[Power of the Word] Praying Always
Daniel Brady
“…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
Can you believe it? I’ve finally gotten off of verse 17. My goodness, I spent nearly a whole year talking about just that one verse. However, I hope that, along the way, at least some of what I said was beneficial to you.
So now, on to verse 18. now, Paul has finished describing the armor of God. However, he is not finished with the topic of spiritual warfare. We know this because verse 18 is a continuation of the sentence he began in verse 17. In fact, this one sentence encompasses all of verses 17-20. It reads like this: “And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints—and for me, that utterance may be given to me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am a minister in chains; that in it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.”
There is a mouthful. But what is Paul saying here? He is telling us to pray as we take up the armor of God. Now, in so doing, he tells us that we should be “praying always,” just as in I Thessalonians 5:17, he tells us to “pray without ceasing.” The fact that we are pray as we put on the armor of God, and that we are to pray always means that we should also always be taking up the armor of God. The war we fight will not be over until we leave this earth. When you reach the age of 65, you don’t get to retire from God’s army, buy a vacation home in Florida, and take it easy the rest of your life.
After telling us how often we should pray, Paul goes on to tell us how we should pray. He tells us to pray “with all prayer and supplication.” This means we ought to pray about everything in life, including those things that seem to be small and insignificant. The reason for this, first of all, is that nothing truly is small or insignificant.
But how quickly we forget that we are dependent upon God for our very lives. It is He who created us. It is He who sustains us. And it is He who determines when and how we shall leave this earth. And considering our sinfulness, we actually deserve nothing but death. The very life we have is a gift from God.
That being the case, we ought to recognize our dependence upon God for everything concerning our lives. In whatever need you have, whether it be large or small, it is God who ultimately meets that need. And the fact that He does meet our needs is no more than another manifestation of God’s grace and goodness. Therefore, we would do well to follow the instruction found in Philippians 4:6, which says, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.”
The second reason we ought to pray always and for everything is that God is actually concerned with every detail of our lives. Even though we deserve death, He has been gracious to us. He has saved us from the guilt of our sin and its just penalty. He has made us His children, and He is our loving Father who cares for us. In addition, He is all-powerful, and all the world’s resources are in His hand. Therefore, there is no need of ours that He cannot meet, and there is no need of ours that He is unwilling to meet.
In Matthew 7, Jesus speaks of the fact that fathers do not give bad things to their children when the children ask for good things, even though the fathers, due to their sinful nature, are inherently evil. Then He says, “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him” (v. 11).
So we are to be praying always, praying for and about everything, and then thirdly, we are to pray in the Spirit. But what does it mean to pray in the Spirit? We’ll talk about that next time.
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