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There is a song that
says,
"Not my brother, not my sister, but it’s me, O Lord, standing in
the need of prayer."
The apostle Paul, singled out by God
Himself, commissioned in the will and the sovereignty of God, was not
above needing the prayers of others. If the apostle Paul was not above
needing prayer, neither are any of us. We all live in the same spiritual
war zone. Prayer is one of our key defenses against the deception that is
in this world. In verse 18 Paul tells us to pray at all times in the
Spirit, and not just for ourselves, but for one another. He is saying,
"Don’t just watch out for yourself, watch out for one another. Pray for
one another."
We live in a world of darkness.
Deception is all around us.
There are 2 things that we need to do in the spiritual war zone:
1)
First of all, we need
to stand firm.
We saw that in
Ephesians 6:13-14. How do you stand firm? You
stand firm dressed in the armor of Jesus Christ, the armor for battle.
What is the armor? It is the garment which is found in chapter 4. How do
you put on the garment? You don’t put it on the outside, you put it on the
inside. All the things mentioned in
Ephesians 6:14-17
are like a list. They all
have to do with standing firm. Each one of those things is a motivation
that causes a person to live like Ephesians 4:24-6:9 describes. These are
the kind of motivations we need. These are the armored threads of our
garment. As we stand in the face of the enemy day by day, we are to stand
firm, immovable.
2) Secondly, we are to be praying at all times in the Spirit.
One hooks to the other. We can’t just be standing there. We’ve got to pray
something. Paul says,
"Standing firm, praying at all times in the Spirit."
Why does he put "standing firm" first and "praying at all times in the
Spirit" second? Because you can’t pray in the Spirit until you are filled
by the Spirit. Look in
Ro8:26. Paul makes a confession that every one
of us has to make. It is the Holy Spirit who leads us in divine prayer.
Prayer begins with God, not with us. Now, watch this in verse 26 of Romans
8:
In the same way the Spirit
also helps our weakness; for we do
not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for
us with groanings too deep for words;
He is not talking about some kind of prayer
language. He is saying you can’t pray in the Spirit until you are filled
by the Spirit. The Spirit of God is the other advocate who helps us pray
to the Father. These two things help us to stand in the world that we are
in, the warfare that we are in, the war zone that we are in.
Remember, it is not a power struggle, it is a truth struggle. The battle I
have every day, the battle you have every day, is how we think.
Proverbs 23:7 says,
"For as he thinks within himself, so he is."
Therefore, the
devil seeks to do one thing, to turn upside down my way of thinking. Once
he gets me thinking wrongly, he can get me living wrongly. Paul says we
don’t war against flesh and blood, and since we are not each other’s
enemies, then we need to learn to pray for one another. The apostle Paul
adds himself to their prayer list there at Ephesus. He says, "Don’t forget
me. Pray for me."
Let’s read verses 19-20:
and pray
on my behalf, that
utterance
may be given (5684)
to me in the
opening of my
mouth, to
make known (5658)
with
boldness the
mystery
of the
gospel,
20
for
which
I am an ambassador
(5748)
in
chains; that in proclaiming it I
may
speak boldly (5667),
as I
ought (5748)
to
speak (5658).
There are three things I want you to see about Paul’s request for prayer
in these verses. I think it might encourage us. First of all I want you to
see the humility of Paul’s request. What do I mean by that? Paul was not
above asking believers at Ephesus to pray for him. Here he is, a converted
Jew, asking converted Gentiles to pray for him. You see, no man is an
island. The word "pray" in verse 19 does not show up in the literal translation.
However, it is implied because of verse 18. Paul is saying, "As you are
praying for others, please don’t forget me." I love the humility of this
man. When I get to heaven one day I want to just spend some time with him.
I want to shake his hand, first of all. Of all the people in the New
Testament, aside from Jesus, he is the one who impresses me the most. Here
is a man with the greatest intelligence of anybody in the New Testament.
He studied under Gamaliel. Here is a man trained in every area and yet a
man who understands how desperate he is for the prayers of others. That is
the humility of his heart. He knows he can’t, and he knows God alone can
do it in him. Therefore he says, "Please, please, please don’t forget me
when you are praying in the Spirit for others."
