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“By means of all prayer and petition, praying at every time in spirit and watching unto this in all perseverance and petition concerning all the saints” (Eph. 6:18). We should pay particular attention to the phrase “watching unto this” in this verse. What does “this” refer to? By reading the context we know that it refers to prayer and petition. The apostle said that it is not enough to pray at every time by means of all prayer and petition; we also must be watchful in the matter of prayer and petition. On the one hand we have to pray, and on the other hand, we have to be watchful. What does it mean to be watchful? Being watchful is to be awake and to survey and keep surveillance by keeping one’s eyes open. Being watchful is to be on the alert for any danger or emergency. Being watchful in prayer and petition is to have the spiritual insight to discern the stratagems of Satan and to expose his aim and the method of his work. We will mention specifically a few things that we should be watchful in with respect to prayer and petition.
Prayer is a kind of service and should be given the utmost priority. But Satan’s strategy is to put everything related to the Lord before prayer and make prayer the least important matter. In spite of the fact that we have been reminded of the importance of the matter over and over again, not many people pay much attention to prayer. Many people are enthusiastic about attending preaching meetings, Bible study meetings, and other meetings of the church. They are interested in these meetings and make the time for these meetings. But whenever there is a prayer meeting, the number is amazingly low. Despite many sermons that remind us that our chief service is prayer and that if we fail in our prayer life, everything else will fail, we still neglect prayer and consider it to be something quite dispensable. Despite the facts that problems are piling up and that we acknowledge with our mouth that prayer is the only way to solve them, we talk more than we pray, and we worry and resort to methods more than we pray. In brief, everything comes before prayer; everything is important. Prayer is always placed last and considered least important. One brother who had a deep knowledge of the Lord once said, “We have all committed the sin of negligence to prayer. We must all say to ourselves: `You are that man!’” Indeed all of us have to say to ourselves that we are that man! We cannot blame this one and that one for not praying. We ourselves have to repent. We need the Lord to open our eyes to see afresh the importance and value of prayer. At the same time, we have to realize that if we had not been so deceived by Satan, we would not have been so negligent concerning prayer. Therefore, we must be watchful, discover Satan’s stratagems, and detect his wiles. We must not allow him to cause us to be relaxed or blind.
After we understand the importance of prayer and have consecrated ourselves to serve and work in prayer, Satan’s attacks will come upon us, one after another. We will feel that we cannot find time to pray. While we are intending to pray, someone will knock at our front door or will come to our back door; either the grown-ups will be arguing, or the children will be causing trouble. Either someone will be sick, or someone will encounter some accident. Before we intend to pray, everything is peaceful. When we want to have a specific time of prayer, many matters will immediately come to us, one after another. Many unexpected and unforeseeable things will encroach upon us like an army waiting in ambush. Countless problems will come and stop us from praying. Many things will come our way to try to push away the time for prayer. Do all these things happen accidentally? No, they do not happen accidentally. This is a planned and prearranged strategy of Satan to stop us from praying. He can encourage us to do many things, but he will try to eliminate our time of prayer. He knows that unless spiritual work is built on a foundation of prayer it will not have much value and its eventual result will be failure. Therefore, his strategy is to cause us to become busy in other things and neglect prayer. We are busy in work, visitation, providing hospitality, and preparing sermons. We are busy in the morning and busy in the evening to the extent that prayer is pushed into a corner, and we do not have much time to pray.
Let me quote again the words of the brother who knew the Lord in a deep way.
