Prayer is a reminder to yourself, as well as a declaration to
the enemy, that you know he’s there. That you’re on to him.
When you bring your concerns and fears and irritations to the
Lord in prayer, you’re aligning your weakling spirit with the full
force of God’s Holy Spirit. Instead of continuing to fail by
taking the battle into your own hands—and taking the battle to
the wrong people—you’re joining instead with all the power of
heaven to take your fight directly to the source of the problem.
You’re following the armies of the living God right into the field
tent where your enemy is cooking up his craftiest designs
against you, and you’re busting up his strategy closet—
making sure he knows that you know that you know what he’s
up to.
I’m not saying, now, that every bad, uncomfortable thing
that enters your life is automatically oozing up from the pit of
hell. Sometimes simply the nature of the world in which we live
can bring “tribulation” out of the woodwork (John 16:33), and
sometimes the reap-what-we-sow consequences of our own
actions can put us in challenging, arduous positions (Gal. 6:7).
The Bible tells us that God is sovereign enough to employ any
device necessary to draw our hearts back to Him, whether He’s
wanting to uncover hidden sins... or teach us lessons in trust