When you start examining the prayer life of Paul, you find he is a man who
lives out what he preaches. He is not just someone who says it, he is a
man who lives it out. He is a man who prays for other people. In
2Cor13:7 he prays for the Corinthians that they would do no wrong.
"Now we pray to God that you do no wrong; not that
we ourselves may appear approved, but that you may do what is right, even
though we should appear unapproved."
In
Eph1:18 he prays for the eyes of the hearts of the Ephesians to be
opened to the riches that they have in their salvation.
"I pray that the eyes of your heart may be
enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what
are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints"
In
Php1:4, he says,
"always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all"
In other words, you are never
far from my mind.
Then in
Php1:9 he prays that their love might abound
for one another, even more and more.
9 And this I pray, that your love may abound still
more and more in real knowledge and all discernment,
10 so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be
sincere and blameless until the day of Christ;
11 having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through
Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
If you remember
 correctly,
Acts 16:13 shows us that the Philippian church was born out of a prayer
meeting led by the Apostle Paul. He is a man of prayer.
13 And on the Sabbath day we went
outside the gate to a riverside, where we were supposing that there would
be a place of prayer; and we sat down and began speaking to the women who
had assembled.
He prayed for
others.
In
Colossians 1:9, he prays for the
Colossians that they might be filled with the knowledge of God’s will with
all spiritual wisdom and understanding.
9 For this reason also, since the day
we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may
be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and
understanding,
10 so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in
all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the
knowledge of God;
11 strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the
attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously
12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the
inheritance of the saints in light.
In
2 Thess 1:11, he prays for the Thessalonians
believers that God may count them worthy of their calling and that God
would fulfill every desire for goodness and the work of faith with power.
11 To this end also we pray for you
always that our God may count you worthy of your calling, and fulfill
every desire for goodness and the work of faith with power;
12 in order that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and
you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
In
Ro10:1, he prays for his fellow kinsmen that they might be saved.
"Brethren, my heart's desire and my
prayer to God for them is for their salvation."
In
Ro9:1, he says, I wish that I could be
accursed that my brethren could come to know the Lord Jesus Christ, that
they might be saved.
9:1 I am telling the truth in Christ, I
am not lying, my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit,
2 that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart.
3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for
the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh,
Here is a man who walked filled with the Spirit and prays in the Spirit.
He prays for the people around him. They are not his enemy. He prays for
them. Now you see something else about his heart. He says,
"Listen, I am praying for you. Please don’t forget me. I need for you to
pray for me."
You see, he was in the same war zone that we are in. He fought the same
battles that you and I fight. Several times in his epistles he mentions
the fact that he is bold, but that boldness is of the Lord Jesus. Whenever
he was in a hostile situation, he needed the boldness that the Spirit of
God gave to him. Don’t ever put these people on a pedestal. Don’t ever
think of them as being up there with Jesus. Oh, no. They are not. They are
human beings like you and me. The apostle Paul understood that. He alone
knew that he was an apostle born out of due season. He never thought
himself worthy of the calling that God had given to him. He continues to
say,
"I am praying for you. Please, will you pray for me?"
Look at the humility of the request that Paul makes in his prayer!
Do you know what I have discovered? Any time I have ever been critical of
anybody, it is very obvious that I haven’t prayed for them. Have you ever
thought about that? Since we don’t war against flesh and blood, we need
the strength of praying for one another. So often we get perverted in our
thinking because we let the devil influence our minds. We don’t let the
Word of God influence them. I am the same way. We get turned upside down.
We begin to think of each other as enemies, as problems. We don’t pray for
one another. We would rather tear each other down or be critical of one
another. This happens in families. This happens in all relationships of
life.
The apostle Paul says,
"No, no, no! You don’t see the point. We are not each other’s enemy. There
is something else out there enforcing all the deception that we have to
come against. We need to be filled in the Spirit and be praying in the
Spirit, especially for one another. And while you are doing it, please
remember me."
There is something about a man who requests prayer from others. There is
something about a man who stops thinking of himself so arrogantly that he
realizes that he can’t. God never said he could. He is desperate for the
prayers of others. I wonder if we know how desperate we are.