When the children of Israel planned to leave Egypt, Pharaoh’s reaction was to add more burden to their labor. Pharaoh’s goal was to make them pay more attention, even all their attention, to their work so that they would not have time to think about leaving Egypt. After you have decided or made plans to have a richer prayer life, Satan will begin a new strategy; he will make you more busy and will pile up work and need upon you so that you will have no time or opportunity to pray. Dear brothers, we must deal with this problem in a definite way. Of course, in fighting for a time of prayer, there may be some dispute concerning our responsibility, duty, and obligations. Some may think that by devoting ourselves to prayer we may neglect our obligations, give up our duty, and damage or hurt our responsibility. However, when we are faced with such situations, we should bring all these problems, that is, our obligations, duty, and responsibility, to the Lord and pray. (However, it is not easy to apply this kind of prayer to every believer. Moreover, this kind of word can often cause misunderstanding because some people are very happy to relinquish their responsibility; they will not seriously take care of their own responsibilities. They will most gladly and easily shuffle their family responsibilities to others in order to have time to pray themselves. May the Lord protect our words so that they will not cause such misunderstanding.) We have to understand that the enemy is trying to use responsibility, obligations, and other matters that touch the conscience, to create the best reason to stop us from praying. If we find that our prayer life has been completely annulled or has fallen into such a confined place that we become completely helpless in living a spiritual and transcendent, overcoming life, under these circumstances, we should pray to the Lord, “Lord, while I pray, I will commit my responsibilities to You. Do not allow anything to frustrate me or damage my time of prayer. Please guard this hour of prayer for me because it is during such time that Your glory is my consideration, and do not allow Satan to intrude into this hour.” We can also apply the principle of tithing to the matter of prayer. After we have offered to God the portion and position that He deserves and have tithed to God, we will discover that we can more effectively use the other nine-tenths of our time, more so than when we were trying to use all our time for ourselves before tithing it to the Lord. The principle of tithing is very effective. However, we should be aware of the warfare in prayer. We have to stand strongly, powerfully, and firmly upon our position in Christ and should pray according to the victory of the cross. We have to fight for prayer by applying the complete victory the Lord has gained on the cross, and we have to drive out any ground the enemy may have in prayer so that we can garrison our position in prayer. This is like Shammah, one of the mighty men of David, who stood in the midst of the ground full of lentils, defended it, and slew the Philistines, and the Lord wrought a great victory (2 Sam. 23:11-12). This ground of lentils signifies our position in prayer; it must be guarded through the victory of Golgotha against the intrusion of the enemy. The kind of warfare that results in prayer is a warfare for prayer. I am afraid that many times we have accepted the environment and considered it impossible to pray at certain times. Because things are happening and developing in a certain way, we think that we cannot pray at that time. Indeed, if we give ground to the devil, things will always come to restrict us from praying. This is the strategy of the devil. We must remove all the hindrances in the battleground of prayer by the Lord’s name and according to the victory of His cross. The cross can effectively gain for us the time to pray just as it is effective in other areas, as long as we know how to apply the power of His victory.
The above words can be a great reminder and warning to us. Brothers and sisters, we must fight for the time to pray, and we must secure a time to pray. If we wait until we have time to pray, we will never have the opportunity to pray. We must set aside a time to pray. Andrew Murray said, “Those who do not have a set time to pray do not pray.” Hence, we must be watchful and secure the time to pray. We must also guard this time with prayer so that the devil will not usurp it by his deception.
Not only must we be watchful in guarding the time of prayer, but we also must be watchful while we pray, in order that we may pray and have things to pray about. Satan will harass us not only through all kinds of things and outward circumstances that force us to have no time to pray, but even after we actually kneel down to pray he will also use all kinds of deception to frustrate us from prayer. Our minds may be very clear and our thoughts uncluttered before we pray, but as soon as we kneel down to pray, our thoughts become confused. We begin to remember things that we do not need to remember, and we begin to think of things that we do not need to think about ahead of time. Many unnecessary thoughts suddenly come dashing in. Before we pray, none of these things come to us. But as soon as we pray, they come to distract us. Outwardly everything seems peaceful, and there does not seem to be anything to alarm us, but as soon as we kneel down to pray we begin to hear voices in our ear. Actually such strange sounds do not come from outside. These many sounds come in a strange and inexplicable way to disrupt our prayer. We may feel very strong before we pray, but as soon as we kneel down to pray we feel tired and unable to sustain ourselves even though there is no lack of sleep. The tiredness does not come when we do not pray, but as soon as we pray we feel tired and want to sleep. Sometimes even symptoms of a sickness which we did not have before may suddenly come upon us. We may want to discharge a burden through prayer, but when we kneel down to pray we cannot offer a single word. It seems as if we are choked and short of prayer. It is obvious that there are many things we should pray about, but as soon as we start praying, we become numb and cold and do not feel we have anything to pray about. Even when we pray, it is like speaking to the air, and we run out of things to say in two or three sentences. None of the above conditions were with us before we began to pray. Only after we kneel down to pray do they suddenly come upon us. If we do not realize that this is Satan’s deception to destroy our prayer, we will want to stop praying and stand up soon after we kneel down. Therefore, in order to pray, to pray thoroughly and release our burden through prayer, we have to be watchful in our prayer. We have to be watchful to withstand the situations that would stop us from praying. This requires us to fight the battle. Before we pray, we must pray that God will enable us to pray. While we pray, we have to ask God to keep us undistracted in prayer and deliver us from all the deception of the enemy that stops us from praying. We have to speak to all the distracting thoughts and voices as well as all the weakness and sickness and declare that all these inexplicable happenings are lies and deceptions of Satan and that we oppose them. We have to open our mouth and chase them away. We should not give them any ground; we should be watchful to withstand the wiles of Satan through prayer. Then not only will we be able to pray, we will be able to pray thoroughly.
