Pray As If Your Life Depended Upon It

Praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.  To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints.  --Ephesians 6:18

We had a great sermon yesterday at our church.  The message was entitled, "Don't look back," an appropriate message for the New Year.  A lot of us look back on past mistakes and get discouraged.  We get overwhelmed by past sins, when God wants us to look forward to future victories.  The Bible says,

Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it on my own.  But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.  Only let us hold true to what we have attained.  --Philippians 3:13-16

What about those sins that keep us awake at night?  Scripture says that God has removed them "as far as the east is from the west." (Psalm 103:12).  How far is that?  If you walked north, eventually you would hit the North Pole and start walking south.  But no matter how far you walked toward the east, you will never be going west.  In the same way, God will never bring your sins up again once they are forgiven.  (I believe God is omniscient, so He cannot truly "forget" our sins; rather, He chooses not to think of them, placing them on His Son at the Cross.)

That's a comforting thought for the New Year, as we look forward to the goals and accomplishments we want to make going forward.  We can forget about the past.  In fact, that was one of the pastor's statements yesterday.  He asked for a show of hands, who had heard the phrase "the sea of forgetfulness".  He reminded us that this was a great thought, but it was not actually in the Bible.  God never spoke of the sea of forgetfulness, because He is omniscient, and cannot forget; also, as vast as the earth's oceans are, they do  have a limit--they can go no further than the shore line, and are only as deep as He made them.  So even this is a flawed example of God's unfailing love.  Besides, in Revelation it says that in the new heaven and new earth, there will be no more sea.

Sometimes we take comforting thoughts like that and mis-attribute them to Scripture.  Recently I was helping my fiancee prepare a Sunday School lesson.  The topic was prayer, and she had me look up scripture references.  I got to the one in Ephesians 6 quoted above, and she recognized the passage as the one describing the whole armor of God.  She began listing them off: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit.  Where was prayer in that list?

It turns out that prayer is not in the list of pieces of the armor, but it is no less important.  Prayer is as vital to the Christian walk as any of the other things Paul listed.  In fact, it is so close to the description of the Sword of the Spirit that it seems to complement the word of God.  Look closely:

In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. --Ephesians 6:16-18a

Many of us remember the movie A Few Good Men starring Tom Cruise, Kevin Bacon, and Jack Nicholson.  The most memorable line in that film, of course was when Tom Cruise's character was cross examining Jack Nicholson's character, who blurted out, "You want the truth?  YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH."  The cartoon above is a parody of that line, showing that too often when a phrase get's permeated into our culture, it gets corrupted over time, and the corruptions end up in our sub-conscious mind more than the original thought.

If you asked 100 Christians if prayer was part of the Armor of God example that Paul gave in Ephesians 6, I'll bet that the majority of them would say yes.  They would probably be surprised if you showed them that it was not.

There was another line in the movie that comes to mind.  When Kevin Bacon's character, the Army prosecutor, was questioning a Marine stationed in Cuba, Kevin handed him a copy of the Marine Corps Outline for Recruit Training and asked him to look up "code red".  The Marine admitted that although code reds were practiced in their platoon, the phrase was not in the handbook.  Kevin then presented a copy of the Standard Operating Procedures, Rifle Company, Guantanamo Bay.  Where in this book, he asked, does it mention a code red?  Again, the witness admitted that this was not mentioned in the SOP.  At the end of this interrogation, Cruise grabs the volume out of Bacon's hand, and asks, "Would you turn to the page where it says where the mess hall is?"  The Marine explains that there is no mention of the mess hall in this volume.  Even though the platoon is regularly fed there, the chow hall is not specifically mentioned in the handbook.

In the same way, while prayer is not listed as a piece of the Armor of God, I believe it is the fuel for the Soldier in God's Army.  Prayer is what sustains us as we wield the Sword of the Spirit.  Prayer gives us strength to stand firm against evil with the Belt of Truth and the Breastplate of Righteousness.  Prayer gives us the confidence to hold up the Shield of Faith and extinguish the fiery darts of the evil one.

My prayer for the New Year is that we would not let the evil one drag us into the pit of despair by reminding us of past sins.  I pray that we would, as Paul said, press on toward the mark of the true believer, forgetting what lies behind.  I pray that we would equip ourselves every day with the whole armor of God, not forgetting to pray without ceasing, so that our hearts would be strengthened and encouraged in our fight against evil, and that we would not falter or tire as one who has not been nourished multiple times daily.