Verse 18. Ephesians 6 verse 18. Here the Apostle Paul says, with all prayer and petition, pray at all times in the Spirit and with this in view. Be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints. Let's pray together. Father, I come before You today in the name of Your Son, and I thank You for that wonderful last song we just sang and the truth that's woven into it. and pray you'd help us now to see some of that truth is found in this text, this very text here. So we pray you open your word to us, Lord, and strengthen us and help us for what is before us in this life. I was thinking of one particular struggle in our life and how when it came, I had no idea. It seemed like four million pounds and all I could lift was a two and a half pound plate. And then yet here we are. So it is true that as our days, our strength will be and that your grace is sufficient and that it can do far more abundantly beyond our ability to think or imagine what it can do. And so I think of the word in Isaiah, call not to mind the former things, that you create new things. And the prayer here in chapter 3 of this book, that we can be strengthened by your Spirit in the inner man, that you can just come. Those who wait on the Lord can gain a new strength. And so Lord, because it's all dependent on You and Your might and Your power and Your love and Your willingness to sustain us, Lord, like David said, for this reason Your servant has found encouragement to pray. So be with us as we study Your Word here, Lord, at this hour. And help us to understand it and to apply it in Jesus' name. Amen. So we didn't sing it this week, but as we move from the section on the armor into verse 18, just mindful of the song we sang last week, Stand Up, Stand Up, for Jesus, an old song, and perhaps a new line in there that you didn't recognize before, I didn't recognize before, where it says, each piece, put on with prayer. Each piece put on with prayer. And you might ask, if you hadn't been studying this text and you were just singing that song, why was there the mention to put on each piece of the armor with prayer? And one answer might be, well, because verse 18 follows The section on the armor in verse 18 is about prayer, but still why? Not why is it in the text, but why is it in reality? Why is it that you need not only the armor, but you need prayer to go with it? Because you might say that, well, I thought the whole point of the armor was, if I fall, I have His righteousness, not mine. I have His shield, not mine. That would almost lead you to laxity, you might think. So, how does it follow for Paul to really hit us with the necessity of prayer and this great need of doing this? That's what this sermon is about. And we'll see two things this morning. First, in this text, we see at the beginning, say verse 18a, that Paul does call for this response, a prayer, after mentioning the armor. And then second, in 18b, we'll see him give the reason for it. So first of all, looking at the first part of the verse, consider with me that Paul does call us to this response of prayer. He would certainly agree with the hymn that we should put on each piece with prayer in some way. Because without breaking stride, he says, with all prayer and petition, pray. And I'm reading from the NAS and it interprets this verb as an imperative mood. So as command, as it does the other, be on the alert. So in this translation, it's interpreted that way, which thinks of it as a command. Some others that some of you may have, the ESV, and the KJV, let's say, they translate them as participles. And so if you have one of them, you have praying or being instead of pray and be, which thinks of them as modifiers. And so then you've got to ask, well, modifiers of what? Well, the nearest main verb would be the one in verse 14, to stand firm. So, some people take it as modifying that verb, in other words, stand firm in a praying way, stand firm in an alert way, or praying stand firm. a kind of prayerful standing, and a kind of alert standing, and so the meaning there would be, you know, put on the armor in a praying way, or while praying, put on the armor would be the idea. So who's right? Is it right to translate it and think of it as pray or praying, modifying standing. Is it right to think of it as a command to be on the alert or being on the alert, put on the armor? And in one way, it really doesn't matter in the end. I mean, really, in the only way, it doesn't matter in the end. Because they ultimately both come out thinking of these two verbs in this text as a command. Just to give an example. If I were your coach and you were swinging a baseball bat, and I said something like, swing the bat, keeping all your fingers wrapped around it. It's true that that verb keeping there, grammatically, would be a modifier. I'm modifying the action of swing and I want you to swing in a keeping all the fingers around the bat sort of way. That's how I want you to swing. But what do you think would happen