On Prayer

"In mine ears said the Lord of hosts, Of a truth many houses shall be desolate, even great and fair, without inhabitant... And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine, are in their feasts: but they regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider the operation of his hands. Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge: and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst. Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure: and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it... Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! ... Which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him!" (From Isa. 5). More today than ever I see these words fulfilled in our seeing and hearing, in every place. When we're talking about the government of the nation we live in passing laws to accommodate grown men who think they are women, to share public restrooms with little girls, then we are not only "calling evil good, and good evil; we are calling reality non-reality, and non-reality reality. We have seen society go somewhere beyond utterly insane, and as children of God if we are not "keeping our hearts with all diligence," then we are going to be effected by the same spirits that have driven the rest of the world mad (Prov. 4:23). You may note that the passage from Isaiah 5 was a message from the Lord to HIS people, not the general unbelieving 'world.' Where it speaks of "their feasts," it is talking about their worship services. It doesn't matter how much music, or preaching, or praying, or ministry of any kind we may have in our services; but rather it is how we are thinking, how we are conducting our lives, and how we are perceiving good and evil that matters. If we are not spending sufficient time "praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints," then we simply are not going to have a right mind, which is to say the mind of Christ (Eph. 6:18). If we play hit and miss with God long enough, it won't be long before we are thinking the way the rest of this sin-crazed world is thinking.

The devil has been given license by the authorities of this world to operate on an unprecedented scale, and his evil horde has literally taken over the minds of most of this world. Like never before the admonition of the apostle Peter needs to be heeded with godly fear: "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour" (I Pet. 5:8). And there's another exhortation of Peter that goes hand in hand with that one: "But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer" (I Pet. 4:7). It all comes back around to what I preach about and write about continually, and that is keeping our hearts pure and free from sin. If we're not doing that then it doesn't matter what we think we know, or what we think we're doing; our minds will simply not be sound and right. It brings to mind a sobering warning from the book of Hebrews: "Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of YOU an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ, IF we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end" (Heb. 3:12-14). The key to developing the mind of Christ is keeping the heart sanctified by the holy Ghost, because the mind is brought into subjection to the condition that the heart is in. If we aren't praying much and earnestly our heart will slowly fade into an impure condition, and our thinking will gradually be turned to whatever is dictated to it by the world around us. The reason Israel received the stern rebuke from the Lord that we see in our text passage, is because they did not condition themselves to the law that God had given them to live by, but rather they had been influenced by the other nations and their ways. We who are of the body of Christ have received the Spirit of God as our guide, but if we don't keep ourselves under subjection to that same "Spirit of truth" we will be guided by the spirits of this world instead (Jn. 16:13; Eph. 2:2). Simply stated, our thinking is going to be dictated to us by whatever spirit we subject ourselves to; whether to God's Spirit unto righteousness and truth, or to the spirit of this world unto sin and lies. As the apostle Paul said, "Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?" (Rom. 6:16).

People generally like to think that they are their own, but in reality nobody is their own. As Paul stated again, "What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price" (I Cor. 6:19,20). And everyone who has not been purified from sin by the holy Ghost, and keeping themselves in that state, is allowing themselves to be nothing more than pawns of Satan, fulfilling his wicked purposes in the earth. Men like to think of themselves as being very intelligent, seeing mankind is the highest life form on this planet; but that reality in itself should alert us to the fact that there are higher life forms than us in the unseen realm all around us, both good and evil. To think that we are not subject to powers above ourselves is equivalent to thinking we are actually living in 'the planet of the apes' here and now. Many among God's people think themselves to be above being overcome by demon spirits simply because of 'who they are.' I can tell you by long observation and experience however, that when someone gets exalted in themselves against the devil, the result will always be getting overcome by the devil. There is a difference between exercising God-given authority over demon spirits, and someone just thinking that they're exercising that authority. If we're not keeping ourselves in a worthy condition before God, we would do well to repent and do so before attacking the devil's turf. He is always ready to overthrow someone who is not solid enough to take him on, and he always wins that match. But the devil's biggest victory is gradually taking over the thinking of those who live with too much slack in their line, so to speak. On the other hand, if we DO keep ourselves free from sin, and seek after God diligently, there is no way that Satan can overcome us, or that we can't overcome him. When we are conditioning our hearts unto the Lord the way we need to, then is the saying of the beloved apostle fufilled in us: "Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world" (I Jn. 4:4). But unless we are persevering in faith, and prayer, and the love of God; we simply are not allowing God to be great enough in us to overcome the world. That is the prevailing reality, and whether we do that or not will determine in the end what we are calling good, and what we are calling evil. May God help us, one and all. Amen.