Prayer and a Battle Plan

My hubby and I just watched War Room. (Yes I would endorse it fully. 5 stars all the way. Please watch it!)

It was inspiring and encouraging for us for two reasons.

1.      We have already learned some of the principles shared

2.      It inspired us to fight in prayer more, and to not give up

Probably the most inspiring scene in the movie for me was, when Elizabeth finds out that her husband is seeing another woman, and in tears, Elizabeth surrenders everything to God and then with boldness walks through her house and commands the enemy in “Jesus Christ” name to get out!

The verse Elizabeth read in that scene was James 4:7 “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

When we are faced with problems, weather they are relationships within marriage or family, extended family, or boyfriend girlfriend etc… we usually see the other person as the enemy and we know we are right and they are wrong and we want to fight them and fix the problem. But we forget they are not the enemy. Satan is!

As Ms. Clare told Elizabeth, (in my own words) we need to submit to God, get self off the throne, repent if we’ve messed up, get self totally out of the way, do our fighting in prayer, and let God do our fixing/fighting for us.

(Does it ever occur to us that the Lord brings people into our lives for a reason? That maybe we were meant to help one another in prayer? Not fight or walk away from them?)

When Mr. J and I were going together before we were even engaged, Mr. J lived with a headache for 2 ½ years! Doctors didn’t know what the matter was, they would only give pain meds. He sought help from many different medical people, and none had any answers for him. He had a chronic headache and he had to live with it, period. But God wasn’t finished with him.

One day we were sitting on the couch in the basement of our friend’s home, when Mr. J turned to me and with tears asked, “are you sure you want to marry a sick man?” My response was, “yes,” because God had brought us together, so why would I walk away from him when he needed someone to go through all this with him? I knew it might not be easy, I even worried that I may be a young widow, but I knew God had put us together and I was going to trust Him to see us through this.  Shortly after that, Mr. J sought the elders of the church to pray for him. They did what is written in James 5:14 prayed for him and anointed him with oil. Soon after this we were led to a spiritual counselor who began to teach us spiritual warfare like in the War Room movie. It took several sessions with this counselor before we had the breakthrough. With tears streaming down his face, Mr. J renounced the areas in his life where Satan had ground, and commanded them (the oppressing spirits) in Jesus Christ name to get out, and when he did this, the headache lifted for the first time in 2 ½ years!! *

Thank you Jesus! Hallelujah!

So you can imagine my excitement over the scene in the movie. The tools they are giving people; showing them how they can have freedom in their own lives and how to spiritually fight!

The movie has also inspired me to pray harder… or should I say, create a battle plan for the areas I feel led to pray in. It’s so easy to just give up on things, especially people we feel a need to pray for. We can’t see God working so we give up praying. But we can’t see what God sees; we can’t see what is happening under the surface.

I do not have a War Room closet, our house is too small for that, but I do have a prayer journal in which I have names and prayer requests and areas in our home that need prayer. I also feel a burden to intercede on others behalf’s and I think the movie touched on that too.

There are some people who I pray for that I would love to shack some sense into, and yet that is not what we are to do, we are only to pray for them, and let God to the shaking. I was challenged by the movie to pray for their walk with God, not so much the `problem’ they have or are causing. Because if they’re walk with God is right, the Holy Spirit will do the convicting and they will get their problems straightened out.

So here are a few things I pray for individually.

            -That they would know Christ as their personal saviour.

-That their relationship with God would grow.

            -That they would submit to God and take self off the throne

            -That the Lord would teach them how to resist the devil

            -That they would have a hunger for God’s Word.

            -That their eyes would be open to the truth.

            -That they would be free from bondage from the enemy in Jesus Christ name

            -That they would walk in the Spirit and put on the Fruits of the Spirit in their lives.

No, I do not have it all together! Some days I forget to pray. But I hope and pray that as I share things, and am open about what the Lord has led us through or taught us, that it will help someone who reads this.

*It is important to note that not all sickness is cause of spiritual oppression. Like Job some can be for testing or to build our faith. We must always examine ourselves and ask for the Lord to show us.

S.L. Kliever