then if you swung but you left this finger not around the bat? I would say, hey, wrap all your fingers around the bat. And I would cite what I just told you. I just told you swing the bat keeping all the fingers around it. So that shows us when a modifier is modifying a verb, the intent of the person saying it is ultimately for you to do it. So, for Paul to say, stand firm and put on the armor, even if you take it as participles, praying, if he found you putting on the armor, not praying, he would say, hey, pray while you're putting the armor on, just put the armor on, pray. And if you were not alert, and you were just kind of, you know, flippant, he would say the same thing for that. So, ultimately this initial thought this gives us, whether you think of it as praying or being or pray and be, the Apostle, what you need to understand and glean from this is this thought. In the first part of this verse, Paul is telling you to pray. If you're a Christian, the Lord's Apostle is urging you to pray. He's telling you, I don't know how you're currently assessing your life and the things that you need to be doing, but this needs to have a place. One of the things, not as a side, like you can have a salad and add croutons or not, this is the salad of the Christian life. You don't have this, you've lost something essential. So let me just start by that in asking you. Do you pray? When do you pray? How often do you pray? Have you been praying? Or have you not been praying? If you assess your Christian life, do you find times where you might say, well, in this season I was praying far more than now. Or might you say, you know what? If I were honest, I feel like I'm not even praying at all. I feel like I'm just totally not praying. Which is it? You answer that with yourself with the Lord. But before you answer it, consider this, because we have more specific things to go off of. Paul gets more specific. What I mean is, he doesn't just tell us generically, you need to pray, and then you think about it, and so, alright, I'll think about if I'm praying. He says, no, no, no, hang on. There's a specific kind of prayer that I'm telling you, you need to assess your life and see if it's there or not. So this is not him just saying, go to the store and get an apple. This is saying, no, no, no, no, a red, delicious apple. I have a specific kind of prayer in mind. So he uses these extra phrases to get specific about it. And the first one is, he says, with all prayer and petition, pray. So the kind of prayer is an all-prayer-and-petition kind of prayer. What does this mean? Well, the word prayer, the first one is just the general standard term for pray. It means to ask. It's like in older literature, someone will say, pray tell, and they're talking to a human. So it just means to ask, so it's the generic term for ask. But then the other is a specific kind of prayer from lack, sometimes translated supplication. similar to our word sup, there's a, or supper, there's a lack and you need, this brings in the idea of the fall, something is missing, there's a sin, there's a deprivation of sorts, there's a darkness, there's a trouble, and you see both of them in Philippians 4. Verse 6, for example, very familiar verse, where he says in verse 6, Be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication. With thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. He says both of those here, prayer and then a particular kind of prayer, which is a prayer of supplication. So, you got this in your mind then that there's maybe different kinds of prayers. There's generic prayer and then there's specific kinds. And one may be a prayer of thanksgiving. And then another is a prayer of supplication, where you're beseeching the Lord for some need. So how are we to think about this? Well, notice he puts the adjective all in there, with all prayer and supplication. So his intent here seems to be, you need to be praying every single kind of prayer that there is, with all prayer and petition. So when Paul is saying pray, As you put the armor on, you need to pray. He's saying, I'm talking about all of it. You need to be praying this kind of prayer and that kind of prayer. I mean, you need to be praying an in-everything prayer. So sometimes we think kids want to pray and thank the Lord that their dog didn't die or something like that, or they made a good grade on a test. And you say, oh, that's unspiritual. No, Paul wouldn't say that. In everything, give thanks. So there's a prayer of thanksgiving. And then you may think, well, How about supplication? Well, can we pray the typical prayer meeting you think of? Somebody's got fever, let's pray. Well, how serious is that? That may come across unspiritual. But often, all it takes is a little sickness to just destroy you spiritually. So it's not a small thing. So prayer. of thanks, communion, like Jesus taught, go in your inner room, and not here at this moment, but where your Heavenly Father is in secret, and He'll reward