WARFARE PRAYER // S03E09
Though the world may see it as platitudes, prayer is one of the greatest weapons we have in our eternal arsenal. It’s not always easy to turn to it first in desperate times, but when we do…it’s a definite game changer. This week, we’re all about this not-so-secret, go-to weapon.
VERSES FROM WARFARE PRAYER
Philippians 4:6-7, 1 Timothy 2:1-2, Matthew 26:39, Acts 10:38, Acts 13:2-3, Matthew 18:19, Romans 8:26-27, 1 Thessalonians 5:17, Acts 12, Luke 19, Romans 12:1, Matthew 17, 1 John 5:14-15, John 10.
QUOTES FROM WARFARE PRAYER
But what is most important is remembering that prayer is more powerful than the Claymores, than the guns, than the bills, than the amendments, than the rules, and the laws, and the gates, and the bars, and the walls that we put up and enact to, to protect ourselves in this world.
Michelle Watson, The Pantry Podcast, Warfare Prayer
You know, there were people being saved, but a lot of it was people just coming to receive without understanding of who we really was.
Shea Watson, The Pantry Podcast, Warfare Prayer
So we have to remember that prayer is a weapon, as much as it is a form of communication. Communicating with God is a weapon.
Michelle Watson, The Pantry Podcast, Warfare Prayer
ANNOTATED TRANSCRIPT
Shea: All right. I think I got some here. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Worship is my worship. Worship is my worship. Bring out the guns, bring out the canons…and shoot the enemy down. Shoot the enemy down. Anyway. Hello.
Michelle: Hi.
Shea: Ah, what a beautiful time it is to be sitting here at The Pantry Podcast.
Michelle: I’m tired, but, like, you make me smile.
Shea: We’re going to bring you some biblical truth. We’re going to talk about a few things out of the Bible that just demonstrates something that I think that every believer should have in their life: warfare prayers. We need prayer. That needs to be the center point of our relationship with Jesus Christ. You know, there’s all kinds of biblical prayers.
You’ve got Thanksgiving prayers, you know, Philippians 4:6-7. Intercession prayers: 1 Timothy 2:1-2. Consecration. When we pray in this manner of consecration, we are setting ourselves under the authority and will of God. That’s Matthew 26:39. Faith prayers: Acts 10:38. Worship: Acts 13:2-3. Look, man Saul and Barnabas were about to head out and share the gospel with people, right. Then, Acts 13:2-3. While they’re worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy spirit said—so see, here they are worshiping and fasting. Here comes the Holy Spirit. He comes in to give them a Word.
And He says, “set apart from me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”
So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off. I don’t know I was in the military and we used to load up ammo, grenades…
Michelle: Claymores.
Shea: You name it. But you know what I found more powerful in life than all of that? Man. Being sent out by the Holy Spirit.
Michelle: Are clay Moore’s made of clay?
Shea: C4.
Michelle: Okay, cool.
Shea: But it’s right.
Michelle: Yeah. When you said, yeah, I’m just random, but now we all know.
Shea: So we have that right now. We all know, but I’m down the line, but all of that, right? Rockets, gun bombs, nuclear warheads… I don’t care, man. I used to call on all and be like, I got all this power. It was nothing compared to the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ and our Father, God. So I’ll worship, right? I got a little off there guys, but hey, now I’m back. I’m back. We’ve got the power of the prayer of agreement, right? Matthew 18:19. Prayer, the Holy Spirit, Romans 8:26-27 and the prayer for all time, 1 Thessalonians 5:17. Pray without ceasing. But why? Because we are in warfare.
Michelle: When you think about war in the spiritual realm, you first have to understand the rules are different. And I see often online during tragedies, more and more lately, but this thing, you know, “I don’t want your thoughts. I don’t want your prayers. I don’t want your positive energy (whatever that is, right?) I want action.”
And when you’re talking to a believer who understands the richness that comes with a conversation with God, which is what prayer is—prayer, isn’t just asking for things—but it’s when we speak to Him and share with Him and communicate with Him. And when you, when you understand what that entails, you understand that the next step would be obedience and then action, whatever that action may be. But what is most important is remembering that prayer is more powerful than the Claymores, than the guns, than the bills, than the amendments, than the rules, and the laws, and the gates, and the bars, and the walls that we put up and enact to, to protect ourselves in this world.
So, you know, you’ve been talking to me and there’s a lot of examples that we’ve seen of times where, because of the faithful prayers, amazing things happened outside of what human effort could ever achieve. And then there’s other examples where human effort was required, but it was the effort God laid out. “Do this this way, and this will happen.”
