The battle in prayer (Part I)
Verse of the day: Colossians 4: 12: " Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends greetings. He is always WRESTLING in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured”
Everyone knows that life is a struggle, but a Christian life is more than just fighting because it ends on the day of death. We must first understand that before the conversion we belong to the kingdom of Satan and once converted, we change the camp. Like all masters are attached to their slaves, Satan cannot stand to lose any of his. If we invite Jesus as our Savior and Master, the devil's agents get together just to get us back. This is exactly what happened when the Israelites were released by Moses. Just after being released, the pharaoh ran after them in order to take them back (Ex 14: 10).
Prayer is the most effective way to fight the devil. Some say they can fight him just by faith but I remind you that faith (The Shield) is just one of the weapons required in the Bible (Ephesians 6: 16). I hope you agree with me that we cannot fight a trained enemy just by using the shield! The shield is a defensive weapon, but not offensive. We cannot defeat the enemy without being able to attack.
The verse of the Day (Colossians 4: 12) speaks of Epaphras who never stopped fighting for the Colossians in his prayers. He was not content to have faith or positive thinking, he was not consoled by speaking about the name of the Colossus church in prayers but he understood that he had to fight for them in prayer. Why fighting? Because the enemy is very aggressive and ruthless. According to the verse of the day, Epaphras was fighting in prayer for the Colossians for one purpose: He wanted them to have a complete submission to the will of God while today many Christians are fighting to realize their own dreams and passions. Very few Christians fight for the church or the country. We should all fight to be in the perfect will of God.
I suggest you read this teaching until the end because we will discover that the target of the battle in prayer is not only Satan but it is also to set a communion with the Lord. Prayer is the only way we connect to the Almighty. Being human, we must necessarily fight against flesh which actually is the first enemy of the Christian. Satan comes in the second position because he often uses the flesh to fight us.
In the second part, we will discover the nature of our adversary.
Chris Ndikumana
