Spiritual Warfare 5: Prayer

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

I would like to talk for about 25 min or half an hour about prayer and spiritual warfare. And I’d
like to point out that one of the things we do before we’re baptized with the Holy Spirit is try to
fight spiritual battles with the forces of our own personality. And I’m preaching to myself tonight
as I share this with you, because I know often still God has to pull me up as I try, with even a
joke, to put something right that needs to be put right by prayer. And often, more often before I
was baptized with the Holy Spirit, I was tackling spiritual problems with the forces of my own
personality. I would try to change my wife, or change someone else by either criticism or what I
thought was a very gentlemanly kindly hint, but what was just a big sledge hammer to the person
listening.
And so when you’re baptized with the Holy Spirit you die to your own ability or power to change
anything permanently inside people. You begin to realize that by the forces of your own personality
you can only make temporary superficial changes in people or in situations and you determine from
then on to depend on the power of the Holy Spirit.

So one effect that the baptism of the Holy Spirit has is that it gives you discernment into the real
problems behind the apparent problems. So when you’re baptized with the Holy Spirit you get clarity
of spiritual vision; you begin to deal with the spiritual realities rather than just the superficial
symptoms. There is a verse in the New Testament that illustrates it in a symbolic way and it might
be worth looking at, it’s Mark 8:24-28. Even though it’s just an illustration I think it does bring
the point home in a graphic way. Jesus came to Bethsaida and they brought a blind man to him in
verse 23, “And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the village; and when he had
spit on his eyes and laid his hands upon him, he asked him, ‘Do you see anything?’ And he looked up
and said, ‘I see men; but they look like trees, walking.’”

The first time Jesus lays his hands upon us in the new birth for forgiveness of our sins, we do see
some things spiritually but we see them like trees walking, we don’t see them too clearly. We sense
that there’s some reason why our mum is as critical as she is, we sense that there’s some reason
behind the boss being as sarcastic as he is, but we just sense it as trees walking, we don’t see it
clearly. When Jesus gives us a second touch with the baptism of the Holy Spirit see verse 25, “Then
again he laid his hands upon his eyes; and he looked intently and was restored, and saw everything
clearly.”

It seems that the baptism of the Holy Spirit brings a very clear spiritual insight so that you
really do see the issues. Of course, one of the results of that is it brings much more peace to you
and to others because you don’t end up in those traumatic arguments or those traumatic emotional
crisis that you’ve caused in the past with your words used wrongly. And I believe that’s something
we still learn after being baptized with the Holy Spirit, but that’s certainly a big change that the
baptism of the Holy Spirit brings. He enables you to see the battle for what it is; a spiritual
battle.

When we produced our first Dunamis newspaper we covered the back page with a picture that had come
from the World Liberation Front, I believe, in Berkley. It was a picture of a quiet rural
countryside with little church spires and farms and the greater part of the picture was the top two
thirds and it was filled with all kinds of demons fighting against angels. And of course the
message was clear that down below the things seemed quiet and peaceful, but up above there was a

tremendous spiritual battle raging.

Now in the trouble that you have in the office, or the problems that we have in our homes, or the
difficulties that we have in school, or with our roommates, or in our houses, that is the situation.
What you see is only part of the battle; the real battle is going on in the heavenlies. You get a
picture of that battle if you look at Daniel 10:12-14. And it starts down at verse 10 of Daniel
10, “And behold, a hand touched me and set me trembling on my hands and knees,” it was obviously an
angel, “And he said to me, ‘O Daniel, man greatly beloved, give heed to the words that I speak to
you, and stand upright, for now I have been sent to you.’ While he was speaking this word to me, I
stood up trembling. Then he said to me, ‘Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your
mind to understand and humbled yourself before your God, your words have been heard, and I have come
because of your words. The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days.’”

