After the Miracle

Today's Devotional Thought
April 19, 2012 by Wendy Foreman

Prayer is Essential

Prayer is essential in this ongoing warfare. It is a battle, this Christian journey we are on. The devil is out prowling around looking for someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8). God is at work and Satan is mad and so he will use every tactic He has to create unbelief and doubt in us so that we perhaps sin or turn away from God and that obviously renders us ineffective for the Lord. And Satan has then won; one less person serving the Lord and winning others to the Lord.

Satan does not care about you or me.

He just knows that his time is limited and he needs to devour as many children of God as he can and make sure as few come to God as possible.

Friends, there is a battle raging around us and I think we sometimes forget about that. We go about our day doing our work, caring for our families and doing other responsibilities. But do you think about the fact that Satan is plotting against you? He knows our weak points and when we struggle with them he smiles and begins turning up the heat and filling our minds with lies John 8:44 calls the devil, the father of lies. How do we fight Satan when he comes at us with lies?

We use scripture.

In Matthew 4 when Jesus is tempted by the devil He uses scripture to refute every temptation that Satan uses. We must do the same. If you struggle in a particular area then search out scripture and find what it has to say about the thing that you struggle with and write them all down and memorize them and when Satan starts you come right back at Him with the word of God. Oh, he will have no choice but to leave you alone.

Prayer is another area. As is mentioned in today's scripture, prayer will encourage us and give us the power we need to fight. We need to pray not only for ourselves but for our brothers and sisters in the Lord. This particular verse says long and hard. You know if you are fighting a battle in life and you feel like you aren't winning you are thanking God you have some prayer warriors in your life who you know are praying you through. Be that for someone else. Pray for your Pastor and his family. Pray for other leaders in your church. Pray for your family members and friends.

Sweet sisters, I sit here today knowing that many of you out there are in a spiritual battle you are swinging your sword of the spirit with all your might and the battle is fierce. I want you to know that I am praying for you today. I am praying long and hard for you. I don't want for you to be discouraged or drop out of the battle. I want you to know that we are victorious. We win and we will leave this earth and all the struggles of it and go to see our Savior face to face. He will wipe our tears away and we will have a new body free of all the battle scars we received while on this earth.

I want to share a song with you today in closing. As you listen to this song I want to know that somebody's praying you through. I pray this song encourages your heart today.

"In the same way, prayer is essential in this ongoing warfare. Pray hard and long. Pray for your brothers and sisters. Keep your eyes open. Keep each other's spirits up so that no one falls behind or drops out."
~Ephesians 6:18 (MSG)