The Good Fight Series #8
Pastor David T. Elms Preached on 7/28/2026
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Summary
Pastor David T. Elms concludes 'The Good Fight' series by emphasizing that prayer is not just another piece of armor, but the vital posture and breath required to wield all spiritual weaponry effectively. and standing strong in the Spirit requires persistent, diverse, and intercessory prayer.
Key points
- •The primary posture of the believer's armor is prayer, which acts as the 'breath' giving life to every piece of spiritual equipment.
- •Prayer should not be viewed as an item on a checklist but as the atmosphere we live in, especially during 'Kairos' moments - opportune, Spirit-led times of intense focus.
- •A believer's weaponry is spiritual, and fighting the wrong battles in the physical realm (or with the wrong attitude) often stems from a lack of prayer.
- •True intercession must expand beyond the self to cover 'all saints,' interlocking spiritual shields to protect the community of faith.
- •The 'first fight' is the battle to actually get to the place of prayer, as the enemy constantly attacks a believer's authority and right to speak to God.
Scripture
Prayer
Spiritual Warfare
Spiritual Growth
Surrender
Scripture
Life application
This week, identify your 'default' response to stress or conflict. Instead of reacting in the flesh, practice 'perseverance' by keeping your prayer life like a ready boat at the water's edge, turning to Jesus in the moments that feel most chaotic.
Reflection questions
- Pastor Elms noted that 'the man who sleeps in the garden swings the wrong sword.' In what ways does a lack of prayer lead to using the 'wrong sword' in your relationships?
- Which of the four 'alls' mentioned (always, all prayer, all perseverance, all saints) do you find most challenging to incorporate into your life?
- How can you tell the difference between 'Chronos' (clock time) and 'Kairos' (God-given moments) in your daily routine?
- What lies does the enemy tell you to prevent you from feeling you have the authority to pray?
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Full transcript
0:00know, I was talking to my doctor this morning. Amazingly, I
0:05had a stress test with Dr. Gerdes, and whenever I get
0:11a stress test, he comes in and we talk about God,
0:17and He's got a chaplain on the hoof, and so here we go. And he
0:23was talking about how he's Egyptian, and he came up through Egypt, and how Christianity
0:27has just been bullied in that part of the world. He's kind of fed up
0:32with the bullying of Christianity, and to be honest, I'm kind of fed up with
0:37it too, because people think that when you become a follower of Jesus, all of
0:41a sudden, you're a pushover, and that's nowhere in the Bible. It does say turn
0:46the other cheek, but if anybody has a brain, you know there's only two cheeks,
0:52okay? One, two, and we're done. And so, you know, but this idea that to
0:58be Christian, you gotta be passive is hogwash. No, we're not pushovers. It doesn't mean
1:03we're chasing battles. It doesn't mean we're picking fights. It doesn't mean I'm chasing down
1:09harm, but I'm also going to choose when I will fight. and there is a
1:14good time to fight. I was on the phone with my brother yesterday, and he
1:20was talking to me about how jujitsu has really made it to where he's so
1:25comfortable. Of course, if you don't know, he is in the top 1% of fighters
1:30in America, and he's been twice to Worlds. And so if you know about the...
1:35It's the BBJ something. Yeah, that. It's all of this Brazilian jiu-jitsu. It's an
1:41amazing program. And, of course, he is very good at it. And so we
1:47were just talking about it. He said, you know what, David? He said, it's
1:52amazing. If you fight, they call it rolling. He said, if you roll a
1:58lot, you really don't get bothered by jiu-jitsu. those that want to bark like there's
2:04a fight. It's almost like you're bored with it because you do this all the
2:09time. And if you're wanting to do that, that's a choice you can make. But,
2:15you know, it changes your world, and that comes with understanding how to fight by
2:20being in fights. Now, we battle not against flesh and blood. That's what the Scripture
2:26says. But we battle against principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness in high places. That
2:31doesn't mean that you're a pushover, but you've got to know when to fight. Every
2:37fight that comes our way is not our fight. I don't want to get in
2:43the wrong fight and lose the war. There are some battles in a family that
2:49occur that sometimes you've got to stop and assess the battlefield. Is this the battlefield
2:54where I really want to expend my energy because Because there's a bigger narrative in
2:59this whole process. Those of you that are coming to our parenting seminar on Saturday,
3:05you're going to hear about this because raising children, you don't fight every battle that
3:10comes that way. Sometimes you just giggle. Sometimes you wink at it. Not that you're
3:16encouraging evil, but you choose your battles. And you choose where are we at
3:21in the spectrum of danger? Where does this fit in the spectrum of
3:27all the trauma that life is going to bring? I don't want to
3:33create trauma when life brings enough trauma. I've often said this whenever your
3:39children get a bike, you generally buy training wheels with that bike. And
3:44we were joking with our neighbor the other day because Ethan, who blessed us so
3:50much a couple Sundays back, Ethan, our neighbors, along with his oldest brother, decided that
3:56they had the wisdom to know when his training wheels should come off. And Ethan
4:01was still a little, little boy, and Austin and Brandon found a wrench and took
4:07Ethan's training wheels off. Well, when you take the training wheels off, the
4:12training wheels off the kids' bikes, you better have your Band-Aids close by. And when
4:18they run in with a beat-up leg, don't act like it's the end of the
4:24world. You should have prepared with some Mercuricom. I think that's what it's called. Mercuricom.