So the angel is saying “The prince of the kingdom of Persia,” and obviously not a physical prince
because this is an angel from the spiritual realm saying this, so there must be in the spiritual
realm a prince of the kingdom of Persia, “withstood me twenty-one days; but Michael, one of the
chief princes, came to help me, so I left him there with the prince of the kingdom of Persia and
came to make you understand what is to befall your people in the latter days. For the vision is for
days yet to come.” So that is a glimpse into the spiritual battles that go on in the unseen world.

Now when you enter into the baptism of the Holy Spirit a great sense of discernment and insight
comes to you brothers and sisters, so that you see those battles more clearly. Now obviously, the
Father is good and he allows us to see just the battles that he believes we can take part in, but he
does allow you to see those battles. Of course it is a great relief, for one thing it is much more
economic of your personality powers, and it is much more economic of time, and it is much easier on
other people, because what we’re often involved in is fighting the wrong enemy. Satan loves to
create a disturbance then step out and let the two adversaries beat each other to death, which is
often what we end up doing in roommate situations, in house situations, in work situations. When
you’re baptized with the Holy Spirit you have a great spiritual insight into those things.

If you ask me why we don’t have it before, I’m not absolutely clear except that I do see that before
you’re baptized with the Holy Spirit you want to depend on your own power and you have a great sense
of pride in your own ability to achieve things. So you tend to want to look at the things that you
can deal with and you tend to be too proud to depend on an invisible counselor like the Holy Spirit
to show you those things. So undoubtedly the baptism of the Holy Spirit does bring a great deal of
power and light and insight.

Now the warfare is fought with one chief weapon and that weapon is mentioned in Ephesians 6:18 and I
think we have looked at that verse before but it would be good to settle it in our hearts. This is
the chief weapon that we use in spiritual warfare. Ephesians 6:18, “Pray at all times in the
Spirit,” that’s it, really. “Pray at all times in the Spirit.” The reason is in verse 12, “For we
are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers,
against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the
heavenly places.” Therefore pray at all times in the Spirit.

How does praying in the Spirit differ from praying with the best intentions of our mind and the
strongest feelings of empathy we have in our emotions? Well – in several ways, but one of the chief
is that you determine that God alone knows the particular enemy at that moment, and God alone knows

what you should pray for at that moment. That’s one of the chief differences between praying in the
Spirit and praying with the mind or the emotions. Praying with the mind and the emotions is like
scattering shot all over the place; like putting a shotgun cartridge in and splaying the shot all
over the place. You may get something but you’re just having a go at a general area. Prayer in the
Spirit is carefully aimed and directed prayer, directed by the Father himself from a position where
he can see everything.

Now prayer in the Spirit in other words, or a prayer of faith is a prayer that comes from God’s mind
to your mind and you pray it. So you have three people in an argument in your office, you’re always
seeing it from your view point so you can’t see clearly which one has to be dealt with first by God.
But the Father can see into their hearts and their spirits. He knows, and your job is to get from
him his mind in order to know which one you have to stand against Satan for in what particular way.
God gives you that. You take the stand and that’s the first step to the resolution.

Now the prayer of faith or praying in the Spirit is prayer that is directed by God. That’s why it’s
so important to allow God to make the need known to you before you pray. So the chief weapon in
spiritual warfare is prayer, but it’s praying in the Spirit and praying in the Spirit is prayer in
which God makes the need known to you. That’s why prayer in the Old Testament involved a lot of
listening and you get that plain teaching in Ecclesiastes 5:1-2, “Guard your steps when you go to
the house of God; to draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools.” So to
draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools.

Often we babble away to the Father the moment we come into his presence, and we’re just offering the
sacrifice of fools. We’re often offering wishful thinking, prayers that we would like to see
answered but they aren’t what he wants to do anyway, so they aren’t going to be answered. Our job
is to find out what God sees is the next move, to offer the sacrifice of fools, “For they do not
know that they are doing evil. Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a
word before God, for God is in heaven, and you upon earth; therefore let your words be few.” So
praying in the Spirit involves a great deal of waiting before the Father and loving him, and looking
into his mind, so that he can give you his mind on a certain issue, so that you can pray in the
Spirit, pray according the need that God has made known. It’s also not only praying according to a
need that God makes known, but praying according to the burden that God plants on your own intuitive
spirit.

