Jesus is more in the midst of us  when we are gathered in love and truth in this way, because Jesus is in each of us anyway. Maybe our unity in some way allows the Holy Spirit to transcend the limitations of our flesh so that He really does become “the fourth man in the fire“ (as in the story of Shadrach, Mishach and Abednigo): however it happens there has to be some connection between this Scripture and the words of Ps 133 that declare “the unity commands the blessing.“ But I also think these are the conditions for verse 18. I can’t imagine that anything happens in heaven without the Father’s authority. Anything that is bound or loosed in heaven has to be so because the Father decreed it. As well as the physical and metaphorical sense, the Greek words for binding and loosing can also be much more generic such as preventing and allowing, obliging or releasing. The Son and the Father are one so when we are in agreement on earth, in love and in truth, Jesus is agreeing with us too; and if Jesus agrees with us, then so does the Father. John 17:21 is fulfilled: “that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.” And then whatever we ask on earth, whether it’s binding or loosing, is authorised in heaven, it shall be so, and the Father is glorified. (See John 14:13)

Unanswered prayer
I think one of the answers to the thorny question of unanswered prayer may be found here. We may be praying God will and God’s provision, and quite probably quoting God’s word;  but if we are not at the level of unity needed to be genuinely in His name we cannot really expect Jesus to be “in the midst” in the way that He expresses it here. We may well quote the Truth from Scripture, but Truth needs to be spoken in Love. Prayer is always about God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven, and thus extending His Kingdom among and through us. We all know what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount: “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” (Matt 6:33). God is Love, and “Love is the Fulfillment of the Law” (Romans 13:10), so both God’s Kingdom and His righteousness are expressions of His love. I think God’s kingdom must be real among us before it can be extended through us.  It cannot be without significance (nothing in Scripture is!) that these verses are sandwiched in the middle of Jesus teaching, then answering Peter, on the subject of forgiveness. If we really want to be in agreement when we pray, with all that this means, I think it’s important that we examine our hearts towards each other and ask God to reveal any areas of criticism or unforgiveness that we may be harbouring, before we say “amen.” If there isn’t genuine unity, we can’t expect the blessing.

The Courts of Heaven
The other aspect of binding and loosing is the one most commonly used among charismatics (I use the term loosely: I’m sure I mean Pentecostals as well, and I have a suspicion that Jesus doesn’t use either of them…), and refers to “binding” spiritual forces of evil, and “loosing” people from their bonds. Jesus healed a woman whom He said Satan had bound for 18 years, (Luke 13:16) Her healing is often used as a template for spiritual warfare, but if the truth were told how often do we see a change in someone’s condition when we make these decrees?

In Zechariah 3:7, the Lord says to Joshua

‘If you will walk in My ways,
And if you will keep My command,
Then you shall also judge My house,
And likewise have charge of My courts;
I will give you places to walk
Among these who stand here.”

In Christ, we too walk in those places of spiritual authority. It was when Jesus gives Peter the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt 16:19) that He first made the promise that is repeated, word for word in Matt 18:18: “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed  in heaven.” Those keys are symbols of authority. I think we often have the mindset that our “binding and loosing” on earth are words of authority that release actions in heavenly places, but if that is true what is going on in heaven isn’t happening on the earth, at least in most cases that I have seen. But what if we turn it round and say that whatever is bound or loosed in heaven is bound and loosed on earth? In other words, we can only bind/loose on earth what has already been bound/loosed in heaven? That actually makes a lot more sense to me, and it means that we have to know what is bound and loosed in heaven before we can see it happen on earth. Jesus only did what He saw the Father doing, so He loosed the woman that Satan had bound for 18 years because He saw the Father do it in Heaven.

Kingdom Authority
Joshua was a prophetic type of Jesus. Jesus did on Earth what He saw the Father doing in heaven, because he was walking there.  I think that the occasions when we see binding and loosing actually happen are when we’ve seen it or heard it in the place where we too have walked “among those who stand” in the courts of heaven and have seen what the Father is doing. The earthly realm has been given over through sin to the control of the evil one, but we are no longer under that control; we are above it, and we are taking it back for the King. If we want to at least have the opportunity to see what the Father is doing, we need to “Set (our) mind on things above, not on things on the earth.” (Col 3:2)  Jesus tells us (Matt 28:18) that  “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.”  In Christ, we are in the place of all authority.  To bind and to loose is to express that authority on earth as it is in heaven, whether it is over demons, sickness, finance, or any other circumstance, great or small. We will see it happen more often when we keep His command (Love one another) and walk in His ways, with our minds set on the places that He has given us to walk among those who stand in the courts of heaven.