In order to pray thoroughly and powerfully we cannot just hope vainly. We cannot glide comfortably into this prayer life, and we cannot follow our imagination to drift into this prayer life. We must learn, we must be broken, and we must fight before we can secure this kind of prayer.
During our prayer, we must also guard against the prayers that are not prayers. Satan will not only take away our time of prayer, but also strip us of the strength to pray. He will come in even while we pray to make us speak many unrelated, confused, unimportant, and vain words. He will cause us to ask in vain and to waste our time of prayer. He will try to occupy our time of prayer so that the effect of our prayer will amount to nothing. Many fleshly, old, long, mundane, heartless, and aimless prayers are time-consuming and wasteful prayers. It may seem that we are praying out of habit, but actually within these prayers there are suggestions, instigations, and deceptions of Satan. If we are not watchful, our prayer will become meaningless and fruitless. One brother mentioned a story he read in the biography of Evan Roberts. Once a few people were in his home praying for something. Halfway through one brother’s prayer, Mr. Roberts went over and covered that brother’s mouth, saying, “Brother, don’t go on. You are not praying.” The brother reading this story said within himself, “How could Mr. Roberts do this?” But later he realized that Mr. Roberts was right. Many words in our prayers are spoken by the flesh through the instigation of Satan. These prayers may be long, but many of them are impractical and useless. Brothers and sisters, this is a fact. Many times in our prayer, we seem to circle around the whole world. Time is wasted and strength is exhausted, yet nothing that is to the point is prayed about. We cannot expect God to answer this kind of prayer. This kind of prayer does not have any spiritual value. Hence, when we pray, we have to be watchful and not spend too much time or give too many reasons. Rather, we should speak what is in our heart to God in a sincere way. We must never fill up our prayer with many empty words.
We have to be watchful that when we pray we do not speak loosely. A man who was very experienced in prayer once wrote a hymn. In that hymn one line talks about prayer. It says that if one wants to pray to God he should first be well prepared about what he wants from God. Brothers and sisters, when we kneel down to pray, if we do not know what we want, how can we expect God to answer our prayer? If our prayer is aimless and heartless, it is not a prayer. Satan will utilize this and make us think we have prayed. Actually we have not prayed at all. We must be watchful and on guard. Every time that we come to pray before God, we must know what we want in our heart. If we do not have any desire, we do not have prayer. All prayers are governed by our desire. Our Lord pays attention to this. The blind man Bartimaeus beseeched the Lord, saying, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” The Lord asked him, “What do you want Me to do for you?” (Mark 10:47, 51). The Lord is asking today: “What do you want Me to do for you?” Can you answer this question? Some brothers and sisters pray for ten or twenty minutes. Afterward, when you call them and ask, “What were you asking God for?”, they may not be able to tell you anything. Although they may have said much in their prayer, they do not even know what they were asking. This is a prayer without a desire. It is an aimless prayer and one that is not counted in God’s sight. We have to be watchful to guard against this kind of prayer.
