Praying Defensively

"Listen to my cry for help, my King and my God, for I pray to no one but you. Listen to my voice in the morning, Lord. Each morning I bring my requests to you and wait expectantly." ~ Psalm 5: 2-3NLT

I enjoy football, but I like it when my team has the ball the most which is when we are playing on the offense. The defense of the other team is working hard to block my team from scoring. (And vice versa when my team is on the defense.) That's exactly what we need to do in our prayer life. We should be blocking satan's attacks on us while we pray.

In the Battle Plan for Prayer book by the Kendrick brothers, day 28 was amazing! I want to share it with you. I wish every Christian would read this book. It has seriously taught me so much about prayer.

Here are a few things I wanted to share:

"God's Word says spiritual war is taking place around you. So you must take up the "the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit." (Ephesians 6:16-18)

The following R.E.S.P.O.N.D. acronym is a powerful, Biblically based battle plan to help you strategically respond to a personal attack of the enemy.

1. Resist Satan in Jesus' name. "Resist the devil and he will flee from you." (James 4:7)

There is a reason why the name "Jesus Christ" is used for cursing and profanity in movies and television, and never Buddha or Muhammad... because it is the name of power that Satan must submit to and wants to dishonor. We should never speak Jesus' name irreverently. It is holy. His name saves us and keeps us out of hell. (Acts 4:12; Romans 10:9-10)

2. Escape with Scripture. God promises to always provide a "way of escape" from temptation (1 Corinthians 10:13). Every time Jesus was tempted by the devil, He raised His shield of faith and strategically cut down Satan with the sword of the Spirit by quoting the Word of God. (Luke 4:1-13 & Ephesians 6:17)

3. Search for unconfessed sin. Victory necessitates repentance. Repentance helps you stand strong against temptation.

4.Plead the blood of Jesus. Forgiven believers who don't believe they are forgiven will not act like believers.

5.Overtake ground given by Satan. When you sin or believe his lie, you are yielding control and giving him ground (John 8:34; Eph. 4:26-27)

6. Name someone in targeted prayer. Instead of continuing to wrestle with a temptation or a lie or on "not sinning", we can just refocus on interceding for others. Praying for someone else gets the focus off of you. It can help you not sin if you are tempted.

7. Delight in the Lord. Now it's time to celebrate what just happened.

Satan wants to keep us from praying to God. And there are times when he will pull out of the stops to do so. Using this might help us fight those attacks.

If you don't already have a daily quiet time with God, I recommend you starting off small, even just 5 minutes. I write my prayers down in a journal. I also keep a list of people and things I'm praying for for them in another journal. (I switched from my prayer cards. My list got too long.)

I hope this helped someone. I know it's helping me. I'm planning on memorizing this because it's a great prayer strategy to use when it's needed.

God bless you today and always!