I got on the plane in Memphis and when I sat down beside a man, something
in my spirit said, "This man is in deep need." The first thing I sensed
was a humility in his spirit. It is incredible how you can tell. Some
people are so arrogant, and think everybody else is wrong. I love to sense
somebody who has a humility that is willing to reach out and say, "Can you
help me?" As we took off there, we started talking about bass fishing.
Well, that caught my attention. "Do you fish?" I said, "Not much but I
love it when I get to go." He talked about his boat, and I talked about
the one I used to have. We talked about that for a while. On into the
conversation finally he said, "I am reading a good book here." I said,
"What book do you have?" It was a self-help book. I asked him, "Do you
have a Bible?" He said, "Oh, yeah. As a matter of fact, I have received
Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior."
I talked about that for a while just to find out if he really knew the
Lord. I really believe he did. He said,
"I have been sober for 27 days. I am really a fool. I knew better all my
life. I never drank in front of my wife and kids. I travel all the time."
He said,
"I just started drinking on my trips while trying to wine and dine the
customers, and I became an alcoholic. It almost ruined my family."
He said,
"My wife has not filed suit on me yet."
Evidently there had been some real bad things that had happened. He said,
"She is not living with me right now, but she has not filed suit. She is a
Christian and is in the Word every day. I would just like to believe that
somehow when God puts me back together, He can put us back together."
I said,
"Yes, sir. You’ve got that right."
He was sitting there on the plane, and I said,
"How
about your Bible? Tell me about your Bible."
He opened it up and he had little things written all in it. I said,
"Do you know how to study your Bible?"
He said,
"You know, I’ve been praying that somebody would show me how to study the
Bible for myself."
I said,
"I’ve got something to share with you."
We began to talk about how to study scripture. The sweetest thing that
came out of that man’s lips was the understanding of how desperate he
really was. Tears were streaming down his face as we landed in Atlanta. He
said,
"Will you pray for me?"
I said,
"Not only will I pray for you, I will tell our church to pray for you."
The next Wednesday night we prayed for him and his wife. God hit me with
something as I was getting off the plane. He said,
"Wayne, that man is fortunate. He knows how desperate he is. I wonder if
you know how desperate you are, Wayne, for the prayers of others in your
life?"
I want to tell you something. A lot of times we look down on people like
that. To me, those are the ones who grab my heart. At least they know what
is going on in their life. They know what they can’t do. They know how
desperate they are. The apostle Paul expresses that same kind of humility.
He says,
"I am desperate. When you are praying for others, please don’t forget me.
Pray on my behalf."
If anything has convicted me in this series, it has been that I have
majored so much on the standing firm. I have to work on praying at all
times in the Spirit. That seems to be the weakest link in my Christian
walk. What about your walk? If you are filled with the Spirit, then you
can pray in the Spirit.
Secondly I want you to see the sincerity of Paul’s request.
When a
man is under pressure, something will surface to show where his heart
really is. Many times you can’t see this, but when any of us are under
pressure, that is when our true heart begins to surface. How do we know
that? By what we request when we want others to pray. Look at what Paul
requests in verse 19:
Ephesians
6:19
and pray
on my behalf, that
utterance
may be given (5684)
to me in the
opening of my
mouth, to
make known (5658)
with
boldness the
mystery
of the
gospel,
20
for
which
I am an ambassador
(5748)
in
chains; that in proclaiming it I
may
speak boldly (5667),
as I
ought (5748)
to
speak (5658).
"that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make
known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an
ambassador in chains; that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as
I ought to speak."
It is incredible to me that he didn’t pray, "Would you pray that I be
delivered from this situation? Would you pray that my circumstances be
made more comfortable?" He didn’t say that! He said, "I want to be bold in
the assignment that God has given to me." Something is surfacing. Listen
to what a person requests. Listen to how they pray. It will show you the
true reflection of where they are in their walk with the Lord Jesus
Christ. If they have anchored down their surrender to Him, then their
requests will always be that they be about their assignment and that God
be glorified in everything.