When we pray, there must be not only the desire but also the word to express the desire. Sometimes in our desire we have something we want, but the more we speak the further away we seem to be from our desire. We must also be watchful to guard against this. Satan’s strategy is either to hold us back so that we do not pray or push us forward while we pray so that the more we pray the more we are lost. Therefore, when we pray we have to guard ourselves so that our words will not deviate from the center. Once we discover that our words have deviated, we should come back. We must be watchful to aim in the right direction and persist to keep out unnecessary words. We have to guard ourselves from praying the prayers that are not prayers at all.
We must be watchful in prayer and not allow Satan to disrupt our prayer with his deception. Satan will often accuse us after we fail a little and cause us to analyze ourselves while we pray so that we cannot open our mouth to God. When God’s answer seems to be far away, Satan will cause us to become disappointed and discouraged, and he will take away our strength to wait on God. Brothers and sisters, if our prayer is to be according to God’s will, we have to persist in our prayer until the end. Even when we fail, we can come before God through the blood of the Lamb; there is no need for Satan to interfere with us. We have to be like the widow who prayed until the judge had to avenge her (Luke 18:7). We have to be like the Shunammite who would not leave Elisha until he went with her (2 Kings 4:30). We believe that a delay in answers to prayer can help us know something we did not know before, and it can help us learn lessons we were ignorant of. We must never allow Satan to cut off our prayer or damage it.
Here we can sing more hymns concerning spiritual warfare, such as hymns #880, 775, 876, and 893.
When a few of us pray together, Satan will not let us go easily. He will be active in many ways and devise many plans to stop such prayers. There may be unfounded rumors, untrue reports, jealousies without reasons, complicated misunderstandings, inexplicable fear, and waves of threats that seem to come from nowhere. All these are under the secret direction of Satan for the purpose of creating some kind of division to shake the gathering of prayer and destroy this prayer in oneness. Therefore, brothers and sisters, we must “prove all things” (1 Thes. 5:21). We must not believe in anything lightly, be shaken lightly, nor pass on words lightly. If we are watchful, we will find that many unnecessary, inaccurate words and things are deceptions from the enemy. His goal is to make God’s people fearful, weak, and even dispersed. Therefore, on the one hand, we must pray, and on the other hand, we must be on guard. We must follow the example of Nehemiah, who set a watch day and night (Neh. 4:9). Our answer to Satan’s threat is: “There are no such things done as thou sayest, but thou feignest them out of thine own heart.…Should such a man as I flee? and who is there, that, being as I am, would go into the temple to save his life? I will not go in” (Neh. 6:8, 11). We will not fear, and we will not stop praying. One brother said, “How much we need a watchman to guard against the deception of the devil, for the ways he uses to destroy the corporate life of God’s people are far beyond our ability to count and enumerate.” For this reason, we must be watchful to examine and oversee these things so that Satan will not have the opportunity to divide us, destroy our oneness in prayer, or cut off our prayers.
We must also be watchful in our prayer so that we do not fall under Satan’s deception of not making our prayer specific. There are often many things that need to be decided, many people that need to be prayed for, many central messages that need to be released, and many problems that need to be solved. However, when we pray, we seem to be short of something to pray for. There are not even words for our prayer, and we barely manage to finish two or three sentences. We have to know that Satan’s attack is present. It is true that through our laziness, fear of entanglement, lack of love, or unwillingness to advance and be thorough our prayers sometimes become routine. But many times when we gather together we truly want to pray. Yet very few prayers are offered. This proves that something menacing is present. This something is Satan’s design to stop us from praying. If we are watchful, we will find that many cases of forgetfulness, oversight, procrastination, and carelessness did not happen intentionally. Rather, Satan is dragging us down, deceiving us, stealing from us, and robbing us. Therefore, we have to oppose his strategies. We have to pray thoroughly for people, for things, for the truth, and for our problems. Brothers and sisters, we have to realize that a hasty, “economical” prayer is often a careless prayer that will give ground to Satan. We must not let go, and we must ask the Lord to remind us of all the burdens in our prayer and give us the utterance to pray them. At the same time, we have to deal with our own slothfulness and procrastination. Our Lord rose “very early in the morning…and…prayed.” When Simon and those with him hunted for Him and told Him, “All are seeking You,” His answer was, “Let us go elsewhere…that I may preach there also, because for this purpose