It was never this, “come up with the plan yourself, do it yourself. Pray that I just sign off on whatever you came up with and it’s going to be perfect.”
God’s always at the beginning of the plan, He has the plan laid out and He’s at the end of it. So we have to remember that prayer is a weapon, as much as it is a form of communication. Communicating with God is a weapon.
Shea: Found out how powerful prayer was. It became my activism because with the right points, with the right heart and the right word of God in you, that breaks down walls, strongholds breaks chains. You know, I like when Jesus entered the temple and Luke 19, right? He enters the temple and he says, this is my temple. It’s going to be a house of prayer. And he tells him, he says, but you’ve turned this into identities. Our body is our temple. And in Romans 12:1, “by the mercies of God that you present your buys, a living sacrifice Holy and acceptable, which is your reasonable service.” So our temple right needs to be a house of prayer. We don’t need outside resources to fight these battles. You see? And then when it continued on the leading priests, the teachers of religious law and the other leaders of people began planning how to kill him.
This is the enemy. This is the principality of the air. This is, this is this battle that we’re fighting this warfare. I like this in the word it says, but they could think of nothing because all the people hung on. Every word he said, hang on that word, this Bible that sits in front of me, this word of God, this canonize scripture has everything. I need to fight my battles. And like you were saying, sometimes we do it wrong. Sometimes we don’t think prayer is enough. Sometimes we question what’s going on around us, but we have our temple. We have this Holy Spirit that’s inside of us. We have the greatest communication tool to win.
Michelle: One of the biggest threats to our prayer life—whether it’s no, or yes—if it’s not immediate, there is room for the enemy to come in and sow seeds of doubt. “No,” is still an answer. “Wait,” is still an answer. “I have something better,” is still an answer test. Is what you’re praying for against the Word of God? “Lord, what do you want me to do? Lord, if it’s your Will, let this happen. Otherwise, I understand you have something better.” Speaking to Him in that manner when I’m in a good headspace, helps in those tough times because then I’ve said it enough times that it’s more real for me to say, okay, I’m excited about this. No, because it means that what I was excited to ask for isn’t even as good as what I’m going to get, because what you have for me is going to work out even better in the long eternal realm than what I asked for. It’s important to remember those kinds of things.
Shea: It’s that mustard seed faith. Yeah. I don’t know, but I’m going to give it to him. I’m going to believe that he can take this. Yeah. I’m going to believe that he has the power to yes, no, not yet. Maybe, you know, that kind of thing, but you’re trusting him with it. It made me think of the boy that was, that was healed by Jesus. In Matthew 17, when they had come into this multitude, this man came up to him, kneeling down to him saying, Lord have mercy. And he goes in to tell him about his son, how he’s an epileptic. He suffers severely. He often falls into the water, into the fire. And the disciples had already tried to cure him of this. Then Jesus answered and said, Oh, faithless and perverse generation. He has been going on for a long time showing his greatness, his miracles.
And he’s like, how long shall I be with you? Cause he knew his time was coming. And yet here they were, it was just about miracles. You know, there were people being saved, but a lot of it was people just coming to receive without understanding of who we really was. How long should I bear with you? I mean, you know, I love when Jesus does these power points, you know, it’s like, come on, come on, get it together. Trust me, have faith in me. Bring him to me. He says, and Jesus rebuked the demon. And that’s where we’re at in this, the demon that he rebuked the demon and it came out of him and the child was cured. That various,
Michelle: All I can see is this analogy for right now, all of the different issues that are going on. And we think we understand the root of the problem. Oftentimes even believers have this temptation to go after that problem in Jesus’s name without necessarily having asked Jesus, is that what his solution is? If this is a part of the solution or if this is just spinning tires in the mud, or if this is actually going to make this problem worse or make a new problem, that’s worse. Instead of considering any of that, it’s like, no, I see. And I have labeled what I deem the root of the problem and I, in the name of Jesus, because I care I’m going to go fix it with my plan. Whereas Jesus came at the issue like, no, I actually know the root cause. I’m Jesus. So I’m actually going to do what’s required, which is rebuked the demon out that’s spiritual level stuff that he saw plain as day because he’s Jesus.
Shea: We are not at that level. We have to rely on him to pinpoint that out. And he’s capable of all of these things. He’s capable of healing on that level. But I love what you were saying about people coming and not even getting the gospel was not yet complete, but for all, you know, they, they were coming and getting and going without the gospel, you can get lost in the other things you’re offering and be like, I care because you have that heart of God, you care, you don’t want to see these people suffering, but you look at the worldly suffering more than the eternal potential of suffering. And so you, you get fixated on ending those worldly things with your prayers or with your actions as opposed to coming at it from that eternal standpoint, which I think is one of the biggest reasons why we end up hearing no more often in our prayers, because we’re praying with a limited, like, I just need this pain to go away. I want this person to not be miserable anymore. God loves to use our misery and pain. Not because he loves to see a suffering, but because often that’s the vulnerable time where we will then come to him. So why are we praying? Is it just because we want them to not be unhappy and in pain or is it for that deeper purpose?
