6th chapter of the book of Ephesians. We're gonna go to Ephesians chapter 6. Ephesians chapter 6. We're gonna start in verse 10. Ephesians chapter 6 and verse 10. He says, Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore, take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand, therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked, 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 and watching there unto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints. Let's look to the Lord in prayer. Our Heavenly Father and Eternal God, Lord, thank you for another opportunity to enter into thy house. Father, I thank you for the day that you've given us for even allowing us to wake up again in thy creation. But Father, thank you for another day. to be able to come into Thy house, another opportunity to sing praises unto Thy name, to meet with Thy people. Heavenly Father, help us to never forget. Help us to never forget the names of those and what happened on 9-11. Father, help us to never Help us to never forget what was done. Father, we'd ask that you'd have your hand on their families even this day. For those that were there at the towers, at the Pentagon, in that field. Father, for those whose families are grieving from the attacks in Benghazi. Father, bear those families up. Father, I come before you and I confess my sins, my failures, and my shortcomings. Father, repent of them all. Lord, cleanse me. Father, cleanse me of all unrighteousness, of all iniquity, of all uncleanness. Lord, let there be nothing between me and thee. Father, take me out of the equation now. Father, I know what you've laid on my heart. Father, give me clarity of mind. Let it not be what I want to say, but let it be Thine, O Lord. Father, I commit this preaching hour and this time unto Thee, and this whole service we commit it unto Thee, O God. Do with it what seemeth best in Thy sight. But Father, we pray that in all that You might receive all the honor and glory and the praise for it. We love You, Lord, and we ask it all in Christ's name and for His sake. Amen. Alright, please be seated. So as I sat back and as I looked at this and It's a very familiar text to us tonight, what I want to start off with. And the thing about it, and fairly simply, is that when you look at the Christian life, it doesn't take long at all to realize that we're engaged in a war. Doesn't take long at all to realize that the Christian life is a battle, that it is a war to be fought. Now the good news about that, is that we've already seen the end of the book. We know how this ends. We know that. We know that one day our Lord will come back again. And that He will reign eternal and supreme. But folks, in this meantime, while we're here, we still have battles to fight. The war might be won, but we still have battles that we have to fight. The good news is, is that our Lord did not leave us with nothing to fight them. He did not send us into a battle and send us into this war empty handed. So as you look at these, and this is the thing that I want you to consider while we're looking at these, and we see this, it's a good example here of some of the tools for our warfare. in this text here. But of all these tools, here comes the question with it. How do we use them? How do we put them on? So what I really want to talk about tonight, I want you to hone in on verse 18. Because then this is the thing, is that the hinge on which all of this armor operates. The hinge on which all of this works. How we're able to put this into practice. How we're able to use the weaponry that God has given us to fight this Christian battle. Praying always, with all prayer. What I want to look at tonight, and we don't often think about it too much, but in the Christian fight that we have, if we're honest, the greatest weapon that we have at our disposal is prayer. It really is. And what I want to look at tonight, and that's the thing, I've got three things that I want to look at fairly simple, and I want to stay fairly elementary with it tonight. But you have the purpose for prayer, the presence of prayer in our life, and the power of prayer. And the purpose of prayer, and this is the thing, is you see, Paul told us in Hebrews, he says, you know, having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say his flesh. And having a high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. And the question I want to think about to start off is simply at the heart of the Christian life, what is the heart of the life of a Christian? You see, if you ask the world, if you ask so many people, it's being a good person. It's being a morally good person. It's doing the right thing. It's being loving. It's all these other things that are good things. And I'm not saying that they're not good things. But when you sit back and you think over on some of the men of old. And some of the examples that we have in the word of God. Abraham was a liar. Abraham lied to Pharaoh. Moses had a temper. Moses killed a man in cold blood in Egypt and then tried to hide it and then fled. David, and there's no nice way around that, David did the exact same thing. David on multiple occasions, David killed a man. and then tried to cover it up. David cost the nation of Israel a good deal of people because of his pride. So if at the heart of the Christian life is being a good and a moral person, every patriarch I just mentioned fell horribly short. But we remember David as a man after God's own heart. You remember Moses is the one that led the nation of Israel out of captivity. Remember, Abraham is the father of the nation of Israel. But you see, beloved, at the end of it, at the heart of it, when we get down to brass tacks, that at the heart of the Christian life, what the Christian life is about is a relationship with God. It's about a relationship with Almighty God. If I say I have a relationship with someone and I spend almost no time talking to them, I spend almost no