Paul understood what I hope I can understand every day of my life. He
realized he was not a prisoner of the Romans or the Jews. He was a
prisoner of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Look in Ephesians 3:1:
"For this reason
I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus"
Look in Ephesians 4:1:
"Therefore I,
the prisoner of the Lord"
What is he saying? If you will look over in
2Cor2:14, I really
believe you will see what he is trying to get across. Paul understood this
and it comes out in his requests, in his prayer. What we pray for and what
we request has a lot to do with our walk with God. Whether or not we
settle the issue that we are His and nobody else’s, we are to be about His
purposes while we are here on this earth. Look at
2Cor2:14. He is talking about when he
went to Troas and couldn’t find Titus, so he went on to Macedonia.
"But thanks
be to God, who always leads us in His triumph in Christ, and manifests
through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place."
This is explaining what he means by "I am a prisoner of Christ." Let me
explain it to you.
When he says in
2Cor2:14,
"always
leads us in
triumph (5723)
(Gk:
Thriambeuo)
in
Christ"
that is a word that really doesn’t appear
in some translations like it should. In their culture they would
understand. It is a word that means to be chained to His chariot. It is
reflecting a custom of that day. Now what does that mean? They would send
out their army and if they were victorious they would send a runner back.
The runner would come in with some incense and spread the incense around
the town, sometimes on the doorposts. Why would he do that? The people
would begin to smell the sweet aroma of that incense which reminded them
that a victory had been won somewhere. They had smelled that before. So
they would line the streets for a victory parade. They may wait for hours.
Finally the dust would start in the distance. They would see the
commanding general of their army coming on a horse drawn chariot. Behind
his chariot would be the captains and the generals of all the armies he
had conquered. They would be chained to his chariot. As they went through
town, the people would just yell and salute the fact that they had
conquered these men in battle.
The apostle Paul says that it is the same thing in the Christian life. He
said,
"I have been conquered by Jesus. I have been absolutely captured by
Christ. I am a prisoner of Christ. Wherever
I go, I am chained to His chariot. I know I am in prison in Rome, however,
I am a prisoner of Christ. Wherever He leads me, He will lead me in His
triumph."
Oh, folks, if we could anchor this, all of our requests would be different
because we would want to honor the assignment God has given to us while we
are chained to His chariot.
Paul is saying,
"It ought to be a
sweet aroma to understand that you have been conquered by Christ. You are
a prisoner of Jesus Christ."
You might be in a situation. Prisons don’t have to have walls. They don’t
have to have bars. You might be in a marriage where your husband does not
care about God and you do. Maybe your wife doesn’t. You may be in a job
situation. It is a prison that has been created because of your love for
Jesus Christ. For some reason He has chosen to lead you into that
circumstance in your life. If He hasn’t led you out of it, evidently He is
not finished with you while you are in it. He will lead you in His
triumph. He becomes our circumstance. Paul knew that. Paul was not
overwhelmed with prison. Paul was not overwhelmed with the enemies around
him. He knew who his true enemy was. He knew he was on an assignment from
God to be light in the midst of all that darkness.
Therefore, he prays a prayer that shouldn’t surprise us. He doesn’t pray
something that will benefit himself because he knows that regardless of
how bad the circumstances are, he is chained to His chariot. He will be
led in the victory that Christ will give to him. He just needs to be about
what God has assigned him to do while he is in the dilemma God has allowed
him to be in. He asks them to pray that utterance might be given him.
As I have listened to giants in the faith pray when they were under
pressure it has said more to me than anything else. Listening to the
requests when the pressure is on tells you where their heart is. It tells
you where their devotion is. It tells you where their commitment is. It is
in the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul’s heart comes out and it is pure and it is
clean. He wants to be about the business God has assigned him.
Thirdly, there is the integrity of Paul’s prayer.
Let’s look at the prayer
again: "that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to
make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel." There are three
things in that verse I want to show you.
First of all is the word
"utterance." What does he mean by the utterance of the gospel? The word
logos comes from the word that means to speak intelligently.
(Click
here
for in depth study of
lógos)
That somehow rung a bell. I know he is talking about presenting the
gospel, but you’ve got to remember something. Paul has been assigned the
ministry of preaching the gospel to Gentiles. Paul is in Rome and the
target that Paul has is Caesar’s household. Paul is saying,
"I don’t know how to do it in such
a way that they can understand it."
There is another
word for speaking. It means to make sounds, sometimes unintelligible
sounds. Paul says,
"That is not what I want. I want to be able to share with integrity and
intelligence the gospel of Jesus Christ
to these Romans, so they can understand that God loves them just like He
loves me."
