(If you never read another thing I write, before going any further, please read this short piece my daughter wrote to her children, ages 5, 2, and ten months. Click here, if you dare, and brace for impact.)
Okay. Back? Let’s get to it.
You don’t have the luxury of praying for people you love – especially your children or grandchildren – like a sissy.
The time is too short…
The enemy is too cruel…
The church is too powerless…
The Lord is too near His return…
…for you and me to sit on an arsenal mightier than a nuclear weapon and ask God to make their lives more comfortable…
easier…
safer.
Safer to whom, for God’s sake? The devil? The world? The ACLU? The media?
Stop asking God to make your little angels little angels. Or mild-mannered weenies. In the name of all that is holy, I dare you to ask God to make them dangerous. Call on Him, in the heavenly realm, to put a sword in their teeth and courage in their hearts to blast a hole in the kingdom of darkness.
The last time I checked, no less than the Son of God said that the gates of hell would not prevail against His church. Do you really believe that? Most of us have been shrinking in the face of our own defeats so long we wouldn’t recognize the gates of hell if we crashed into it while updating our Facebook profile. Maybe it’s time to ask God to raise up a generation that gets it. Gates are a defensive weapon to protect against danger.
Don’t you think it’s time to ask God to make your baby (whatever his or her age) a threat to the kingdoms of darkness and the kingdoms of this world?
The nation of Israel is named after a conniving swindler who clung in a death grip to an angel and declared, “I will not let you go until you bless me!”
That’s dangerous.
John Knox, the Scottish reformer, dangerously prayed, “Give me Scotland, or I die!” Mary, Queen of Scots is reputed to have said of him, “I fear the prayers of John Knox more than all the assembled armies of Europe.”
That’s dangerous.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if this generation’s version of an evil king said that about your warriors, or you?
Where to Send the Reinforcements
Two men confer in an emergency session. They are under a surprise attack and there is no time to waste. So the older man says to the younger, “Pick out some men for an army. Then you take them into the valley tomorrow, while I go up on the hill.”
The young man was Joshua. The old man Moses.
Joshua went to fight valiantly; Moses went to pray dangerously.
As long as Moses stood and held up the rod of the Lord, Israel prevailed. But when Moses’ arms grew tired and he lowered the rod, Joshua’s army began to retreat in defeat.
Back and forth the battle went – all determined by how capable Moses was to pray dangerously.
Finally, Aaron and Hur decided it was time for reinforcements. What’s interesting to me is that they didn’t send a messenger to ask for more troops (and there were plenty more men who could have fought). Instead, they got a big rock for Moses to sit on. And each of them took an arm of Moses and held it up until Joshua prevailed.
I shudder to think what the strategy would be if that battle were taking place today. Maybe they would have called in a consultant. Or a negotiator. Maybe they would have gotten Moses a gym membership or Joshua tickets to a seminar. Heck, maybe they would have just sued the Amalekites for pain and suffering.
What they did instead was find the source of power and send in reinforcements there. Those poor Amalekites – they were aiming at the wrong people and never knew what hit them.
Or Who.
“I Find All This a Little Uncomfortable.”
Good. It should be.
Look, it’s like Carrie said in her post. You can pray all day for your kids to have an easy life and guess what? It’s gonna be hard anyway. Why don’t you pray instead that it’s hard for them to sin? Or that they love so much it’s hard to resist their compassion? Or that they’re so wise and discerning it’s hard to fool them? Or that they have such perseverance that it’s hard to discourage them.
That’s dangerous praying.
A Place to Start
All right. There are all kinds of ways to approach this, but here’s a place to start. Here is what I am starting to pray for my family, but specifically for my six grandsons (including the one who is due October 4) and my granddaughter:
I pray that the Lord would teach them to stand in His strength and His alone, not in any way shying away from their weakness or trusting in their abilities.
I pray that He would give them great discernment to recognize the difference between soul and spirit, truth and error, opportunity and deception.
I pray that He would ground them in the truth – truth as a Person (Jesus), truth as an absolute, and truth as an anchor to their days.
I pray that He would give them a heart ablaze with His righteousness, filled with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
I pray that He would call them out and make them ready, regardless of their vocation, to engage those who are far from God with good news of God’s grace.
I pray that He would raise them up to believe Him greatly, simply, and expectantly and that true to His promise, their faith would move mountains.
I pray that He would keep them always under the banner and protection of His grace and mercy – trusting only in the shed blood of Jesus as their merit.
I pray that He would make them men and women who know His word – alive, powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword – and know how to use it to pierce the darkness with His light.
I pray that He would make them warriors in prayer, wielding the authority of the King of Kings, and that they would not grow weary in interceding boldly for God’s people and God’s kingdom.
I pray that He would give them the tongue of learned, the wisdom of an ambassador, and the boldness of a prophet to say what needs to be said, whenever it needs saying.
And I pray that when the smoke clears off the battlefield and their days are done, when somebody digs up the gates of hell, they’ll find the imprint of my grandchildren on them.
Finally, I pray that should Jesus tarry, they would raise up a new generation of passionate servants of Christ, enflamed by the love of God to transform their world as well.
Dangerous? You bet.
No sissies allowed.
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I read Carrie’s post, which is absolutely inspiring, and I’m now following her. 🙂 I learned that I, too, have not been praying offensively for my children and grandchild. As I told Carrie, all this is changed as of right now! I’m going to copy and save your praying suggestions, Andy, and read them as prayers for those I love over and over until they rest easily in my heart.
I love all your posts, but this has to be one of my all-time favorites.
Blessings, my friend!
Martha Orlando´s last blog post ..Joyful Journey!
i needed to find this: I had been getting discouraged after all the years of having the “church” tell me to shut up. But: Father didn’t say our enemies wouldn’t come against us, but that they would fall for our sake. He didn’t say that no weapons would be formed against us, rather that they would not prosper. He didn’t promise us healing, rather He had Jesus give His back to the smiters, and “by [His] stripes ye were healed”.
God gave us a covenant in the blood of His Son. Are we to cringe and pull back when the devil’s henchmen come? Or shall we believe our gracious Father’s words of deliverance and let every trial be our opportunity to speak His truth against the darkness and stand, believing that His word shall NOT return to Him void!
While it would have been nice to have gone home overnight, as long as I’m here, it is my duty, in honor of Jesus’ obedience unto death, to try to live up to His standard of faithfulness to our Father.
And the Holy Spirit has only me to work with in that. Good thing He sees Fahter’s intended end in me. I think I hear groanings that can’t be uttered.
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