4:30Thank you. My medical practitioners are helping me out. You've got to be ready. Why?
4:36Because they're going to get a beat-up, skint knee. But that's not the worst battle
4:42in all the world. I would rather have a boy with a skint knee than
4:47somebody that's a little boy that's lived in a bubble because life is going to
4:53be hard. I have watched some people that in their childhood had aversions to a
4:58certain health. They had things that would happen to them. Sometimes children with diabetes. understand
5:03more about living long because they learn that life is a battle at a very
5:08young age and instead of acting like they've been cursed they just embrace the process
5:14and the process makes them better and they outlive those kids that thought they had
5:19it all when they were eight nine and ten because they realize that life is
5:24tough and the sooner you realize that life is not fair everybody say that to
5:29your neighbor life is not fair I know you didn't want that to come
5:35out of your mouth. I know you didn't want it to, but it is not
5:40fair. And the sooner you realize that, the sooner you'll realize when a blow comes,
5:44maybe it's not because you deserve it. Maybe it's just the waves and the warring
5:49of life. And so when it comes, I'm going to stop. Instead of letting it
5:54assess me, I'm going to assess it. It's like this Bible. This Bible, you don't
5:58read the Bible. The Bible reads you. All right, you think this is a book
6:04you read? No, no, no, no. You get in this book and all of a
6:09sudden, all of a sudden you'll say, "I need to move off this page. I'm
6:14gonna ease on down, I don't know." Then you'll find certain verses you'll wanna stand
6:19by and just stay at, you know. "Consume my enemies, O Lord, chew them with
6:25your teeth. Shoot your arrows of righteousness at them, O Lord." Can I memorize that
6:30verse? And then your mom comes along and tells you to memorize my verse, Ephesians
6:354:32. Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for
6:40Christ's sake, hath forgiven you. I was needing to correct my wife this week, and
6:45I corrected her, and I corrected her a little too strong. And guess what her
6:50husband was doing when he finally got in his office? Be ye kind one to
6:54another. Tenderhearted. Can I believe I just told you guys that out loud? Be
7:00kind one to another. Tenderhearted. Forgiving one another. Even as God, for Christ's sake, hath
7:06forgiven you. That verse will crawl up in your face, get its finger out, and
7:12say, you're the one we're talking to. And this is where God will change your
7:17life. He'll change your disposition. And so that's why we have gone through
7:23this Good Fight series to know that the battle we fight is a spiritual
7:29battle, but we've got to fight it in physical manners. It's not theoretical in
7:34the ether of your brain. You've got to have outward responses to inward attacks. So
7:40we've talked about putting on the belt of truth. We've talked about putting on
7:46the shoes, the boots of the preparation of the good news of peace. We've
7:52talked about, remember, I brought my bulletproof vest. I'm sure all of them would have
7:56laughed so hard at me putting that thing on because righteousness is like that. None
8:01of them like wearing it. No, nobody wants to wear it. That's the way righteousness
8:06is. I want to be a dirty dog. I know y'all are all sweet and
8:11special. None of y'all have any alley cat in you. But every once in a
8:15while, I want to be a junkyard dog. And you know what I've got to
8:20do? I've got to put on that breastplate of doing right. and say this is
8:25who you're going to be you were not be going to be what your flesh
8:29would like to be you're going to be what God has created you to be
8:34my fallen flesh wants to fall back here but I'm going to stand up and
8:38say that's not who I will be that's not who I'm going to be it
8:43might have been who I have been but that's under the blood and at the
8:47altar there's a new man walking in my shoes And so we change little by
8:53little by little by little. And we talked about the breastplate. Then we talked about
8:58the shield of faith. Faith in the Greek is theoretical stuff. But in the Hebrew,
9:04it's faithfulness. It's stability. It's dependability. That's what faith is. You put a shield of
9:09dependability up. And then there's the sword of the spirit, which Sister Elms, did she
9:15ever wield the sword you brought? She did not wield the sword. She's not
9:20strong enough to wield that sword. Don't tell her I said that. But I better
9:26take that back. I talk big when she's not around. That sword of the spirit,
9:31which is the word of God, it's the only offensive weapon mentioned. And then tonight,
9:37we think many times, many people think that that's the whole of the armor of
9:42God. And they miss the whole essence of how you're to conduct yourself when
9:48you're practicing this putting on of the whole armor of God. And so I'll read
9:54it to you, Ephesians 6, 10, still 6, 10. Finally, my brethren, be strong in
10:00the Lord and the power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God
10:05that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil, the tricks
10:11of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities,
10:17against powers, against spiritual wickedness, and the rules of darkness in this world, against spiritual
10:23wickedness in high places. Wherefore, take unto you the whole armor of God. All right?