time conversing with them and fellowshipping with them, how good of a relationship do I have? It's not a very good one. If I say that I love my wife, but at every opportunity I have little more to say to my wife, Then, hi, thanks for everything you do. Bye. And then I'm on about the remainder of my day. That's a horrible relationship with my wife. Let's be honest with that. So what does our prayer life look like? And that's what I want to get at. Is you understand and it. When we sit back and we understand exactly what prayer is. that when we pray to God, do we truly believe that we are entering into the very throne room of God Himself when we pray to Him? Beloved, if we want a relationship with God, if we want a meaningful and a lasting relationship with Him, the only way that that is accomplished, the only way that we have that is through prayer. And that's the thing is that Peter told us in first Peter, he tells us, he says, humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time, casting all your cares on him for he careth for you. And that's the thing is that you understand God is not just some cold and indifferent God that you see is so much of the world likes to follow. The world has set up their own gods, be it work, be it money. I mean, insert anything else there. They all have one thing in common is that they're all dead and that none of them care for those that follow them. Beloved, we do not serve a God that is cold and indifferent that doesn't care. And that's the thing, it's hard for us to wrap our minds around sometimes that the living God is a very personal God. that he is very intricately involved in our everyday lives. But the thing about it is that not only has he commanded us to do this, but he wants us to. That he wants a relationship with his children. That he wants us to draw close to him. And the only way that we'll draw close to him is through prayer. And it's in that that's the thing that I want to look at in here is that it's not just coming into the throne room of heaven. But it's a communing with the father. That. You understand, beloved, that we're not. These four walls. Are not the church. Churches are not brick and mortar. Churches are not plywood and steel. Churches are flesh and blood. And if we really believe, and that's the thing, that we are the temples of the living God. Our bodies are the temples of the living God. Paul told us in first Corinthians. So he says, he says, what know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost? Which is in you, which you have of God and that you're not your own. He says, for you're bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. And that's the thing. And I want to sit back and I want to look at prayer because, beloved, we see what's going on in our nation. We see what's going on in our world. And we see the trouble that it's gone into. We see how far it's fallen. That you remember it. And as I said, it still boggles my mind that it was 18 years ago that you had the September 11th attacks. But the thing that you see And the difference in those 18 years, the shape that our nation has come into. Beloved, the day after 9-11 was remembered as a day of prayer for our nation. What's happened? What's happened? And we need to be honest with ourselves. We need to be able to look at ourselves. And I'm not saying this from some, you know, far off spot sitting up on a pedestal. I say it because one of my greatest failures in life has to be my prayer life. That I feel that in that area is where I probably fall short more than anywhere else. But beloved, it's an area that we desperately need more than anything else. You see, and that's what it gets down to. If we're to conduct a warfare well, if we believe that the sword of the spirit is the word of God, that it's the truth of God's word, how are we to put that into practice? How are we to use it apart from prayer? We can't use it apart from prayer. And that's the thing that I'm getting at. I understand that better than most that prayer is, it's very taxing, it's spiritual work, but it's extremely taxing. It doesn't take long to look at me with the way that I bounce around up here to figure out that I'm just a little hyperactive. You know, you put a, you get my coffee in me in the morning and I'm hard to hold down. I can't sit still for very long at all. I'm just, I'm always up and doing stuff. I'm always up and moving. And it's difficult for us to take that time to just sit to be still, to quiet our minds. My mind runs about 100 miles a minute and it's hard for us to sit back and quiet our minds, to quiet ourselves, to spend time in communion with God. It's difficult for us. That's why we're to bring our bodies under subjection. That's why we're to crucify our flesh. But the good news about that, and that's the thing is, yes, it is difficult work, but it's rewarding work. You understand that it's through prayer that we're spiritually refreshed. It's through prayer that we're brought to a closer understanding and a better knowledge of God. It's through prayer that we find the discernment that we need to rightly divine the word of God. We're not going to find that on our own. And the thing about it, and this is something that I want us to consider, is that how effective or how ineffective that we are in the cause of Christ, that how we are not only as a church, but as individuals, that what we show this world will be determined by our prayer life. And that's the second thing that I want to look at in here is the presence of prayer in the life of the Christian. If you will turn with me real quick over to 1 Peter, to 1 Peter 1. 1 Peter 1, we'll start in verse 13. He says, Wherefore, gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance, but as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation. Because it is written, Be ye holy, for I am holy. And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear. Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation, received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world but was manifest in these last times for you who by him do believe in God that raised him up from the dead and gave him glory that your faith and hope might be in God seeing you have purified your souls and obeying the truth through the spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren See that you love one another with a pure heart, fervently. For sake of time, I'm going to stop right there. And this is the thing that I want us to consider. And it was something that stuck in my head when Brother Toby was there with me at that fellowship meeting. When Brother Spears had preached something on sanctifying the Lord your God in your life. in your heart and in your mind. And the thing about that is how you sanctify Lord your God in your heart, how you sanctify him in your life, how you sanctify him in your mind and all that you are. And what that involves is giving him the preeminence in everything. And this is what I want us to consider and this is what I want us to look at. That how our life is, our conversations, everything that we do. You understand everything that we do in this life is a direct reflection of our prayer life. That's something that I want us to consider. Because you see, Christ gave us a long time ago, he gave us a litmus test for how you determine who his disciples are. You remember he said, by this shall all men know that you're my disciples. It's not by our doctrine. It's not by our doctrine. It's not by what we believe. It's not by what we teach. He said that you have love for one another. He said, by this shall all men know that you're my disciples. If you have love one for another. And I remember a while back, there's a story. You understand, and you can find the story in Luke chapter 10. I'm not going to turn over there for sake of time. But in this story, there was a certain logger that came up to Christ and asked him, you know, how can I inherit eternal life? So Christ asked him and said, you know, what's the law say? What does the law say on this? So he said, you know, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul. with all thy spirit, with all thy mind, and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. And he says, you answered right. He said, do these and you shall live. But the lawyer, wanting to justify himself, asked Christ, he says, who's my neighbor? Who's my neighbor? So Christ tells him this story. He says, you know, a certain man was on his way on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. And while he was on that road. He gets attacked. He has robbers come on him. Not only did they steal all of his stuff. But they beat him bad enough that he was on the verge of dying and they left him for dead on the side of the road. Now, here comes along comes a priest. And this priest sees him on the side of the road, sees the condition that he's in, walks over to the other side of the road and passes on by, won't even look at him. And then here comes a Levite and sees this man dying on the side of the road, passes over to the other side of the road and goes on. That's like he's not even there. And then behold, here comes a Samaritan, of all things. A Samaritan. You understand at that time, and this had happened long beforehand, the way that the Assyrian Empire, when they conquered someone, the way that they dealt with them, when they conquered an area, is they took half of the population there, or a good chunk of it, and moved them to another part of their empire, as far away as possible. And they took a group from another part of their empire and moved them into there. and then force them to commingle. So what you have when that happens is that there's no nice way to say that you have a mixed race of people that are hated by everyone around them. You understand no Jew would want anything to do with the Samaritan and no Samaritan would come anywhere near a Jew because the Jews hated them because they're half breeds. They're no longer pure Jew and the Samaritans had to deal with it and they hated them because of the way that they treated them. But you see a Samaritan coming and he sees this Jew dying on the side of the road. And then this Samaritan has compassion on him. He takes the man. He puts ointment and wine in his wounds. Binds up his wounds. Puts him on his own ass. Walks beside that donkey to the end. Takes care of the man. And then after that, the next day, when he had to go, He gives money at the end for the man there. And he says, now you take care of this man. And when I come back through, if you spent anything more than what I gave you, I'll pay for it. So then Christ asks this lawyer, he says, now tell me who is neighbor to that man? Lawyer says, I suppose he that had compassion on him. So Christ tells the lawyer, says go and do likewise. Now what's the point of this? There's only one person that that kind of love can come from. You understand that, that that kind of love to do something like that, that the natural man doesn't possess that kind of love. That's impossible for us is then our natural state to ever understand, to ever realize, much less to put into practice. that that kind of love can only come from God, that that kind of love can only come from Christ, from someone that is no longer a natural man. For someone that is a new creation that has had their heart changed without a change of heart, you will never find that without a new heart, you will never have that kind of love. We can't even come close to replicating it. And that's the purpose of that. Where do we find that kind of love? After Christ gives us that kind of love and He gives that into our heart, He gives us a new heart. How quick do we fall away? How quick do our hearts become cold and indifferent? How quick does that happen to us? If we're honest, it's a lot faster than we want to admit. and you understand something, when a Christian starts to backslide