you with communion and strength and power. So there's all kinds of prayer, and Paul's saying you need to pray every kind. So again, I ask you, are you? Are you praying? Do you pray every kind of prayer? Are you thinking to yourself, like, you know, when you go to the store and there's a certain kind of thing you want and you really want it, you say, well, how about just one, no, get them all. Like, I want all of them. Get one of every kind and put it in the buggy. Paul says, all of prayer. Is that your attitude? Second, he says, he specifies that we need to pray at all times. And we were talking about this one in the restroom, Trevor and I, a minute ago. The Greek word time is kairos, which means season. It has a range of meaning. I mean, sometimes it's right to translate it time, sometimes season, sometimes it comes out as opportunity. So that gives you an idea of its range. For example, in 2 Timothy 4.2, We're familiar with this one. Preach the word, what? In season and out of season. But interestingly there, literally in the Greek, it's got the prefix you and ah there. So, good season and bad season. So, in the good seasons and the bad seasons, preach the word. So, the idea here is Spurgeon says, when you're in the mood and when you're not in the mood, pray. The quantifier all is again added to this, meaning in every season, at every opportunity, at all times that you can. It doesn't mean pray and have a wreck, you know, and then the officer's like, well, what did you, well, I was praying. That's not what he means. It's not like, texting and driving, praying and driving shouldn't be a thing. But you can if you keep your eyes open. You don't have to close your eyes. You can just be praying with your eyes open. I remember the first time I went riding with a Christian and saw that, I was like, wow, I didn't even know you could pray with your eyes open. But not everybody does that, but I'm just saying, the idea is you're prayerful, you're taking every opportunity you can. It's like water, when you remember, like, I need a sip of water. Like, prayer is that way. And so, the good seasons and the bad. So let's ask, do you pray only when it's good or only when it's bad? Do you pray when you feel like it and when you don't feel like it, when things are happy, when things are sad, in morning, at night, spring, summer, fall, when someone has sinned against you? when a church has harmed you, when whatever it is, is there some event in your life that you would say, I'm going through this. This is the reason. This is the excuse for why I'm held back, why I'm not praying. Paul would say no to that. He would say no to that at all times, at all seasons. It covers what you're now going through. And he's saying you need to be praying now. So this means at the hospital, where it seems like the time to pray, while you're playing badminton out in the yard, when it doesn't seem to be the time to pray. Leonard Ravenhill grew up watching his grandmother, he spends time with his grandmother, and she would throw her apron over her head at the sink and just pray. I mean, that's what it means, praying at all times, looking for any opportunity to just have your heart right with the Lord. And the idea is because you know when you go to face things, your weakness, that you cannot face these things. And so this drives you to pray. So is there anything of which you would say, if this got messed up, if this got ruined, I would stop praying? Child, spouse, sin committed, sickness, a certain division, stress. Paul says don't. Finally then on this one he says, in the spirit. So pray at all times, all prayer and petition, and in the spirit. This is good to dwell on just for a moment because it's always a debated idea exactly what he means by these phrases. But I think we can at least dismiss one. We can rule out one idea that's helpful, which I would call a revivalistic notion that what he's talking about here is like sweaty prayer. You know, like what he means is just You know, hand raising, your emotions are heated, you're weeping, that's what it means to pray in the Spirit. I don't think that's what He means, and it seems like that's what a lot of people think. You know, what comes to your mind, as I always say, when you think of a powerful worship service, that's the stuff that comes to your mind. And people will often talk like that. Wow, the Spirit really moved. But that can't be what He means, because He just told us to pray at all times. And we're not in a heated emotional state at all times. So, we have to be careful of taking this in such a way to negate the phrase He just gave us. So, what he means then, I take it to mean, is something like, by the Spirit's leading, which may or may not come with heated emotions. Remember, he spoke to Elijah one time in the quiet, still voice. not always the crackling of the rocks and the fire. Martin Lloyd-Jones took it that any time he was consciously aware of a thought to pray, that it was from the Spirit. So, when you put them together, what you have is something like, if you interpret them consistently together, it would mean anytime that you can, that you find it in your consciousness that maybe you should pray. At that time, pray. That's what he means. At all times, in the Spirit, pray. And he doesn't even mean that you may... A lot of times we struggle in our prayer life in developing because we think, well, I don't know what to say. What do I say? Remember Romans 8. 