10:29All of that is introductory. That ye may be able to withstand in the harmful
10:34day, when people are trying to hurt you. That's what evil is. There's a difference
10:40between sin and evil. Sin is, I made a mistake. Evil is when
10:46I tried to hurt somebody. God has a tremendous capacity to forgive sin. But evil,
10:52he'll spin away from it. When you start trying to hurt people, that's when he
10:58becomes your enemy. But in the evil day, and the Bible said in the last
11:04days, evil men shall wax worse and worse. That's these days. Evil men, not all
11:10men, but evil men. All right? And so he said in that evil day,
11:15And having done all to stand, stand therefore, having your loins girt
11:21about with truth, having on the breastplate of righteousness, your feet shod
11:26with the preparation of the gospel of peace, above all, everybody say
11:32above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able
11:38to quench the fiery darts of the wicked and the Take,
11:43you can tell I don't have my glasses. I appreciate y'all being
11:49patient with me. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword
11:55of the spirit, which is the word of God. All right, and
12:00many people think that's it, but that's not it, because right there,
12:06it begins by saying, praying always with all prayer and supplication in
12:11the spirit. If you've got a King James Version, Tell me,
12:17is that spirit capitalized or is it not?
12:22It's capitalized. You Bible readers, you know what
12:28that means. That's not your spirit. Your spirit's
12:33always small S. God's spirit's always capital S.
12:39You're praying in the spirit and watching therein
12:44too with all perseverance, thank you, and supplication
12:49for yourself. I'm glad y'all are good readers.
12:55Hallelujah. Let's see. All right. I had
13:00a battle fierce today right in the place of prayer. I went to
13:06meet and talk with God, but I found Satan there. He whispered, you
13:12can't really pray. You lost out long ago. You might say words while
13:18on your knees, but you can't pray, you know. So then I pulled
13:24my helmet tight, weighed down upon my ears, and found it helped to
13:30still his voice. And I lay all my fears.
13:36It was amazing when prayer came that the battle was not at
13:42work, not in the world, but one of the greatest battle places
13:47you'll ever fight is in the place of prayer. This man went
13:53on to, in his prayer, talk to God, but he also found
13:59that an adversary was already in his prayer place waiting for him.
14:04But what the adversary went after first was not his marriage,
14:10not his money, not his enemies. The enemy in this poem went
14:16after his authority to pray. You don't have a right to pray.
14:22You shouldn't be praying. Your prayers are vain and your prayers are
14:28empty. Your prayers are fruitless because you have no right to pray.
14:34The standing to prayer is always under attack. And of course, the
14:40poet wrote it, you lost out long ago. The accusation is
14:46always the employment of the devil. The Bible tells us in Revelations 12 that he
14:52is the accuser of the brethren. That's the reason I don't like people running around
14:57saying they got something on somebody else. Whose club are you in? The accuser of
15:03the brethren is always running around saying he has something on somebody. I refuse to
15:09join his club. I'm here to find that the goodness of God is has
15:15been extended to me, and the arm of the Lord is not shortened that
15:21it cannot reach. And of course, in this poem, the prayer warrior pulled his
15:26helmet down low over his ears because most attacks from the devil are audible.
15:32You can't hear it with these ears. Boy, you can hear it mighty good.
15:38He always comes in camouflage clothes, always comes as if it's the voice of
15:44your own reasons. He always comes as if he's saying things that
15:50are meant to help you. And yet, why are you feeling so distraught?
15:56The devil is always trying to steal the hope of salvation, the hope
16:01of the right to pray. The idea that you even can think about
16:07praying is a travesty in his mind. The idea that you have the
16:13authority to even open your mouth. You can talk to your neighbor, but you don't
16:19get to talk to God like that. You can talk to your dog, but you
16:24can't talk to God. You can talk to your cat, but you can't talk to
16:30God. Isn't it something how we can talk to everything? We can talk to that
16:35guy that cut us off in traffic. That skill set's right there. But
16:41when it comes time to talk to God with the same amount of passion, you're
16:46not supposed to do that, are you? Shut up, hell. Because the people of God
16:52have learned how to talk as a child, but we've got to learn how to
16:57talk to God even as a child. But you can't be praying eight-year-old prayers when
17:02you're 18. You don't need to be praying 18-year-old prayers when you're 24. You don't
17:08need to be praying 35-year-old married prayers when you're 52. You need to be praying
17:13prayers of your space and your place. How do you get there? By telling the
17:18enemy. He cannot defang your prayer. No, no, no. I'm going to pray with the
17:24same passion that I had when that guy cut me off in traffic. And I'm
17:29not crazy when I do that any more than I'm crazy when I said, what
17:34are you doing? I mean, I was trying to get out of the doctor's office
17:39today and a person thought they should turn in the whole road. I had thoughts
17:44that I thought. Do you know how to drive? What
17:50if with the same spirit we would ask ourselves, do you know how to pray?