In other words, it’s very difficult to pray in a way that is effective in spiritual warfare unless
you have a burden in your own spirit, and God will lay that burden upon you if you’ll only come
before him and spend enough time with him. Often we do not pray as we should not because we do not
know how to, but because we have not a burden on our own spirits, and we’re simply deciding we’d
better pray a little for this. So we pray a little for it, but not with a great sense of burden,
and then we wonder, “How long should we pray?” Well if we had the burden that would tell us how
long we should pray. If we had the burden in our spirits we wouldn’t need to be taught words to
pray, we would pray because we had a burden.

Now the heart of receiving a burden is back to the first step, spending time before the Father, and
determining “Not to make a move Lord, until you show me what you want me to fight for in this
battle” so he gives you a burden. You find that teaching in Galatians 4:19, “My little children,
with whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you!” And that’s the indication that
though all is well inside a person who is baptized with the Spirit, yet they do know travail, and
laboring, and toiling spiritually, and Paul says he is in travail until Christ be formed. Often the

reason why our prayers are not answered is they aren’t prayers that God wants us to pray, they
aren’t needs that he has made known to us, and they aren’t burdens that he has planted on our own
spirits they’re just things that we have taken up and decided to pray for. And so all those prayers
do is discourage us from ever praying again, because we pray, we don’t get much sense of dealing
with God over it at all, and we get no answer so the prayer becomes a trial rather than a joy.

But this other way where you seek God and allow him to let the need be known to you, and you receive
a burden in your spirit, then you begin to pray with a sense of achieving something. Then of
course, it is possible to pray until the burden lifts. But unless you take this route, you know
nothing of a burden lifting at all, and you’re just baffled when somebody shares that kind of truth
with you. You say, “Well what’s the burden lifting?” And of course if you haven’t had the burden
in the first place, you won’t know what it is to have it lifted. But you can pray for it loved
ones, until the burden is firmly settled on Jesus, and you sense that that is the end of your
prayer.

That’s another lesson that God teaches us; that we ought not to let the prayer exceed our burden.
We ought not to pray longer than the burden is resting on our spirits. This would save us from a
lot of depression and pain that we get ourselves into. I remember someone coming up to me and being
concerned about praying for some spiritualist. It’s very important if you’re going to pray for
spiritualists or if you’re going to pray for someone who is in trouble, that you pray for them as
long as the spiritual burden is on your spirit. If you pray beyond that point, you will begin to be
involved in their problem and their trouble. It’s very easy to go out in a naïve soulish
philanthropy and say, “I must pray for those people, they really need it” and if you pray without a
burden and especially if you pray beyond the burden that God has placed on you then you are going
beyond what the Holy Spirit wants and you’re going outside his protection. It’s a little like going
beyond what the General of the Army tells you to do; he guarantees you protection up to that point,
but withdraws it after that point.

It’s very easy for instance, to empathize humanly with someone in trouble, too much. Now you may
think, “Oh no brother, that’s love,” but loved ones, it is possible to use your imagination to
become so involved in someone’s difficulty, especially the difficulty of a loved one, and so borne
down by their problem that you are of no value to them at all, in fact you lose out yourself on it.
So it’s vital only to intercede, or to pray, or to stand against Satan as long as the burden is on
your spirit inside. Beyond that, the prayer itself becomes rather dead, and you yourself begin to
move into dangerous places.

