Prayer: Motives and Methods

I would like to share another thought about prayer, motives for prayer and methods. Any who know me know that I rarely word a prayer that isn't based solidly upon scripture, or totally in harmony with the same. Those lines of scripture haunt me (in a good way) from that hard hitting pastoral guidance book written by Jesus' brother, the Apostle James, "You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend it in gratifying your lusts." Now the chapter is about personal morality, about people being scattered, double minded, lost in competing passions, but the truth of the statement applies to all of prayer. I don't want to take God's name in vain. So I don't want to pray prayers that come from my passions.  Why?


Today we have turned the word "passion" into a good and admirable quality. We say as a compliment, "he is so passionate" (same with the word enthusiasm) Yet an enthusiast just a short while back meant a person enamored with an object or goal, seeking the object of a passion and NOT to be trusted.  The primary definitions of passion is "a bent of mind towards a particular object."  Idolaters are passionate for myriad idols.  So prayers from our passions are worthless.


People pray two ways "amiss" (1) faithlessly - a proforma action to be seen or if privately from their own romantic delusions about their relationship with God, most times a god they have constructed in their own image, holding all the same passions and prejudices; and (2) passionately - seeking God's help in their willful wants and actions.  We have lost the distinction between "fervency" and "passion."  "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much" quoting James from the next chapter has HUGE meaning. Passionate prayer vs Fervent prayer - the difference is night and day, literally the difference between darkness of the "heart" and filling the heart with "light." 


That word fervent is an amazing word. It is translating the original Greek word, energeō and that one Greek word took two English words to try and convey the meaning "effectual fervent". We know that effective mean, "causing an action." Prayer that does not cause an action is dead, uttered amiss. So what does "fervent" mean? The root of fervent is "intense heat" the imagery of the Holy Spirit, tongues of fire, ushering in a new power, an energeo. God's uncreated energy.  God's uncreated energy cannot permeate a person, matter or accompany the affairs of men (both good and evil men) without changing them. 


The "spiritual warrior": In all of scripture I have found only two weapons afforded the spiritual warrior. Spiritual, effectual, fervent prayer is one.  What is the other? Consider, that well known text about the Armor of God, from the next chapter of James. "But on the whole armour" here the word armour is implied since a verse later he gives a word picture of it.  The Greek word here translate, "whole armour"  panoplia, is compound word the literal meaning of which is "all that has utility".  Put on all that has utility from God. Again, it denotes actions, all that may be utilized. Then he outlines each tool, each utility and here he IS talking exactly of the battle in which we are engaged in this prayer room. "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."  Could there be any better description? 
(1) Stand, wrapped about with truth. - number one without which all other efforts are in vain, and sadly this first step is a step so many religious people have yet to take, (lost in passions - illusion - delusion of the myriad idols.) 
(2) What is next the breast plate of righteousness - Why is this second, because the second that you start actually entertaining the truth you become a target of Satan, and there is nothing more pathetic that when Satan stoop to teaching theology to those who may slip from his grasp. Every passion he owns in you he will use to try to get you to create a "religion" of your own prideful invention. - One reason I cautions about people entering a fast, when unprepared for it. Some of the most demonically deluded people I've met in my life, gained their delusion (their heretical revelation) while pridefully engaged in a fast. Nothing but the discipline of "right actions", the fires of combating the passions is appropriate here. One does not start by "receiving revelations."
(3) Our feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace - Shoes of preparedness  manufactured of the Gospel of Peace - "O Lord be the guidance of my feet" - preparation  - Before a person can be a warrior they have to know how to "do no harm." Before being handed a weapon, you have to know what it is, what it is capable of, and how to use it, so that you will do no harm, first to themselves or to others. It sort of punches a hole in the instant, passionate, spiritual oracle, doesn't it. Even Saint Paul who was an expert in the law, prepared in the Gospel seven years before he presumed to teach. 
(4) And taking the shield of faith - which is what the preparation in the Gospel produces, IF it is truly the Gospel - the shield of faith - that those body shots don't make it all the way to the body as before. Rather than a passive defense that is the breastplate, it is an aggressive shield, it works intelligently and cunningly and meets the attacks as they come, before they can strike.
(5) Next taking the helmet of Salvation? My, wouldn't one naturally think this would be first? Is not that how it is usually taught in most American Christian circles. But what is salvation here. It literally means coming so imbued with Christ that you begin to think like him. 


Look closely at the list - FIVE defenses armaments, no weapon. Only at that point are you given a weapon. "The sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God." And that word arrives two ways at least. One from the scriptures and two the practical words of healing and help for those working on 1 to 5, or merely open to The Way, Faith In Jesus Christ AS God. 


So spirit imbued prayer, which is from a base of God word is a combination of the two weapons we are given. I use it almost exclusively in private and in public and I'm not talking about an intellectual exercise of matching "proof texts" to prayerful intentions, I'm talking about prayer enriched and given reality by the power of the Spirit and the power of the Word. And that word power is interesting too.  "You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." Power = dunamis (Gr) where we get the word dynamite. The spirit filled prayer imbued with the word is a double explosive able to shatter strongly fortified demonic fortresses and prideful constructions. 

One last word about the spiritual battle the Christian Americans should be fighting against the stronghold of demonic forces that have been installed in nearly every seat of power and influence in our country. We have to we wise, and learn the nature and modus operandi of our enemy. But we need to be really, really careful that we do not sacrifice our own "healing/salvation" by being continually focused upon our enemy.  Tens of Millions right now are in spiritual danger, because of the outrages of our government they are endlessly, night and day rehearsing the strength, gaul, and cunning of the enemy.  We cannot focus on the enemy to the exclusion of the health of our own souls. We have to focus on God and everything that is good and right MORE than we focus on the enemy or we will be robbed of the means and methods to overcome him. 

Dr Butch and Company - 2.9.12