17:55I'm talking about being human, folks. This is who we created to be. And yet
18:00the enemy wants to silence us when it comes to the things of the spirit.
18:05And so in this answer that we get from Paul in teaching us how to
18:10carry the whole armor of God, he wants us to know there's a way to
18:15go about it. And his answer is not a new answer. Answer, it is an
18:21inventory. I wear the truth. I wear the gospel of peace. I wear my
18:27righteousness, a pursuit of being right. I wear a helmet of the thoughts of
18:32salvation. I put on a shield called faithfulness. I take up a sword, but
18:38all of that is void if I don't cover it all with something that
18:44is not something I wear. It's the very breath I breathe. i've got to
18:50learn how to pray prayer is the breath of faith prayer is the breath of
18:56truth prayer is the breath of righteousness ah and if you don't have that breath
19:02you will absolutely lose your spiritual stamina and your spiritual life and in this description
19:07if you look logistically at this paul gives us six pieces and one posture
19:13All of the six pieces we put on. But the posture is the breath
19:19of our approach to God. And so we've got to continue to understand that
19:25the first fight is the fight to pray. And it's won by taking inventory
19:31of all the things that you put on. When you pray, you need to start
19:36by getting on some stuff. You need to first get on truth when you start
19:41praying. If you wondered, how can I pray longer than three minutes? I don't know
19:45how to pray five minutes. I don't know. You're talking about praying an hour? Who
19:50can do it that long? And then pastor calls for two hour? Guess what? Next
19:54Friday's gonna be a two hour prayer segment. Who can do that? My Lord, it's
19:59crazy. Well, I'll tell you how you learn how to do it. You get these
20:03roadmaps. And if you get dressed in these instruments in prayer, you pray a little
20:08while about truth because all of us got a little fraud sneaking up. Then you
20:12pray a little while about the boots of peace. How much peace do I need
20:17in my life? And then I pray a little while about a breastplate of righteousness.
20:21Then I pray a little while about being faithful. Then I pray a little while
20:26the word. Just get your Bible out and pray it out loud. The Lord is
20:31my shepherd I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.
20:36He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. Yea, though I walk
20:41through the valley. You know how to do it. Pray the word. Then you gotta
20:47put on the helmet. What? I must be saved. Oh Lord, I don't wanna wear
20:52a soft cap. Who was it? I got a brand new hat. Donnie. Donnie. What's
20:57Donnie's and Anna's last name? You remember Austin? Donnie Hawthorne. Donnie Hawthorne. Apparently he
21:03went to Augusta and he bought me a man corner hat. I got it in
21:08my house. It says a man corner on it. It's Augusta. I can't wait to
21:12break it out someday. It is fine. It's Augusta green. But the a man corner
21:17hat will not stop any of the attacks from the devil. Now, I may
21:23need an amen corner in the church somewhere, but let me tell you something. I
21:27don't know if I can buy any more of those hats. Wouldn't it be awesome,
21:32Sean, if we could get all of good ameners in the church an amen corner
21:36hat? I mean, we would have the green hat section over here. But no, I
21:40got to put on a helmet of salvation and then do it all. How? In
21:45prayer. The first fight is the fight to pray, and it's won by taking inventory,
21:49not by asking for angels to come to help you. Paul never calls prayer a
21:54piece of armor. He says in Ephesians 6, 14, stand therefore. That's the main verb
22:00in the whole passage. Now, I'm not giving you, my dad was an English major,
22:05but I am not an English major. But there is grammar that's important to help
22:11you understand what's being said. And when I pray, I don't want to twist scripture
22:17to make it look like something I want it to look like. When I'm praying,
22:22I'm like saying, okay, Lord, what were you intending for us to see when we
22:27read that scripture? Stand therefore, that's the main verb. Everything after stand therefore
22:33is just something that's added to it. Having girded truth, having put
22:39on righteousness, having shod good news of peace, above all taking faithfulness,
22:44put on hope salvation, receive the word of God. The last participle
22:50to this initial verb in the whole chain which modifies the whole
22:55thing is stand. The sentence reads, stand, stand's the first
23:01one, that's the verb, stand therefore, and the participle that ends it is
23:07praying. So when you read this whole thing, you got all of these
23:13pieces we gotta put on. But the Lord says, when you go about
23:18doing what you're doing, stand praying. Six pieces, but one posture. Prayer is
23:24not an item seven on a list of seven things to do Prayer is how
23:28you're going to do all of these things Prayer is how you're gonna put on
23:33truth prayer is how you're gonna put on peace prayer is how you're gonna put
23:37on righteousness that prayers how you're gonna pick up faithfulness prayers how you're gonna get
23:41a sword prayers how you're gonna get a helmet prayer is the breath that gives
23:45those things life and You put it on praying. You don't treat prayer as
23:51the last item. Okay, I got to get this, that. No, no. It's not another
23:55tool. A tool is something you reach for when the trouble starts. It's not a
23:59tool. It's the atmosphere that we live in. And of course, you know, the Bible
24:03says pray without ceasing. Well, what does that look like? Man, I grew up thinking,
24:07well, sometimes I want to read the comics. I'm going to tell you what it
24:11looks like today because pray without ceasing doesn't mean you go around all the time.