And those disciples came to him vulnerable in verse 19 disciples came to Jesus privately, why could we not cast it out? They couldn’t cast it out. They didn’t give up. They went to Jesus and said, why couldn’t we? But see here’s what the beautiful thing is that we have at, at our dispense, stop being an unbelief and start having the faith of a mustard seed. See Jesus told them to have the faith of muscle. You will say to this mountain move from here to there and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you. That is power. But see here’s, here’s what he tells them. And when we’re talking about warfare prayer, this is what Jesus tells them. He says, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting that deeper spiritual level, not this superficial worldly, we sea level, but this unseen battle, that’s being waged for souls.
Michelle: He’s capable of amazing things like in Acts 12 when Peter was in prison and they were praying and I believe they were fasting, no, they were just praying. They were praying fervently for him to get out. And then he got out, God has took him out of prison. He wasn’t put through like all the things that you would tend to have in prayer. Lord, like work in the lawyer’s work in the judge, make the evidence like all these things we would get really hyper-specific. But none of that was required for God to snatch him out of prison. And because of how things are set up now, God probably wouldn’t snatch you out of prison, given all the tech, but who knows. But the point is God could snatch Peter out of prison based on prayer. That’s what we have to remember is God is capable of the old Testament miracles and the gospel miracles in our church era.
Shea: I think we have too often seen healings, exploited that aren’t real miracles that were actually just shams. And so we’re jaded and it’s harming our faith in Christ. We don’t need to say, I believe every single miracle that’s out there, but we need to believe that he can work those miracles in our own lives. Because the ones that we experience personally and in our circle are going to be different. And miracles don’t always have to be parted water. They can be those little things that are still miracles. How on earth could they have ever happened? Unless we were in communication with him, he loves to do things in a way where you can’t explain them away with human work. So to ask and expect things to come about in very human ways. When you’re, when you’re talking to him, you don’t have to limit him or your expectations to that.
Michelle: And 1 John 5:14-15, it says that this is the confidence that we have toward him. That if we ask anything, according to his, will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him. Does that mean it will always be yes. By our terms. I think the more we align with his will, the more we will hear. Yes. And that’s the key is to get to know him better means allowing him to shape us, fix us, heal us so that we start to understand and see things the way he does. The more you get to know him, you’re going to have different priorities. You’re going to have different wants I’ve. I treated him as a genie and very few prayers went answered, but the more I walk with him, I’ve found my prayers have changed, but I’ve also seen things I would not have ever expected to be answered years ago answered. And I can’t explain it away in any way, except that it was through that relationship and faith in God,
Shea: Testimonies are powerful. Faithfulness is powerful. Prayer is necessary. Who do we go to when we’re thirsty? You know, in Greek, it has different meanings. It’s thirsty figuratively. Those were said to thirst who painfully fill their want of an equally long for those things by which the soul is refreshed, supported, strengthened. That’s what we’re looking for. This emptiness, who do we believe in that? Scripture says that Jesus is rivers of living water. That flows from his heart, John seven, he’s the gate to salvation. Those who believe went through that gate. Those who don’t need to enter that gate from there we go freely coming and going from that beautiful pasture. But here it is always remember the thief is there to still kill and destroy Jesus. His purpose is to give us a rich and satisfying life. John 10 prayer. Our warfare is prayer. Worship is our warship because this is the time. And this is the day to fight this battle the right way. Jesus Christ. Amen.
Michelle: Amen. I love prayer. And we would love to join you in prayer. We accept prayer requests on ThePantryPodcast.com as well as The Pantry Podcast on Facebook and Instagram, help us get the word out more by sharing, commenting, subscribing rating, all those fun things. There’s so many different ways. Um, just do it all. Get us out there.
Shea: We’re selling those shirts by the way. I think we should say that.
Michelle: Yes, yes. Yeah.
Michelle: We’re selling these shirts to pay for the hosting fees for the podcast, as well as donate money to both Save the Storks as well as the Araaminta Freedom Initiative. So yeah, feel free. You can grab them on our website as well as shop.thirtyone25.com, which is my faith-based apparel website where there’s tons, more options till next time.
Shea: Bye.
Michelle: Bye.