Now at the same time I think there’s another truth, it’s important that we don’t miss burdens
through carelessness or through our own unnecessary burdens. And that’s where it really is
important to be baptized with the Spirit, and to experience a real death to self. Because if you
die to self, then you’re no longer burdened down with all your own worries and all your own troubles
so your spirit is light and airy and able to receive someone else’s burden. But loved ones, the
truth is that God has taken all our burdens upon himself, he has determined to look after our
career, to look after our bank account, to look after our friends, to look after our bodies, so that
we can be free to bear other peoples’ burdens up to him. So it’s vital to be free of our own
burdens, and it’s vital to be careful that we don’t miss other people’s burdens through carelessness
and through simply not paying attention to the Holy Spirit.

There is a verse in Psalms 37:5 that we need to walk in, in order to be in the position where we can
receive burdens. And unless we do this with our own burdens, we will never be able to be in the

place where we can receive burdens from God himself. Psalms 37:5, “Commit your way to the Lord;
trust in him, and he will act.” And it’s really important to learn that verse of “and commit your
way to the Lord.” Once you’re baptized with the Holy Spirit you have signed on in Jesus’ service.
Your job is no longer primarily taking care of yourself, your job is no longer primarily making
yourself successful in this world, all that you commit to God and accept that that is part of the
“all other things that will be added unto you.”

You are in the king’s service and you commit all those things unto the Lord and you trust them to
God and you set about Jesus’ service. A Christian is meant to walk free of his or her own burdens
so that the Holy Spirit will be able to lay on him or her burdens from other people and that is a
glorious and a free way to walk, and it’s the way God means us to walk.

Now if you say to me, “But do you not often find your own burdens falling back upon you as you’re
trying to lift other burdens” certainly you do, and that’s why God gave you a mind so that you
could turn your thoughts from your own burdens, and take your stand again and commit it unto the
Lord. And if you said to me, “Brother, do you not find that as you’re trying to bear a burden in
your spirit for somebody else, a whole mass of private messes clatters on the top of your head?”
Certainly, yes, and at that moment you’re meant to rise right up and throw all those things onto
Jesus, and walk in the burden that he’s pressing upon you. So it does demand will power and a
direction of the mind, because be assured that once you begin to fight in spiritual warfare Satan
will be intent on distracting you from the battle.

Now maybe there are just another couple of things that it would be good to share, dear ones. You
may say, “Well how do you pray this way in the Spirit?” I think there’s great truth in this; that
as your daily walk is, so your prayer life will be. If you walk in the midst of emotional fervor
and in the midst of your emotions, your prayer life will be an emotional prayer life. If you walk
every moment with just the intellect and the shrewd cleverness of your own mind, then your prayer
life will tend to be the same. You can’t walk one way loved ones, thirteen hours of the day and
walk another way the fourteenth hour; as your daily life is, so you’re prayer life will be. If you
walk primarily depending on your physical powers in your ordinary everyday life, so you will walk
that way in your prayer life.

Now I think that comes again in Galatians 5:25; that it is important to walk each day in the Spirit,
if you hope to pray in the Spirit. There’s no mystery about walking in the Spirit, it’s walking
with your eyes on God, considering primarily him and what he’s thinking and what he’s surrounded
with, rather than the visible things you can see. So there’s no need to get complex and esoteric
about what praying in the Spirit is. Praying in the Spirit is not being preoccupied with the things
you see. Walking in the Spirit is not being preoccupied with the things that you see, but being
preoccupied with the Father and with looking at him, and with what he’s thinking.

Galatians 5:25 says, “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.” Here’s a mistake
that many of us make, I think, in regard to this. I think many of us receive prayer burdens from
Jesus, we receive insights into other people’s lives, and instead of receiving them as prayer
burdens we dissipate them by sharing them with other people. I think that’s why many of us don’t
have a living prayer life, and a living intercessory life, because as soon as God shows us something
about somebody else we’re sharing, it in confidence of course, but we’re sharing it with someone
else, or we’re sharing it with the person themselves. And so we go before God and we’ve dissipated

all the burden that he gave us for the person.