24:15Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We're gonna
24:19show you what that means today. Prayer is not the seventh piece,
24:25it's the breath of the warrior. Now, here's what Paul gives us.
24:31He gives us alls in one verse of scripture. He said, "Praying
24:36always," everybody say that's an all, "with all prayer," that's an all,
24:42"and supplication in the spirit, "watching there into with all perseverance," say
24:47that's an all, and supplication for all saints. Four alls in this verse.
24:53Paul stacks one Greek word four times in this one sentence. And four times, it's
24:59not his style. It wasn't that he was out of words to use. It was
25:05a drumbeat he was trying to pound in to the people of God that these
25:10alls were very important. So the first all is at all. all praying always so
25:15what does this mean this is the big conundrum of those who are trying to
25:20figure out how can i go to work how can i talk about what the
25:24marlins did and how can i pray all at the same time here's what paul
25:29is telling us it's the correction praying always it keeps it from becoming a burden
25:33nobody can carry nobody can pray all the time if you're talking about doing this
25:38the whole time that's nonsensical and yet if you just read it in english that's
25:42what it feels like But I want my Vienna to know
25:48how to pray always. How can she pray always when she's got to
25:54talk to her dolls? I mean, she's got shoes to inspect that Mellie
26:00bought her. How can you inspect these shoes properly, Vienna, if you are
26:05supposed to pray always? Here's what the Bible tells us. It tells us,
26:11he writes, that the difference, the praying always is not, and this is Greek, okay,
26:17I'm not telling you that because I know a bunch of Greek. I just know
26:22that there's a difference between kairos and chronos. Chronos is time, both those words have
26:27to do with time in the Greek, but one is the clock time. That's chronos.
26:33The other is kairos, which is the time that has to do with a decisive,
26:38loaded, opportune moment. You know those loaded moments that show up? You know those moments
26:43when you feel like, mm, You get chill bumps. You know those moments when something
26:49hits you and you feel like everything got tight and you got focused vision.
26:55That's a kairos moment. That's a moment that the hair on your arm stands
27:00up. The Bible says praying always. It doesn't say praying chronos. It says praying
27:06kairos. In other words, you're ready at all times whenever either fear or flight
27:11or fight comes over you, you are ready to say, in Jesus' name, in Jesus'
27:17name. You're not in trouble because you hadn't said his name for 30 minutes. No,
27:23it's not praying Kronos. It's praying Kairos. There's those moments you wake up and you
27:28feel like God just is right next to your shoes in the closet. Woo, what
27:33a great day it is. There's other days you pray and it feels like the
27:39heavens are stone and the hell is right there. Well, both are Kairos moments. And
27:45so whenever the moment comes, when you feel like it's one of those packed moments,
27:49packed with fear or packed with faith or packed with love or packed with peace.
27:54Have you ever had a packed with peace moment? Man, I had one of those
27:59yesterday. I mean, I just saw a palm tree and a sunset. And it just
28:04felt, all of a sudden, I just felt this amazing coziness all over him. It
28:09was a kairos moment, praying always. And so the first one is you've got to
28:15pray always. You don't establish communication when you're under fire. You've got to establish communication
28:20at all times. I know some of you guys know I'm a little nerdy when
28:26it comes to war and battle and technology and technology. There was a time in
28:31February, the end of January and the beginning of February when the war in Ukraine
28:36had a major turn that was taken. And over 77 square miles were won by
28:42the Ukrainians in just a couple of days because what was discovered was that the
28:47Russians had, by proxy, been buying Starlink satellite dishes through locals in Ukraine, paying them
28:52in Bitcoin, hundreds of thousands of dollars, because there's a white page that you can
28:58run Starlink in Ukraine if you're on a white page, but you can't if you're
29:03based in another country. That's way too much information. I apologize for giving you too
29:09much information right then. But my point is this, because of this, Russians were getting
29:14a lot of satellite information and using Starlink for communication. The Ukrainians discovered what
29:20was happening, told Starlink, and Elon Musk went on and said, all right, we're
29:26going to do a reset. And for several days and ever since then, the
29:31war has changed immensely and immeasurably because the communication skill set of the Russians
29:37has been diminished immensely. immeasurably because of the lack of communication. In
29:43fact, they overheard one of the commanders of Russia in a
29:48moment of sarcastic frustration literally said over the radio, well, all
29:54we have now is radios, cables, and pigeons because they had
29:59lost their ability to communicate through the sky. Ladies and gentlemen,
30:05Starlink is not high enough for the voice I'm looking for.