and a Christian starts to fall away, what are the first two things that you always see disappear out of their life immediately? Prayer and Bible study. It's prayer and reading. Those are the first two things that Satan will attack and will try and drag out of your life. And you see the way that our world is gone. You understand, beloved, the closer that we get to the return of our Savior, the more desperate Satan gets. You see how fast the pace this world moves today. That 40 hours a week to work is no longer enough. Now it's 50. Now it's 60. Now it's however many other you have to put in there to keep the world going to the point that we're so busy working for the things of this world that we've lost time for prayer. How fast does that happen to us? And then how quickly do our lives start to show it? We become angry people. You understand, beloved, the angriest person in this world is never a lost man. He's happy in his sin. The angriest person in this world is a backslidden Christian. And that's what I'm getting at, is that the presence of prayer in our life, of communion with God, if that relationship from us to our Father is right, our relationship from us out to man will be right. It'll show. If the one from us to our father is off, everything else will be too. It doesn't matter how hard we try to cover that up. If that relationship is gone, everything else is going to show it. But when that relationship is right, everything else will show it too. And that's really what I want to look at here. And I'm trying to hurry, but the third thing that I've got, and my third point, my final point, is that the power of prayer that you see. The power of prayer in the life of a Christian. And that's what I'm getting at. When I'm talking about prayer, it's not, you know, just a couple minutes, hey God, thank you for our food. Thank you for the day you've given us. Beloved, when you see and you look throughout the Word of God, through some of the people whose prayers were some of those powerful prayers you've ever seen, that had almost, it seemed, immediate responses, and that God worked in a mighty and a powerful way, there's always an underlying thing in there with that. Those prayers are always very short, just about, almost always. But the thing that we don't see in there is that those are built on a lifetime of personal and private prayer to God. On extended times in a prayer closet, far away from God, far away from people, from the eyes of man, on private prayer. The short public prayers that you see are a result of a long time of private prayer. If there is no long time of private prayer, do not expect the short prayers to be effective. And that's the thing that I want to look at. And you understand we have, I can't count how many times you see in the word of God, that Christ spent nights, entire nights in prayer to his father. That's the son of God. You need to remember that. That's the Son of God Himself that spent hours in prayer to His Father. How much more should we? If you would, real quick, I'll read it. But something to consider is that the power of prayer to resist the temptation of sin You understand in Matthew 26, Christ told his disciples and he tells us, he says, watch and pray that you enter not into temptation. He says the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. That one kind of speaks for itself. I don't really have to say a whole lot else with that. It's self-explanatory. Beloved, James had told us, he said lust when it's conceived brings forth sin. Sin when it's finished brings forth death. Christ is saying pray you stem it off before it even starts. But beloved, a great deterrent, and I'm not saying for a moment that we'll never sin. In our bodies, it's impossible for us not to. Let's be honest. But we have an advocate with the Father. And this was one that I loved looking at. And when I went back and looked at this again, the Lord showed me something new with this. If you will, real quick. Go to 1 Kings chapter 18. 1 Kings chapter 18. And a little bit of back story on what we see going on here while you're turning over to that. In this 18th chapter of 1st Kings, you see something going on between the prophet Elijah. And I love looking at the prophet Elijah's life. But you see here that he gets into a dispute with the prophets of Baal. And that there's no other way around it that, I don't know a nicer way to put it, that a competition is put into place. to see who's God's stronger, Jehovah or Baal. So they go first, but you see when they built the altars and they put the wood on there and they put the sacrifice on there, the one thing that they weren't allowed to bring to all of this was fire. Their God had to bring down fire from heaven to consume that sacrifice. So you understand the prophets of Baal spend all day going through this, going through this ritual, going over everything in here. And they work themselves up into a frenzy and they cut themselves. And Elijah's sitting over here and he's mocking them. Elijah's mocking them as they're going through this, you know, and that's what he's saying. He said, maybe your God's asleep. Call to him louder. Maybe he's gone off somewhere. He can't hear you. And they keep going through this all day from the morning sacrifice to the afternoon sacrifice, all the way to the time of the evening sacrifice and nothing happens. And finally they quit. And now it's Elijah's turn. So Elijah tells the people there, he says, dig a trench. He says, dig a trench around the altar. After they dug the trench, he says, now bring water. Now pour water on the sacrifice and on the wood. And keep pouring water on there until you fill up the trench that was dug. And look with me now, if I've set that up well enough, 1 Kings chapter 18 verses 37 and 38. And this is where you see, I'm sorry, 36 through 38. And it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice that Elijah the prophet came near and said, Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel and that I am thy servant and that I have done all these things at thy word. Hear me, O Lord, hear me. that this people may know that thou art the Lord God and that thou hast turned their heart back again. That's the whole prayer. That's the whole prayer that he prays, that Elijah prays. After the prophets of Baal have spent all day working themselves up into a frenzy until they couldn't stand, until they couldn't do anything. And they went with nothing but silence all day. Verse 38 says, then the fire of the Lord fell. and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when I looked at it, an interesting thing showed up in there. And when you see the power of prayer in there, that you see the power of prayer in tearing down false teachings, You understand with what they had going on with bail, that was fairly easy to see that there was something seriously wrong going on there. But beloved, you see that in so many of the churches, so-called churches that you have around today, that it's very plain and very clear that it's false teaching, that something's wrong there. But what happens when the line gets a little bit more blurred? What happens when it's hard to see? Between that which is good and right. And that which is just a little off. Just a little off is still wrong. He said a little leaven, leaveneth the whole lump. If you add a little bit of error in there, you don't have most truth in a little bit of error. You still have all error. There's no way around that. And it's through prayer. It's through long time spent in private prayer and devotion to God that we see and that we learn how to discern and to rightly divide the word of truth. That without that, apart from that, we don't have it. You won't find, you won't be able to see what we learn from the word of God apart from prayer. We certainly never learn how to apply it to our lives without prayer. And the last place I want you to turn, and I promise this is the last place we'll be turning, James 5. James 5. Verse 13, in James 5, James writes, he says, Is any among you afflicted? Let him pray. Is any merry? Let him sing psalms. Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up. And if he hath committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one to another and pray one for another that you may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. You understand? And that's the thing about it. That's the thing about prayer at the end of it, that it's not us. It's not us that's working. It's not us that's doing any of this other stuff. You see, it's pleading with God for his help. It's begging with God to take charge. We can't control the situation. We can't control anything we do. You understand, I've had times when I've left to go somewhere, I have to leave, you know, 15, 20 minutes earlier beforehand to account for lights, to account for something as simple as a traffic light. I am not sovereign at all. If I can't even control whether or not a traffic light is going to make me late or not. I have no control over anything else. None. But I know one that does. I know one that controls everything. And he's the one that we plead for help. He's the one that we plead to take charge. There was a saying, and Brother Griffiths said it here too, that evil will triumph because good men do nothing. Evil triumphs because a good man does nothing. Beloved, we are not powerless in what is going on in this world. And that's the thing, and that's what I want you to understand, the big takeaway from all of this, is never underestimate the power of prayer. We see the shape that this world has gotten into. Even here in our own town, we see the way it's coming. We see what they're trying to pass, what they're trying to allow to accept what God calls sin. And we all just say, well, it's going to pass. There's nothing we can do about it. We can go up and talk to them, but that's it. Here's one better. How about the people of God start getting into our prayer closets and plead for God to intervene in what's going on? Then we might get somewhere. Beloved, we say that we want to see revivals, that we want to see things turned around, that we want to see our country brought back to where it was. But that's not going to happen. until we start pleading for God to change it and to have mercy on us. That won't happen until we start pleading for mercy. So the people of God get back into our prayer closets and we seek his face and we plead for him to intervene. But the last thing that I want to look at, and this is what I want to close with. And I read a book by Ian Bounds. Ian Bounds was a Methodist preacher. There's a lot of things that Ian Bounds did that I didn't believe that I don't agree with. But there are two things that you cannot say that are undisputable about the life of Ian Bounds. He was a child of God. And his prayer life was something that would put just about all of us to shame. But the thing about Ian Bounds, and he spent hours every morning I mean three and four hours every morning in prayer before his day ever started. E.M. Bounds died in 1913, he went to glory. Still pleading for God to save his son, Osborne. 63 years after the death of E.M. Bounds, God sent a preacher by the name of Marian Price to the house of Osborne Bounds. who was in very quickly declining health. God used a preacher to take the gospel and save the inbound soul. Now that is from God. Beloved, our time spent in prayer, God could have used anyone that he wanted to, to save that man's soul. But because of the prayer and the surrender of Marian Price, God chose to use him. Salvation is all of God, and there's no taking away from that. But there is nothing wrong. With pleading for God to save the souls of those we love. I hope it's been a blessing to you. If there's anything anyone wants to make known, something on your heart that you want to share, come ahead, brother. Brother Griff, y'all come on and go in there.