There are many great books and pamphlets on spiritual warfare, some that are resting on the shelf behind me as I write. But the one I keep by my side all of the time is . . .
Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. No question about it. Yes, it is not as user-friendly as some of the paperbacks we can nab from Barnes & Noble, but it is certainly far more profound when you grasp its significance.
Likely you are thinking, “Yep, he’s referring to Ephesians 6:10-20.” And I certainly point to that as the practical application easiest for us to understand. But the entire letter which Paul wrote is about warfare because the city of Ephesus was considered the center for the practice of magic arts for the Mediterranean world. When you read of Paul’s ministry there in Acts 19, it is very clear there was a lot of spiritual darkness and outright demonic manifestations. The body of young believers absolutely needed to be equipped against the strategies of evil, and so Paul begins the training in the very first chapter.
Last week, I began a series of posts about the Unseen Battlefield. If we are going to minister effectively to victims of the Sexual Tsunami, we need to have a grasp on what role dark forces play in the bondage of many. Before setting others free, however, we ourselves need to be prepared and equipped.
I ended last week by stating that I eventually learned the importance of having a formal team of intercessors. Here’s where that lesson began.
A nearby church camp in Pennsylvania ran a variety of camping programs, sometimes with three or four programs sharing the facility during the same week. I was asked to take on a week of Sports Camp. OK, cool. I like sports. But I didn’t want it to be simply a week of football, swimming, and goofing around. So I enlisted the help of a gifted youth evangelist and put together a team of counselors, excited about what God might do.
Upon arriving, I was introduced to the camp staff counselors. Two young girls had worked that week of camp for a few years in a row and they were hopeful that I was as cool and fun as the previous leader. When I first began to describe the program, I was met with the inevitable, “Well, that’s not the way we’ve been doing it. Sure, we had some devotions, but no mandatory Bible study and evening chapel services!” And many of the returning campers were expecting a weeklong fun fest as well.
The new program was well conceived. The counselors I had recruited from my church were fully on board and had helped to organize it. But the camp staffers, in league with campers from previous years, were griping and dragging their feet.
Evening services started out slowly. The evangelist was absolutely excellent. But disgruntled teens and camp staffers crossed their arms and frowned the first few evenings.
One night around 1:00 am, there was a knock on my cabin door. One of my counselors said the girls in her cabin were told they could go outside and do whatever they wanted. What!? And so I and another counselor went out and tried to corral the wild horses. When brought together, the campers said, “Well the staffers told us to!”
The next day, I spoke with the director and asked him to replace his staffers. It took some finagling, but the switch was made. As the girls left our camp, one of them winked at the group of boys and said, “Be bad for me, boys!” They grinned in response.
The next night the boys snuck out of their cabin, went down to the recreation center, broke chairs, emptied a fire extinguisher, and spread litter, leaving the rec center a wreck. They got back into their bunks without being detected.
That was a turning point, however. The camp director addressed the campers and righted the ship a bit. And then the Holy Spirit began to move in the chapel services. Our little group of 40 campers began to give their lives to Jesus! By week’s end, 36 out of 40 had made some kind of decision for Jesus Christ.
Introduction to the Prayer Warrior
The day after camp ended was a Sunday. That morning when I returned to the large local church where I served on staff, a lady I barely knew walked up to me and said, “What was going on with you last week?” She did not know that I was away at the camp. “God woke me up in the middle of the night,” she continued, “and he wouldn’t let me sleep until I was done praying for you. I continued to pray for you for the rest of the week!”
Incredible. I already knew the importance of prayer. From time to time, I would ask a few people to be praying for me. But here was a woman whom God had recruited specifically to pray for me when I was out chasing campers in the middle of the night.
Those summer camp staffers were not evil, but evil spirits were using them to prevent kids from getting saved.
That was 1996. Ever since, I have recruited people to pray for me, especially on matters related to sexuality. Back in 2002, I recruited some people to pray for my first book to be written. Nearly thirteen years later, Into the Light: Healing Sexuality in Today’s Church was finally was sent to the printer.
Now I always have a team who pray regularly. When I’ve served at retreats as a counselor, when I’ve begun a new project, when I’ve encountered a very difficult counseling situation, I am covered.
Over the years, I recruited by having sign up sheets at events and eventually gathered a group of nearly 40. But I was not quite convinced they were all praying. Some, I think, saw my emails simply as newsletters. And it just felt strange sending letters and emails to a group of people who may or may not be committed to interceding.
My current team numbers fifteen, and I am confident they are following through with prayer—some of them daily! One wonderful woman of God that I’ve known for probably eight years felt God telling her a year ago that her main ministry from this point on was to intercede for me. How privileged I am!
Like the lady in 1996, some of them hear from God on what specifics to pray. Last August, one of them received a word from God regarding expanding my ministry—a word that I weighed carefully and prayerfully for over a week, concluding God was calling me to start the Tsunami Surfing Academy which will be launched later this year.
SO . . . back to Ephesians, note at the very end that Paul was recruiting his own team of intercessors. After describing the pieces of our spiritual armor, he connected those pieces together with the practice of prayer:
Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints. Pray also for me, so that when I speak a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak. (Ephesians 6:18-20 NRSV)
Are you neck deep in ministry to the deeply broken? Are there times when you return home beaten up and inundated with voices of accusation? Are you a leader in a critical place of ministry?
Become familiar with the pieces of spiritual armor, and prayerfully recruit a team of people committed to you and your vision. It might be only three or four, but if they are disciplined and devoted, they will be absolutely invaluable in the work God has given you.
Next week I will continue on this theme of spiritual warfare among those of us reaching out to victims of the Sexual Tsunami. We will look at another section of Ephesians as well!
Dang! Anyone dealing with teens really DOES need a lot of prayer support! I'm glad you had that when you needed it. I grin about the stuff Bev tells me that she faces as a substitute teacher. I remember it well. But after the grinning, I remember that it's a job that provides a perfect opportunity to have an impact on kids. She and I often talk about how small interactions can make a huge difference in kids' lives. So, yeah, we have to be prayed up and have back-up to face the world out there.
Mark, in this post you pose some perennial difficult and even baffling issues. Yes, we are on a Battlefield, and in a conflict that we have not chosen, it has been chosen for us. But when the enemy is in our own campground . . . . “Houston, we have a problem.” I have spent an inordinate amount of time and energy in the past 50 + years resisting (and even battling) manipulative pathologically ill leaders (and at times followers), relational dysfunctionality, outright sinful, and at times evil “Christians.” There have been way too many occasions similar to the one you describe, but, in my case, almost none of them were spiritually resolved. Seminary does not prepare you for this. Curiously, there are not that many books or seminars about it either. Yes, we must make Ephesians our war manual, without any doubt. But I am reading Paul’s epistle to the Philippians and I am observing all of the emotional, feeling language he uses with regard to those who are problem people, or his “enemies,” or those who have become “enemies of the cross.” He does not take it all lightly. I often ask why it is that “the few” are called to resist carnal, sinful, hard-hearted behavior in the Christian community. Why can’t it be a large group, even a mass of Christians, who band together to live righteous lives and discern and resist evil in all of its manifestations? (Maybe I should have driven up to participate in the recent Asbury revival.) I guess I have some “Jonah or Elijah syndromes” inside of me that need to be exorcised. We need to pray for you, Mark. But we need to pray for each other too so that the insidious alienation of the pandemic of loneliness and isolation of our current historical moment might be ameliorated by a palpable, felt unity among us pray-ers, thereby producing true community in Christ that can find strength to resist, and having done all, “to stand.” (Sorry for the long post.)