Written by Pastor Jack Wellman– R.A. Torrey
The Power of Prayer
There is power in prayer but it’s not our power. The access to that power is through Jesus Christ in Whom we pray through. The Apostle Paul wrote that “there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1st Tim 2:5) so there are not many paths to God. There is only one path (Acts 4:12) and it is through Christ. John 15:7 says, “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” Praying through the Mediator, gives you the ability to get to the very throne of God to pray for His powerful intervention.
The Prayer of Faith
It sounds like a question, but it’s really a command where James wrote “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord” (James 5:14) because “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working” (James 5:16b). We must remember that “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit” (James 5:17-18).
Entering Enemy Territory
When we started to do street and door to door evangelism, I made it clear that we were entering enemy territory and that the enemy wouldn’t like it. The message of the Light of the World, Jesus Christ, overcomes the kingdom of darkness, just as the Apostle John wrote “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). The light hurts their eyes because they’re used to the dark and the light exposes their evil.
Overcoming Sin
When we first pray for forgiveness to God and confess our sins to Him and turn from them (repent) and then put our trust in Christ, Satan and his demons must scream in anger because they’ve lost another soul to heaven but another thing that Satan and his demons hate is when we start to overcome our old sinful habits and replace them with better choices. When you’re overcoming a particular sin, you’d better expect resistance from the enemy!
Abiding in the Word
We must remember that Satan knows the Word of God too as he quoted Scripture in the wilderness experience with Jesus (Matt 4:1-11), even though the Devil took text out of context, but the way to keep the enemy trembling might be to pray back Scripture to God. For example, there are many psalms that are more like prayers than anything else (Psalm 51) and you can pray those back God’s own words back to Him and if you really believe, the Devil trembles and if the Devil trembles, imagine what the demons must be feeling like!
Conclusion
Sometimes we don’t even know what words to use but “the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Rom 8:26-27). When you’re in that prayer mode, he trembles as much as he ever did.