In other words loved ones, many of us lack prayer burdens because we do not have a private interior
life with God of our own. What we are you can tell by listening to our tongues, we’re nothing more
than that. We never keep anything to ourselves. We never keep anything between ourselves and God.
We receive an insight into someone’s life and we don’t realize that it’s a prayer burden, so we go
and tell them about it and try to put it right, or we go to a friend and tell them “I think I know
what so and so’s problem is.”

Now loved ones, usually when God gives you a private insight into somebody’s life that’s a prayer
burden for you to take before him, and if you’ll take it that way he will answer it and use it to
change the person’s life. If you dissipate it by sharing it with somebody else or sharing it with
the person themselves you lose everything, nothing happens just frustration and that alone. So I
think brothers and sisters that praying in the Spirit will come if we will begin to have a private
negotiation with God about other people, and about their lives. I think if you pray in the Spirit
this way and if you cultivate an interior life with God, then your spirit becomes more and more
sensitive.

It’s a psychological rule as well as a spiritual rule that if you use your mind a lot then your mind
will become very effective and very powerful. If you use your emotions a lot they will become very
effective and very powerful. If you use your spirit a lot it will become very effective and very
powerful. And so the secret of praying in the Spirit is in our own private lives walking in the
Spirit more often. Beginning to look at situations and ask God to show us, “Lord what is behind
this situation?” And really begin to ask the Father to show us, “Alright is there something
spiritual behind this? And Lord if there is will you show me it?”

But loved ones, instead of reacting against the human situation, begin to look for what God is
showing you about the spiritual problem behind it. And in that way begin to walk in the Spirit,
because if you begin to walk in the light of the invisible things more really than in the light of
the physical and visible things that you see, than you will begin to come into prayer in the Spirit.
And prayer in the Spirit, yes it has burdens and travail, but loved ones; it is a life of peace
compared with the prayer burdens that we engage in. You know how our intercessory prayer often
weighs us down instead of raising us up to the Father.

Now loved ones I should stop – I think I should keep my word — are there any questions? I’m going
to continue to speak further about that next Sunday evening.

When waiting upon God to wait for his mind to come to you, where should our minds be?

You remember my sharing a couple of Sundays ago, that certainly our minds should not be passive.
Waiting on God is not passivity, because if you simply make your mind blank and wait for God to
write his words upon that blank slate then you engage in transcendental meditation which is what
brings the Eastern religion practitioners into contact with evil spirits. So it is not a passive
mind, Mary.

It seems to me it’s “thou will keep in perfect peace who’s mind is stayed on thee.” Seems to me you
stay your mind on the Father. I do it every morning, and I did it this morning again, I read the
first verse of Psalm 104 and I used that to stay my mind on God so that my mind would not be on the
responsibilities of the day or on how I was feeling, but on God. So I would use the sword of the

Spirit a great deal to actually set my mind on God or “whatsoever things are lovely and true and of
good report,” I would think on those things.

Now I’m with anybody here who says, “Oh but brother is that not soulish prayer?” No, the mind can
be used to aid the Spirit. And I agree with you the Spirit has to take hold of your spirit then and
rest it in the Father where thoughts begin to fade away, and you aren’t conscious of thinking
specific thoughts. But it’s good to prime the pump by thinking specific thoughts at the beginning
so that your mind is cooperating with the Spirit, Mary, rather than just lying passive.

[Question Inaudible 30:38]

That’s it Mary, that’s what I do. I read a verse of scripture that sets your mind on the Father. I
think the mistake that many of us make is we either don’t do that, and so we sink into our own
subjectivity, or we do it in a purely soulish way and never expect the Spirit to take fire and lift
us beyond that. And I agree with anyone here tonight who says, “The Spirit does lift your spirit
and lift you beyond thoughts.” I agree with that, and that’s what he will do if we set about it
with a mind that is active.

Is using a prayer tongue praying in the Spirit?