So we see the
integrity of it.
The second word that I want you to look at is the word "boldness,"
parrhesia. It means confidence and boldness. Paul is saying, "I want to
present Christ intelligently and with power and with confidence to those
who hold me captive. I want to have the ability, God given ability, to
share it in such a way that it is understandable, with intelligence and it
is reasonable so that they can see that as Gentiles God loves them just
like He loves His own people, the Jews."
The word "mystery"
(Gk:
mysterion) (click
for more in depth word study of
musterion) is another part of that. It refers back to 3:3-7. What
is the mystery? That the Gentiles are included in God’s plan for this
world. He explains it very clearly in
v3-7 of chapter 3. Paul says,
"I have an assignment, and here I am, in prison. It’s not fun. God, I am
not asking for myself. I am simply asking
these people to pray for me so I can win the battle over fear, so I can
win the battle over intimidation, so I can with boldness preach the
gospel."
He says he is an
ambassador in chains. Every time Paul moved his arms he heard the sound of
chains which reminded him of the opposition that surrounded him. He knew
they were there. He also knew they were not his enemy, that his enemy was
the spiritual enemy behind all those people and that these people could
come to know Jesus Christ if he was able to properly get the gospel to
them. So he prays that he might do that.
The word
ambassador
is the word
presbeuo. It refers to the imperial
legate of a Roman emperor. The legate was a representative of an emperor
who lived in the outposts, outside the empire. He didn’t live in the
empire. He enforced imperial policy and was directly accountable to the
emperor. Paul says, "I am Christ’s imperial legate." I am in the outpost
of the Romans and as far away from the people I know who are in the kingdom
of God. His whole mission, he said, is to carry out the assignment of his
Lord, which is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to the Gentile world.
Paul asks the Ephesians,
"Hey, guys. I am in the same kind of warfare you are. I am a man just like
you are. I have fears just
like you have and I am asking you to pray for me because I need to
overcome those fears. I need to have boldness to carry out the assignment
God has given to me."
I have had the question asked me many times,
"If you believe in the sovereignty of God, how come you believe in prayer
if God is going to do it anyway?"
Do you know why I believe in prayer? Because God says to pray. That is why
I believe it. God says to pray. God is sovereign, but I want to show you
something. The prayers of people way over in Ephesus had something to do
with Paul way over here in Rome. How does that work? I don’t know how that
works. How does it work when people pray in America for missionaries over
in Albania? I don’t know how it works. But somehow it does. Somehow it
strengthens them while they are over there.
How feebly I look at prayer sometimes. How frail I see a prayer and yet
God says if we will pray in the Spirit, He will strengthen you. How does
that work? I don’t know but I know it does.
Look in
Php1:12-13. Did the prayers of the
Ephesian believers work? Paul wants the Philippians to know something:
"I want you to know, brethren, that my circumstances [my imprisonment]
have turned out for the greater progress
of the gospel, so that my imprisonment in the cause of Christ has become
well known throughout the whole praetorian guard and to everyone else.
Most of the brethren, trusting in the Lord because of my imprisonment,
have far more courage to speak the word of God without fear."
Paul is telling the Philippians what he requested in Ephesians. He said,
"Hey, it is working." He said, "Everybody knows about my imprisonment for
the cause of Christ."
Look at
Php4:22. This is a precious verse tucked away in the last
part of the chapter.
"All the saints greet you, especially those of
Caesar's household.
How did they get in there? Paul was in prison and was on a journey. He was
chained to God’s chariot and God said, "You want to reach Rome?" Paul
said, "That is right. Let me get a tent and I’ll have a tent revival." God
said, "No, I am going to put you in jail and I am going to put the
praetorian guard over you. But you stay chained to My chariot and stay
bold in the Spirit and we will touch all of Caesar’s household before it
is over with."
The humility, the sincerity, the purpose of Paul comes out in his
requests. So often I want people to pray for me so I can get out of
something. That just shows you where I am. I have not grown to where I
need to be. Also the integrity of Paul’s prayer just blesses me. Where a
person is spiritually is reflected in the requests that he makes in his
prayers. None of us are above asking others to pray for us. We are all
desperate. My prayer is that we will know how desperate we really are
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