30:12There is a communication with God that don't you ever underrate it. Don't you ever
30:18underestimate it. You may not hear it with these ears, but it's louder than these
30:24ears can hear. You'll feel it in your very bones. And when it comes to
30:30you, you say, hmm. So two words. He puts praying always. That's Kairos praying. Then
30:36he said all kinds of praying. all kinds of praying what does this mean there's
30:41two kinds of prayer that are offered to the Lord there's prayer of communion that's
30:45just your everyday grind praying Lord I love you today I owe you some praise
30:49and Thanksgiving I'm going to give it to you and so it's just me loving
30:53you and you loving me it's communion prayer it's sometimes you do it out of
30:57duty sometimes you do it out of love sometimes you do it because you know
31:01you owe him that sometimes you do it because He's blessed you so much you
31:06couldn't stop yourself from doing it. That's communion praying. Then there's another kind of praying
31:10that is desperation praying. And these words in the Greek are literally said, all kinds
31:15of praying is what he said you've got to do. Always God word, the prayer
31:20of worship and communion, the one you say every morning, pray that kind. But also
31:26it includes the desperation praying. It is that one that at three o'clock in the
31:31morning you woke up and you can't even breathe. All you can do is thank
31:36Jesus. You ever been there? Oh yeah, oh yeah. I don't know if you've never
31:42experienced that. I hope you never do. But I'm telling you what, when you wake
31:47up and there's darkness over you and you can't move a muscle, I'll never forget
31:53it hit me when I first went off to Bible college one morning and you
31:59know you don't tell anybody because I'm a dude you know I don't tell that
32:04stuff baby but I couldn't even move I could barely breathe I couldn't speak all
32:10I could do was think Jesus is what I thought Jesus Jesus why speak his
32:16name hell has no power against that name all power in heaven and earth is
32:22given unto him And so there is that. And so we also understand
32:27he had another all. He had all praying always. He said praying with all
32:33supplication. That's all the different kinds. And all perseverance. This perseverance means to be
32:39strong, to hold out, to be strong towards something. That means you gotta be
32:45strong toward it. I've been trying to lift weights lately. I don't want
32:50to get bowed up. I'm a little too much for people to handle when I
32:55get bowed up. So, you know, but I've been lifting weights at the JCC. I
33:00have to fight off the crowds. They want to come and watch me lift. So
33:04my wife's not here to tear me down right now. That's a joke. I'm so
33:09embarrassed that I'm benching 25s on each side. That's so
33:14ridiculous. I don't want to tell you. It's the bar. That's what's
33:20the bar? 45? 45 and then two 25s. I'm doing sets with
33:2695. That's ridiculous. Oh my goodness. I used to warm up with
33:32135. But I don't care. I'm hurting right now. I'm burning. My
33:38arms are burning. What am I doing? Be strong. It
33:44takes effort to be strong, to be strong towards something, to stay glued to it.
33:50That's what the Bible said. Pray and be strong at it. The noun occurs exactly
33:55once in the entire New Testament. What does this mean? Paul's reaching for a word
34:01that as a noun, it's only here. As a verb, it's several places. As a
34:06verb, Jesus told his disciples, that small ship should sail. Wait on him. Now here's
34:12the picture I want you to know what prayer ought to look like because the
34:16picture that the Lord has given through Paul to the perseverance praying. Everybody say perseverance
34:21praying. Perseverance praying is that the disciples were told to go get the Lord a
34:26boat. He was going to teach all day when he was done and when he
34:30needed the boat, he would go get in the boat. But he said, just leave
34:35it there until I need it. And that's what the Bible is referring to when
34:40it comes to your kind of praying. You need to have it present. Doesn't mean
34:45you're doing it all the time, but your mind has an automatic default. If any
34:50kind of chaos, if any kind of confusion, if any kind of temper tantrums shows
34:55up in your head, I know I'm not the only one that has those. When
35:01that show up, that's when you stop and say, okay, I got a boat over
35:06here. It's not like the John boat I preached about Sunday. I'm going to go
35:11get in that boat. What is it? It's perseverance praying. I'm going to keep it
35:15close. That little boat was kept ready at the edge. And so he went on
35:19to say all saints praying for all saints. Here's another thing about prayer. I've known
35:24some people to go to pray. They prayed an hour and they left worse than
35:28they started. And they could tell everybody, oh, I've been in prayer. Don't think you
35:33can just mark time and get up and pray properly because there's a lot of
35:38praying that's nothing but selfish praying. You are a stinking narcissist and your whole prayers
35:44are all about you and your stuff. And this is what the Bible said. In
35:49this kind of praying, you've got to pray persistently. You've got to have all kinds
35:54of prayer. You've got to pray always in the kairos moments. But above that, you've
