More on Prayer

God has been teaching me so much lately! A lot of it is stuff I've known for the longest time, but He and reality have been slapping me in the face. In so many areas, I'm not practicing what I've studied. Most of the problems are in my prayer life, and I've already talked about it in my posts Believing God and Prayer's Pretty Awesome. But He continues to show me new things!

So when someone hurts a member of my family or one of my friends, I'm so quick to get angry and potentially violent. I cannot tell you how many times I have wanted to drive to someone's house and punch them in the face. Yeah, I know you're shocked because I'm just too sweet to want to do something like that. Pardon me while I do my do my evil laugh... k I'm back. But I definitely have my violent tendencies when someone I love is hurt. Maybe that's partially due to the movies full of explosions that I love so much, I dunno.

Anyways, God pointed out to me today that my fight is not supposed to be against flesh and blood. It's supposed to be against evil forces. Instead of putting on my brass knuckles and preparing to make somebody sleep with the fishies, I need to put on the full armor of God and fight with prayer for my friend. Because it's not other people attacking my friends. It's the enemy and his nasty homies. My God is great and awesome and can fix a situation so much better than I can with duct tape and a cinder block. (Ephesians 6:12-18)

Instead of being quick to desire revenge, I need to be quick to prayer. And not just a "God bless so-and-so" generally heartless prayer, but specific petitions. I've seen recently how God does in fact answer prayers, so I can't help but wonder how many times people I love have suffered because I refused to come to God with prayers specifically about certain situations. Prayer and the God who hears it have sooo much power and I'm not taking advantage of it. And it's so stupid of me.

From now on, I want to daily use prayer to battle the enemy and defend my family and friends. It's gonna be like this epic battle scene at the end of Lord of the Rings, but instead of wielding a sword, I'm gonna use the power of prayer and watch as my amazing God slays the enemy before me. Though unlike that battle scene, we will win not because of our skills with an ax or bow, but because we trusted and relied on God and He gave us the victory.