It sthe Spirit? tongue praying in the Spirit?14, ould have.
a townhouse, is a townhouse so tha’ature or some documentation sayis very important to see that
praying in a tongue, in an unknown tongue is praying in the Spirit but that is not the only way to
pray in the Spirit. I think you see that when you study the verses that are used by Paul. He says
for instance, “Pray in the Spirit,” here and it is a capital S, in Ephesians and that’s what he
commands us to do, pray in the Holy Spirit. Whereas you remember, when he talks about, “What
happens when I pray with a tongue, I pray in the spirit,” he uses a small s, and he says, “There I’m
praying just in my spirit without praying in my mind.” So it’s important to see that the command to
pray in the Spirit is to pray in the Holy Spirit, and that can be done either with a tongue, an
unknown tongue or it can be done with our own language with our own words.

If I could do a wee commercial for tongues, nevertheless, and say that you can see that one of the
advantages of praying in an unknown tongue, and we’ve been talking a little bit about this in the
prayer seminar at 9:30 on Sunday mornings, one of the advantages is that it does lift you above just
the thought life, and the preoccupation with thoughts, and lifts you definitely out of the soulish
realm. Now there’s no question you can be out of the soulish realm simply praying in your own
language, but that is one of the values of a tongue especially to a person just beginning to learn
to pray in the Spirit.

[Question Inaudible 33:43]

Brother says he’s using the recommended technique but it isn’t producing the results. He’s says
he’s getting up in the morning and he’s using the verse of scripture and using it to keep his mind
on God, but it doesn’t seem to be – I think you say it doesn’t seem to be making prayer real. Would
that be how you put it?

[Question Inaudible 34:18]

Yes, yes, that he’s not getting thoughts from God, yes. So I think loved ones, it’s very important

and that’s why it is good to laugh about those things, because it’s very important to see that every
Christian operation that Jesus has started has always drifted into soulish techniques or methods,
and thought that they were the answer. And that’s why I think it’s very important on the teachings
that we share on Sunday evenings, to see that they themselves will achieve nothing but they are only
guides to us as to how we might get in contact with God’s Spirit.

Brother, I agree with you, I think only the Holy Spirit can make prayer real and can bring you into
a real living prayer life. And I do think that any of us that are having difficulties entering into
a real prayer life ought to look again, even those of us who say, “We’ve been baptized with the
Spirit,” we should look again, “Holy Spirit is there something else you can do in my spirit to make
me more alive and to strengthen my spirit in the inner man?” And I think that that’s more the line
brother, that it’s a question of the Holy Spirit showing you what it is in yourself that is still
involved in perhaps soulish prayer. Yeah.

[Question Inaudible 35:56]

Yes, yes, I should ask Rick Halverson. Rick knows why I say that, because I think a number of us
brother, would differ on just what we mean by soulish. But in the teaching that Jesus has made real
in my life the soul would be the “psuche”. I’m trying to think of the Greek psyche isn’t that
right? It would be the psyche or the psychological part of his mind, and the emotions, and the
will, and it would seem that many of us have failed to see that there are levels of the personality
at which we exist. And certainly with anyone who says you can’t take the soul out and say that’s
it, or the soul goes to heaven or that kind of thing, I agree that we’re a unit, but that we exist
at different levels of a personality and the Spirit is the level at which we contact God. And so
that’s it brother, we’re trying to make a distinction between just praying with the mind, or the
emotions, or the will and praying in the Spirit. And it seems that many of us are involved in this
kind of prayer, and it really is almost simply the reflex reaction of our own thoughts and feelings.
It’s not really getting through to God at all.

Now I do agree with you that the only way to pray in the Spirit at all is to believe God to be
working in your spirit and making your spirit alive. But those of us who have come into some
awareness of spiritual prayer do know a very real difference between praying in our spirits and
praying in our souls. There’s a reality and a sense of being hand-to-hand in touch with God,
face-to-face with him, that there isn’t here. There is also a great restfulness about it and there
is a real sense of knowing what you’re doing, whereas here you’re hoping that something is
happening. [Audio ends abruptly 38:06]