35:59got to pray for others. Nudge your neighbor and say, I'm praying
36:05for you. I'm praying for you. You may wear the armor alone, but when you
36:10pray, you're praying for the whole line. When I stood up with that shield, I
36:15told you how those shields were formed. The shields were formed to cover the left
36:20side of the soldier, but the right side would interlock with the other soldier beside
36:25them. Those shields that won the war for Greece and Rome were designed to not
36:30go as seen shields but they were designed to go in unison with other soldiers
36:34and when it comes time to pray the Lord's not wanting you to sit around
36:39and just pray for me and mine and you know when I was single I
36:44pray for my wife I prayed out Lord I want to have better to edit
36:48it edited it no you got to stop you got to start praying but Lord
36:53give her the Isaac a wife Lord give him give her the Isaac wife Lord
36:58help him Jesus help him Jesus He's receiving it right now. Listen,
37:03you cannot pray alone. Pray for all saints. That means that one you
37:09do not understand. That means that one that you're having a hard time
37:15liking. They parked real close to you in the church parking lot and
37:21you thought they might have dinged your door. I know whose car that
37:27is. You kind of ease on by that foyer. It gets crowded in
37:33there and you just kind of find a way to get to this
37:39side of things. Praying for all saints. You know what? When Job
37:44had his captivity turned, and the word in the Hebrew for captivity is
37:50exile. His exile was turned when he prayed for, y'all know your Bibles,
37:56his friends. Seven days they talked bad about him to his face. When
38:01Job repented and understood, when he prayed for the three men who he
38:07had accused for 37 chapters, or they had accused him for 37 chapters.
38:13Read the book of Job. Some of you, it might be the
38:18book of Job. Activity was exile. How do I want to get out of
38:24this exile? Pray for your detractors. And at the center of the four directives,
38:30pray in the spirit. It's not a decoration. You don't pray from your mind.
38:36You may start in your mind, but you need to pray in the spirit.
38:42Paul talked about praying in the, Jude talked about praying in the Holy Ghost.
38:49Paul was describing talking in tongues in the first Corinthians 14. And there were some
38:53that were talking in tongues. They wanted a lot of attention. They wanted people to
38:58think they were super spiritual. So they would talk in tongues a little while. I
39:02went to seminary one time and that you could tell in the class, it was
39:06like a who knew what prayer because it was like three minutes in the prayer.
39:10Everybody was kind of doing this tongue talking. And I thought, what's going on? I
39:14mean, I'm a tongue talker, baby, but it's not a badge of who I am.
39:19It's no show-off instrument. Now, I don't do it to let people know, wow, I
39:24got status with God. So what? There'll be tongue talkers in hell. Satan can talk
39:29in tongues. You got to have more than just talking in tongues. But you do
39:34need it. And the Bible said, Paul was trying to explain to them. He said,
39:38my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful. I don't know what I'm saying. I
39:44don't know what I'm saying when I'm talking in a heavenly language. I will pray
39:48with the spirit and I will pray with the understanding also. Paul's prayer life had
39:53two gears, two gears. This one I understand and the time I don't really understand.
39:58And you need both of them because there are times the Bible said in Acts
40:022:4, "And the spirit gave them the utterance." The man who wrote this chapter asked
40:07God for an utterance. Now this is what blows my mind. Musicians come, I'm closing.
40:12This is what blows my mind from this text because we are reading the
40:18writings of a man who is in prison, in bonds, and chained to a
40:24soldier that has all this armor on. The soldier he's chained to has a,
40:30in fact, they tell us that Paul was such an evangelist that they got
40:36to have to change his guards every two hours because he was converting them
40:41so fast. I'd like to have been chained
40:47to Paul for a couple hours, I guarantee you right now. Chain me up to
40:52Paul, let me talk to him about the things of God. And he's writing this
40:57and he said, whatever you do, you need to pray in the spirit. There's times
41:03words run out. There's times I feel things and I don't have words to describe
41:08them and my lexicon is okay. But there are moments that I cannot put a
41:13word on what I'm feeling. You know, these songwriters have finally got 'em. You
41:18know, we just sang that song, "So we lift you high, we lift you
41:24high." We could sing that again. You played that pretty good, didn't you? This
41:30is her first night to play for our church here. Didn't she do awesome?
41:35Give me five, give me five. This is where the stars sit. But there's
41:41a certain line that's just, "Ohhh." And there's times when I'm, Pastor, and I'm
41:46like saying, "Oh, we're on that 'O' part." You
41:52know, I get tickled with my own conversations during
41:58church, you know. I'll laugh at myself. I'll get
42:03lost in spirit and hit a leg over here
42:09and trip a little bit. Hope y'all didn't see
42:15me get back acting like I have it together.
