SR • December 2015
13
The armor of God is simply Christ Jesus himself.
SR
put on the armor, prayer should characterize our daily
activity. Jesus said,
“My house will be called a house of
prayer for all nations.”
(Mark 11:17) The house He was
referring to was not the physical temple but the spiritual
temple – His people, those who live by faith in Christ.
The command to pray is accompanied by four “alls.”
These “alls” are important. The first is “all kinds of prayers
and requests.” There is nothing in our life that can fall out-
side of the need to pray. If you have a question about
whether or not to pray about something, let this be your
answer — “Yes.”
The second is “pray at all times in the Spirit.” Is there
ever a time where we should be out of communication
with the Spirit of God? We should always be listening
even when we are unable to pray out loud.
The third is “all perseverance and petition.” Some
things need to stay on our prayer list until the Lord gives
us peace to take them off. James 5:17 says,
“Elijah was
a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently
that it might not rain, and for three years and six months
it did not rain on the earth.”
There are times when what
we lack is perseverance, not faith.
The last is “for all the saints.” We need to hold all of
God’s people in our hearts. That doesn’t mean that we
can pray for everyone all the time, but it does mean that
we should be ready to pray for God’s people at home and
around the world as the occasion arises. For example,
we should be praying regularly for Christians who are
facing the reality of the Islamic State.
The following report is from the Voice of the Martyrs:
“As the Islamic State (IS) fighter raised his weapon to
fire, the Christian he was about to kill made a surprising
statement. “I know you will kill me, but I give to you my
Bible.”
The fighter — who especially enjoyed killing Christians —
squeezed the trigger, and the Christian man fell dead.
Then the fighter did something strange: he picked up the
Bible.
As he read it, he began having dreams of a man in
white who told him, “You are killing my people.”
As we pray for strength for others and they pray for us,
we are all going to be stronger in the Lord. We don’t
fight these battles alone. We are in this together. Let us
be those who pray at all times for all of God’s people.
How can we pray? Let us pray for each other to become
more like Jesus: To grow stronger in faith, in righteous-
ness, in the peace of God, in truth, in the Word of the
Lord, in being transformed into those who truly reflect
the image of Jesus.
UNITY – COMMON UNION
In His prayer on the night before His crucifixion, our
Lord made a couple of very important requests of our
Heavenly Father.
“I have given them your word, and the
world has hated them because they are not of the world,
just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take
them out of the world, but that you keep them from the
evil one.”
(John 17:14-15)
Jesus also prayed,
“I do not ask for these only, but also
for those who will believe in me through their word, that
they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I
in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world
may believe that you have sent me.”
(John 17:20-21)
The Lord was asking for unity among his followers, for
all who would come after him. This unity is possible
because of the unity that exists between the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit. We have a common union not because of
our common beliefs, our common abilities, our common
temperaments, our common ancestry, or any other thing
that belongs to us. We have common unity or communion
because we share in Christ together. Because we have
been covered by Christ, because we are in Christ who is
in the Father, we have the ability to come into perfect
unity.
Perfect unity is not perfect uniformity. We will never see
unity by attempting to make another person like us. We
will see unity as we together fix our eyes on Jesus, helping
one another to draw close to Him and to be conformed
to His image, His character.
So then let us put aside the need to create each other in
our own image and instead celebrate the image of Jesus
which God is creating in each one of us.
