Pray for One Another--Ephesians 6:18--Being the Body Series

            Her heart must have been pounding inside her chest as she stepped into that room—that room where no one was welcome without an invitation, that room where coming uninvited could get a person killed. But as the king heard her footsteps and lifted his eyes to see who had dared to come into that room, his heart was filled with compassion. When he saw the face of the one he loved, he raised his scepter to indicate that she was welcome.

            The story of Esther reminds us how difficult it has always been to get an audience with people in positions of high authority. Just imagine if you wanted to have a conversation with the President. For the average person, it would be practically impossible.

            And yet, as Christians, we have free and ready access to the highest authority of all—God himself! At any moment we choose, no matter where we are, we can simply turn our thoughts toward God and express our thoughts to Him, and He will hear us. Isn’t that amazing?

            With such an amazing privilege at our disposal, we should ask ourselves, “How am I using this opportunity?” Am I making the most of this incredible gift? Am I perhaps using it in a merely selfish way? I heard a great question recently that I think really helps put things in perspective—if all of my prayers were answered tomorrow, would only my life be different, or would the whole world be different?

            Today, we’re going to take a look at a scriptural command for us to pray for one another. It is no hollow cliché to say that the best thing we can do for each other is pray for each other. We’ll find out a bit more about how to do that in Ephesians 6:18.

            Beginning in Ephesians 6:10, the Apostle Paul uses the metaphor of warfare to discuss the battles that we face against the schemes of the devil. He makes a vital point in v. 12 when he writes, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” The titles “rulers” and “authorities” refer to the spiritual beings—the demonic beings—who are working with Satan to do battle against us.

            So our struggle is against spiritual beings and their powers, and as the old saying goes, you have to fight fire with fire. You’re not going to win a modern-day war with bows and arrows, and likewise, you’re not going to win a struggle against spiritual beings with merely human resources. This is one reason why prayer is such a vital tool in our spiritual arsenal, and it is why we need to employ it on behalf of others.

            In vv. 13-17, then, Paul calls upon us to embrace certain attitudes and behaviors, and he memorably compares them to different pieces of armor that were worn by Roman soldiers at that time. Then in v. 18, he ties it all together with this instruction about prayer—“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.”

Let’s dig deeper into this verse with a few simple questions.

When Should We Pray?

            According to this verse, we should pray “at all times.” If we were to ask the Bible whether we should pray in the morning, the afternoon, or the evening, it would simply say, “Yes!” Every time of day is a good time for prayer!

            Recall that in John 15, Jesus said (and I paraphrase), “I am like a vine, and you are like the branches coming out of the vine. Apart from me, you can do nothing!” He meant, of course, nothing of spiritual value. We can do plenty of sinning on our own, but to do anything good, the guidance and strength of Christ are absolutely essential.

            If that’s true, then as people who need Jesus like a branch needs its vine, we should never be very far removed from our last prayer, and we should never be very far away from our next prayer. Texting conversations provide a great illustration of what that might look like. You can carry on a texting conversation with someone all day if you want, and yet at the same time, you can take care of the business you need to attend to that day. But that conversation is always in the back of your mind, and every so often you fire off another text to that person.

            That’s a great model for what it might look like to pray at all times. In the back of our minds, we should have an ongoing conversation with God about our day, and then every little bit, we bring that conversation to the front of our minds, and we pray a prayer to God.

            So think about your typical day and ask yourself, “Do I have some pretty long stretches of prayerlessness?” Or ask yourself this—“If I ate only as often as I pray, what would my physical health be like? Would I be well-fed or malnourished?” Well, if you endure long stretches without prayer, don’t you think your spiritual health suffers? So, we must pray at all times.

How Should We Pray?

1. In the Spirit

            When you hear this phrase, don’t picture yourself going into a trance or some kind of altered state of mind. The idea is to pray with the resources that the Holy Spirit provides. What kind of resources does He provide for our prayers?

            The first resource we should mention is confidence. The Holy Spirit reminds us that we are children of God, and as such, we have the right to come to God in prayer. Romans 8:16 says, “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” Thus, we don’t have to wonder, like Esther did, whether the king is going to lower His scepter to us when we approach his throne. We can thus pray with confidence.

            That same chapter—Romans 8—mentions another activity of the Spirit to help us in prayer. Verses 26-27 state, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”

            Notice how the Holy Spirit steps in for us. We don’t always know the right thing to pray for, do we? Sometimes, life is so complicated, we don’t even know what the best thing to ask for is. So as we wrestle with what to even say, the Holy Spirit assists us in the process. It may not be far off to think of Him acting like a translator—as I’m stumbling over my words, He can step in and say, “Father, what Tim really meant to say was…” And so, the Holy Spirit can give us great confidence for prayer.