42:20But my point is that there are moments that
42:26all you can do is say, oh, God, you're
42:32not ignorant. You're not unlearned. You're understanding there are
42:37some things bigger than words can capture. Move into
42:43these realms. Every moment, he wants you praying. Every
42:49Kairos all kinds of praying he wants you with all perseverance keep that boat right
42:55there all day If you don't need it, it's still there when he needed the
43:01boat It would be there all Saints the ones you love the ones you're working
43:07on loving one Greek word four times in a single verse That's not Paul's style.
43:13It was a drumbeat the armed man's last assignment is not to swing remember when
43:19Peter was in the garden and the Lord begged him shall we stand and
43:25begged him, would you pray with me just a little while? And they couldn't pray
43:31with him. They went to sleep. They just kept going to sleep. And he would
43:36go back and ask him, could you not pray with me just a little while?
43:42And they went to sleep. Of course, it was in that garden that they came
43:47to betray Jesus. And Peter, who could not sleep, drew his sword and went to
43:52cut off the man whose name is Malchus. He wanted to kill his son.
43:58Kill him. Tried to chop his head off. Missed and got his ear. Cut his
44:04ear off and the ear fell to the ground. Jesus, what an amazing story. I
44:10mean, this sounds like Hollywood. Honestly, just think about it. Before there was Hollywood, there
44:15was this. Okay, cuts his ear off. The ear falls to the ground and Jesus
44:21turns to Peter and said, put your sword away. All that live by the sword
44:27are gonna die by the sword. Now, Jesus, a few hours earlier had said, get
44:33your swords, right? I'm confused. What are we confused about? There's
44:39a time to fight. There's a way to fight. There's a moment
44:44to fight. You don't want the wrong weapon, nor do you want
44:50the wrong target, nor do you want the wrong fight or all
44:55the wrong time. That's why we've got to know praying is the
45:01way to go about it because the man who sleeps in the
45:07garden swings the wrong sword among the people. I've been
45:12around some churches in my life. I've been around some church fusses
45:18in my life. You know what? I've watched people get a sword
45:24out against other brothers and sisters in the church. People have issues
45:29and so-and-so's child starts dating this child and now there's a breakup
45:35and everybody's caught up in the breakup. Wrong sword, wrong fight. One
45:41of our kids stumbles, has a child out of wedlock. People get
45:46upset about it. Wrong sword, wrong place. Wrong battle. People post
45:52something stupid online. That's the reason I don't go on. I'm telling you
45:58what, people post some of the most stupid stuff. Good night alive. They're
46:03proud of their stupidity. They don't know how stupid it is. Put your
46:09sword up. Wrong place, wrong sword, wrong moment. I'm going to reign with
46:15mercy and let God be the judge. I'm going to reign with hope
46:21and repentance and have an altar. And know sometimes I need to get
46:26in it. You know, I've not said this from the pulpit, but
46:32A man who's Pentecostal, he's not of us, okay? He's a friend of a
46:38friend. His daddy's name is Tim Spell, and Tim Spell wanted to sing on
46:44my wife's record. We just didn't find a way to make it happen, but
46:50his son's name is Tony Spell. Tony Spell pastors a church outside of Baton
46:55Rouge, and about a month ago, he got caught on social media beating the
47:01ever-loving tar out of a 21- or 22-year-old neighbor, and it was all on
47:07video, and, uh, I'm not gonna say it was a good thing.
47:13When you hear the rest of the story, it was not good either
47:19way, but you know, I can't promise you that I wouldn't have done
47:25what Tony did. It doesn't make me good, but sometimes the preacher needs
47:31a pulpit, an altar too. Doesn't excuse being stupid. Doesn't excuse being fleshly.
47:36There's a better way to go about it than throwing hands. But if
47:42you happen to go down that road, we have an altar, and I
47:48need the altar too. Now, I'm not planning on getting any fight.
47:54I got security guards for that. I'll put Sean Raven on him. But you see
47:59what I'm saying, folks? We got to live real in the real world. And we
48:04got to understand sometimes we get out over our skis out of weariness. Sometimes pressures
48:09get us there. Sometimes problems get us there. And we need a whole boatload of
48:14mercy. Lord Jesus, this is your house. These are your people. We've come into this
48:19place, oh Lord, to learn of you and to be more like you, to shape
48:24up. to take our life and reconfigure it in a manner that is acceptable to
48:29our neighborhood and loving to our community and merciful to those that are around about
48:34us. We want to hold up a light, oh God, and let this dark world
48:39know that there are people who live different. We live different. We don't respond the
48:43same way the world responds. we don't come back with the same manner that the
48:49world the carnal flesh comes back we're people oh Lord that want to be more
48:54like you we want to we want to walk like you and be like you
48:59and sound like you and talk like you and even sing like you oh Jesus
49:04let this house be a house that's building people up building them up in a
49:09righteous manner Hallelujah Hallelujah building them up let's talk to the Lord