Be prepared; hold on., Christian Life, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

Count to ten and wait on the Lord

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Wait on the Lord I say! (Psalm 27:14)

We often read and hear testimonies about how someone (quite often a parent praying for their children) trusts in God’s faithfulness to answer their prayers for many years before they see that answer manifest. A well-documented example is Saint Augustine, whose mother prayed for his salvation from his infancy, and yet who seemed to wander further and further off the narrow way in a dissolute lifestyle until his dramatic conversion at 31 years old.

One of the unchangeable attributes of God is His faithfulness. In the midst of his darkness Jeremiah testifies of it in Lamentations 3:22-26:

“Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not

They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.

“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul,
“Therefore I hope in Him!”

The LORD is good to those who wait for Him,
To the soul who seeks Him.

It is good that one should hope and wait quietly
For the salvation of the LORD.”

 We know that God’s word will not return to Him void (Isaiah 55:11), and many of us have held onto that truth in the middle of an empty place for many years before God has filled it with what He has promised – often in a completely unexpected way. We know that “those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength…” (Isaiah 40:31) and again many of us have personal or apocryphal stories of how God’s power and provision have carried them on an impossible journey as He has answered their prayers.

But I have been thinking about waiting for much short periods of time, and in a different context. The theme I’ve come to a few times on these pages is the need to tame the tongue. I probably keep returning to it because I keep finding that I still don’t succeed in that area! But there is a very simple strategy we can use to tame our wild tongues. What’s more we have probably all seen, read, heard and even spoken of it ourselves more than once. Quite simply, it’s “count to 10 (or three or five).”

Waiting a few seconds before we open our mouths in an emotionally charged conversation is in itself good advice,  and you can find it on Wikipedia and wherever else you might look for worldly wisdom. But Christians just have to add two words – “and pray“ – to take it to another level, where we have a practical and powerful example of waiting on the Lord. Because along with the advice comes the promise, as Jeremiah says in the verses quoted above: “The LORD is good to those who wait for Him.”

The Holy Spirit doesn’t need Long if we open the door to him: He will immediately start to bring peace, transforming negatives into positives, curse into blessing. He will always be good. “Cypress trees will grow where now there are briers; myrtle trees will come up in place of thorns.” (Isaiah 55:13

Paul exhorts us to take every thought captive, (2 Cor 10:5) but  if our thoughts are running away down negative tracks, we can’t take them captive unless we stop.  When we do, that simple act of stopping and waiting on the Lord is enough to let the Kingdom Of God take seed in even the most rancid situation.

Try it. Stop, count, pray. Wait on the Lord, I say!

Christian Life, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare, Walking in the Spirit

Through a glass darkly

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“And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them, as upon us at the beginning. Then I remembered the word of the Lord, how He said, ‘John indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If therefore God gave them the same gift as He gave us when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God? When they heard these things they became silent; and they glorified God, saying, “Then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life.” (Act 11: 15-18)

In this passage, Peter is describing to the church at Jerusalem the events of Cornelius’s house that Luke had narrated in the previous chapter, when the gospel was preached to the Gentiles and they received the Spirit and spoke in tongues (Acts 10 : 44-46). This morning, I happened (happened?) to have been reading a little bit about a very well-known author and preacher who calls himself a “moderate cessationist;” wondering, as I often do, how somebody who talks and writes about prayer (and other aspects of Christian living) can leave out what to me is fundamental to my communication with God. Because I often “don’t know how to pay as I ought,” I am really grateful that ‘the Holy Spirit is helping me in my weakness,’ (Romans 8:26) so in my own opinion leaving Tongues out of one’s prayer life is like not putting the yeast in the bread machine when you are baking a loaf. Something comes out alright, and it is no doubt just as nutritious; but it’s heavy and flat, and just not something you want to go to for sustenance.

The cessationist position in the article I read taught that the whole counsel of Scripture provides a more solid and secure foundation for our Christian life that subjective experiences of the supernatural, be it “prophesies” that are products of the imagination, “healings” that are psychosomatic in origin and not at all miraculous, or “tongues” that are the product of the language centres of the human brain and not utterances of the Holy Spirit, so aware of that I found myself reading the passage that I am studying at the moment with this issue very much in my mind.