I came out” (Mark 1:35-38). How specific and thorough is our Lord. He “went out to the mountain to pray, and He spent the whole night in prayer to God. And when it became day, He called His disciples to Him, and He chose from them twelve, whom He also named apostles” (Luke 6:12-13). How specific and thorough this is. When the apostle Paul reminded the Ephesian saints to be watchful in prayer and petition, he mentioned “petition concerning all the saints, and for me, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known in boldness the mystery of the gospel…that in it I would speak boldly, as I ought to speak” (Eph. 6:18-20). This is also very specific and clear; it is something that requires much petitioning. If we have a Body consciousness and if we are concerned for the sinners’ souls, for the saints’ affairs, and for the service of the Lord’s servants, there will be countless things and people that we have to make petition for. There must also be numerous prayers for every truth to be released. In writing to the Ephesian saints, the apostle Paul said, “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father…that He would grant you, according to…” (3:14-16). Here we see that Paul’s revelation of glorious truth came from prayer and that the revelation itself is prayer. From this we see that the true worth of the light of the truth comes by prayer. We should pray the truth into our lives and then pray it out. We should pray over all the truths that we have heard and spoken, so that these truths do not remain merely in our mind or in our notebooks, but are manifested in our lives. How many definite and thorough prayers are needed for this!
The devil’s attachment and manipulation are behind many problems. If we are not watchful, we will think that there are only problems with people, things, and events. But if we have spiritual insight, we will see that the work of the devil is present, and we will cast out all the demons behind these things. Sometimes, as the Lord said, a demon “does not go out except by prayer and fasting” (Matt. 17:21). This requires us to be watchful on the one hand and persist in prayer on the other hand. Otherwise, the difficulty will be like a mountain; either we have to command it to move to the sea, or we have to walk around it. Brothers and sisters, let us wake up. We have to pray in a thorough way. We must expose the deception of Satan and destroy all that he attaches himself to and manipulates. We must cast out the demons behind all the problems.
Not only do we have to be watchful before we pray and while we pray, we also have to be watchful after we pray. We must be watchful to examine all the changes that happen after we pray. We must realize that all serious prayers and prayers with burden are made not only “by means of all prayer” but also “at every time.” It is not once but many times. And it is not once by means of all prayer but at every time by means of all prayer. Therefore, we have to take note of any new development, changes, or movement after every prayer. For example, when Elijah prayed on Mount Carmel, he knelt down and put his face between his knees. He also asked his servant to look at the sea seven times until the servant reported that he saw a little cloud arising out of the sea like a man’s hand. Then he asked his servant to tell Ahab to prepare his chariot and go down so that the rain would not stop him (1 Kings 18:42-44). This can also be seen from Elisha praying for the Shunammite woman’s child. He stretched himself upon the child until the flesh of the child became warm. Then he returned and walked in the house to and fro, went up, and stretched himself upon the child until the child sneezed seven times and opened his eyes. Then he delivered the child to the mother (2 Kings 4:33-37). Whether Elijah or Elisha, they did not just kneel down to pray without asking for anything. While they were praying they were observing the effect of prayer and the changes in the environment. For example, you may be praying for someone who opposes the Lord. You pray that God will make him believe. You may pray for him by means of all prayer, and you may have God’s promise for this. But the outward circumstance may appear to be worse; he may become stronger in his opposition. If you ignore this and continue to pray the same prayer, it is not enough. You must detect this and tell it to the Lord. If you are watchful, you will receive light from Him. You may realize that your prayer has affected him, and you can begin praising God. Or you may change your prayer and cast another net. Perhaps, after some time, he will soften, and you can then change to another kind of prayer to cast another net. We have to adjust our prayer according to the situation. To do this we need to be watchful.
Ephesians 6 is a chapter on spiritual warfare. The most important thing in this chapter is the prayer mentioned at the end. Among God’s children, prayer is the one thing that is most easily attacked. This is why we must be watchful to fight for a time to pray, to guard prayer, to stop prayers that are not prayer, and to be on guard against Satan’s strategy to cut off our prayer. We must remember that prayer is a service, an excellent service. We have to watch and pray, and we must practice conscientiously, so that Satan will not have the opportunity to destroy our prayer.