            Second, He can also give us content for our prayers. Notice that Ephesians 6:17 says that the sword of the Spirit is the word of God. God’s Word is a powerful tool that the Holy Spirit uses to shape our lives—to give us teaching, reproof, correction and training in righteousness (2 Tim. 3:16). As the Spirit teaches us the promises of God, we can use them to inform our prayers. As He convicts us of sin, we can find the remedy in Scripture, and pray over it. A Scripture-saturated prayer is a powerful prayer indeed, and the Holy Spirit can impress those Scriptures upon our hearts.

2. With all prayer and supplication

            Think of this directive as a goal to make your prayers a “well-balanced diet.” The word “prayer” is a more general term that could encompass anything you might say to God—whether you’re thanking Him or praising Him or confessing sin. The word “supplication” is a more specific term that refers to making requests.

            Taken together, these terms describe a well-rounded prayer life. If anything, I’ll bet we’re tempted to go heavy on making requests, and perhaps go a bit light on everything else. Or maybe your prayers are like a form letter—you always end up saying the same things, and the only section that ever gets an update is the request section.

            This statement from Paul instructs us not to neglect any aspect of prayer. Reflecting on The Lord’s Prayer is a good way to find some balance in your prayer life, because Jesus uttered that prayer in order to teach the disciples how to pray. It can teach us, too, if we’ll reflect on it a bit and learn what the Lord was saying.

3. With alertness and perseverance

            This phrase may surprise us a bit, because I think it paints prayer in a different light than the light in which we’re used to seeing it. Paul’s language here is perfectly suited to the context, since he’s been using this metaphor of warfare. A soldier in battle must always remain alert and must persevere through difficulty.

            And remember—a soldier in battle is precisely how Paul envisions you and me in this passage. That observation puts the practice of prayer into an important context. I believe we are often tempted to think of prayer as being like a perk or a fringe benefit of being a Christian—kind of like a bonus that God tossed into the gift of salvation.

            But prayer is no fringe benefit in the Christian life—it is much more like the communication that occurs in a time of battle. If you’re a soldier, communicating with your commander isn’t a bonus or something optional—it is absolutely crucial to the success of the mission and to your own safety and well-being.

            In his book Desiring God, John Piper suggested that many of our problems in prayer and much of our weakness in prayer come from the fact that we have taken a wartime walkie-talkie and turned it in to a civilian intercom. Rather than use prayer to go on active duty for God, he says, we use it to try to call the servants to bring another cushion into the den. We’ve turned it into something like a call button for an airline stewardess—something we can just use to call for another Coke whenever we’re thirsty.

            We must never forget that we are constantly under attack by the schemes of Satan. It is in that light that we must pray—as if our very survival depended on it. We must not let Satan catch us during a season of drought in our prayer lives. If we truly are at war with the Evil One, why would we cut our own line of communication with our commander by not praying? Or why would we render it moot and useless by trying to use it for the wrong purpose?

For Whom Should We Pray?

            At the end of this verse, Paul states that we should make supplication for all the saints. At a minimum, I’m sure Paul was telling these Christians in Ephesus to pray for all the other Christians there in their local church. To that, we could add other believers with whom they had personal contact, like the Apostle Paul, and then beyond that, we could add other Christians as they came to hear about them.

            Here is where we really get to the heart of the command to pray for one another. Our prayers should not be all about ourselves and our own concerns. Other people should have the starring role in our prayers—then, we can just bring ourselves in for a cameo appearance!

            That balance may ebb and flow with different prayers. A prayer to confess sin will, of course, be intensely personal, and it will focus on yourself. In other prayers, you may have a very urgent personal need that receives most of the focus. But in the bulk of your prayers overall, other people should be blessed by being the focus of your prayers.

            I would encourage you not to simply rely on your memory to help you pray for others and their needs. Use other tools to help faithfully pray for others. We supply several different tools through our own church—our recurring prayer list that we now print once a month, our urgent prayer list that we print in the bulletin, the selected family to pray for each week. If you will make use of these tools, they will provide you with a systematic way to pray for all of your brothers and sisters in this church.

            Praying for each other is a great privilege and a necessary tool in our battle against Satan. It also reminds us of the unity that we have as a result of our Lord’s sacrifice for our sins. Whenever we celebrate The Lord’s Supper together, we are reminded that we all have a stake in the sacrificial death of Christ; we all have been washed clean by His shed blood. May we partake of it today with our unity in the forefront of our minds!