This episode in the Book of Acts is of course a frequently used justification for the Pentecostal/charismatic position on speaking in tongues: they got saved, the Holy Spirit fell as at Pentecost, and they spoke in tongues; therefore it follows that the gift of Tongues is there for everyone who gets saved. I fully believe this myself, but what struck me when I read the passage this morning was Peter’s comment that he “remembered the word of the Lord, how He said, ‘John indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit,” and that he related this experience of the Holy Spirit among the Gentiles to “the word of the Lord” spoken by Jesus. Pentecostals and Charismatics make this connection frequently enough, and I remember Reinhart Bonneke preaching on this text many years ago; but this was the apostle Peter. Jesus Himself was the Word, the Logos; and the “word of the Lord” referred to by Peter was the “rhema” word, the “now” word spoken by Him into a specific context. So the baptism of the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands with the evidence of speaking in tongues is as grounded in the scriptural foundations of our faith as it is possible to be: referenced by the apostle  Peter to a rhema word spoken by the Logos Himself.

It is essential that our experience always lines up with the Word of God, and that we always worship in Spirit and in Truth; and because of this our assemblies must be churches of the Word and of the Spirit – whether or not Smith Wigglesworth’s famous prophesy of the great revival based on the Word and the Spirit ever comes to pass. But even if some of our “spiritual” experiences are not supernatural at all, I would embrace them every time for the sake of not missing the ones that are, as long as it is always our trust in the truth of the Word of God, and not our (or other peoples’) personal experience, that is the basis of our faith.

To close, prayer is not often something I find difficult. I often come across articles or book extracts that suggest all sorts of props to one’s prayer life, whether they are Bible study programmes, or pathways through the Psalms, or daily notes whatever else, and I think to myself, “Why?” Isn’t it enough to have the Holy Spirit helping me to pray?” Maybe some of these people are “moderate cessationists” as well, avoiding the gifts of the Spirit for the sake of keeping their faith in the Word unsullied by untrustworthy experiences. Maybe they find prayer difficult at times because they have left the yeast out of the bread mix and find the loaf heavy and indigestible as a result. I don’t know, and it’s not for me to judge. Maybe my own prayer life is full of yeast bubbles and has little substance…

But I know this: when I was a baby Christian in a charismatic church in the 1980s I used to doubt that people who didn’t pray in tongues were even saved, never mind just missing out on one of the God’s many blessings for His children, and by the grace of God I am wiser and less arrogant than that now; but I still think It is better see through a glass darkly than never to look in the mirror at all.

NOTE: Material on the power of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer is (loosely) grouped under “Spirit without Limit.” A useful starting point is “The Name of the Father,” which looks at the baptism in the Holy Spirit in the context of the beginnings of the Ephesian church.

Prayer and Spiritual Warfare, Walking in the Spirit

The Peach

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“ We do not know what we should pray for as we ought…” (Rom 8:26)

Sometimes our prayers can be like a peach: we look at a situation – whether we are praying for ourselves or for someone else – and we pray. We see the peach, we take a bite, and we wait for the Lord’s answer. Nothing changes. We pray again, taking another bite. Third bite: ask and keep on asking; knock and keep on knocking. But the door still doesn’t open to us. We keep praying, trusting God’s faithfulness, until we have devoured all the peach. God still hasn’t answered, and we are left holding a damp red peach stone. So we stop praying, believing that our prayers weren’t in God’s will, and we throw away the peach stone.

But what we’ve done is throw away the answer to our prayers. We have prayed for what we have seen – the flesh of the peach- but that doesn’t mean we have prayed for what God sees. In fact Isaiah tells us:

“He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes,
Nor decide by the hearing of His ears”. (Isaiah 11: 3)

The starting place for God’s creative acts is not in what is seen, but what is unseen:

“By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.” (Heb 11:3)

The life that the peach carries is not in the flesh, and not even in the stone: it is in the kernel that is hidden inside the stone. Paul writes:

“I shall pray with my spirit, and I shall pray also with my understanding.” (1 Cor 14:15)

The New Living Translation renders this as “I will pray in the spirit, and I will also pray in words I understand,” which I  think is how it is generally understood. The Greek word used for understanding is “nous” – the word for human intellect and reason. In fact we use it in English colloquially, in phrases like – “anyone with a bit of nous can see that…”  But I think we can see it another way as well. I think it could also mean that we look at a situation and pray about it with our “nous,” but we also pray in the Spirit about the same situation. The two are connected.  In other words, we understand that, for example, the marriage of a certain couple in leadership is in trouble, so we start to pray about it according to what we know and can see, which is praying about it with our understanding; but when we start to pray in the Spirit we receive revelation about how God wants us to pray, our understanding is then enlightened, and we are then praying according to the will of God:

“The Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.” (Rom 8: 26-27)

Let’s remember that when we have prayed through all that we can see, including all the scriptures that we understand to be relevant to the need, we may have devoured the flesh with our understanding, but that is just the beginning of the prayer: it is only by the Holy Spirit that we see the kernel hidden inside the stone, where God’s answer is waiting to bring forth Life.