26 to 27. Let's go there and look at that. Romans 8. Paul addresses this here. And he addresses it in such a wonderful way. I just want to remind you of it. It says, verse 26, here he is in Romans 8, reminding us of all the helps we have in the Christian life. And he says, in the same way, the Spirit also helps our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we should. So, let's just settle that. It's not like, well, what do you do when you don't know what to say? None of us know what to say. None of us always know what to say. And so, Paul is telling us here, that shouldn't stop you from praying because the Spirit helps that weakness. And it's such a beautiful term in the Greek. It means to grab the opposite end of the board. You ever have a board, it's too heavy on the other end? And he's saying the Spirit will grab the opposite end of the board. So the heaviness here is, I don't really know what to ask. Maybe you say, I don't have a supplication. Maybe you say, it's just kind of a regular day and we're waiting on supper to be cooked and I have a few minutes. What do I pray? How do you pray when you don't really feel pressed to pray? And you just pray whatever comes to your mind to say. You want to know the Lord. You want to be led by the Lord. Lord, be with my mind. Keep me in the gospel. Like Fanny Crosby's old hymn, Jesus keep me near the cross. You're just praying whatever comes to mind. And Paul says this, you don't have to know the specifics. You know? He says, we don't know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. That means there are certain desires in you that don't even get translated. into words through your vocal folds. And that he who searches the heart knows what the mind of the Spirit is. You are literally the line between God the Father and God the Holy Spirit communicating to each other. through you. The Spirit has given you desires. For example, you may pray a prayer at some point in your Christian life and you mean it with all your heart, Lord, whatever you have to do conforming to Christ. You ever prayed something like that? And then later on in your life, something happens and you wish with all your heart this particular thing weren't there? Paul is saying, look at the flow. Look at the flow. Notice, don't know, He knows, we know. So we don't know specifically what to ask, but He knows what the Spirit is. He knows how to run the universe in accord with the desires of the Spirit in us. And we know that God causes all things to work together for good. So the idea is God runs the universe providentially in response to the Spirit's longings in the hearts of the saints. So that when we get to glory, You will one day view whatever the thing is that is hurting you the most, and yet you see it conforming you, whatever that thing is, it's not just that like, well, I'm grunting and okay, I see that help, like, no, that's what I asked for. And Lord, I would not want you, there will come a day in which I would abominate the idea of having a healthy son. and viewed like this was the best life that He could have ever given me. This was what I needed. Jeffrey Johnson said, I was listening to one of his sermons this week, that Don Johnson, who you know, his dad came to visit him, he's got all kind of health issues going on now, and he was struggling through them all, he's going through them all, and he's like, and then he just stopped. And you know how he is, y'all have heard him preach. He just stopped and he said, but he doesn't afflict willingly. And he quoted the psalm, before I was afflicted I went astray, and now I keep his commandments. And he was like, I need every single one of them. I need every single one of them. Here, don't worry about specifically what to pray. Trust, like Lloyd-Jones says, if you're being led to pray, just pray and trust that God the Holy Spirit is translating this to God the Father and He's running the world for your good. So do you pray that way? See, that's a different question now. It's not like, oh, pray, and you need to be praying. Okay, Paul, I'll assess that. No, no, no, no. Are you praying at every opportunity you can get when it enters your mind to do it, and you're not driving down the road, you're not going to kill anyone, do you have a moment, you're just at the... This means when you're getting your oil changed and you're sitting there, and you have two minutes to look at your phone again or to just slightly pray and lean in for grace, Paul's saying, choose to lean in for grace rather than the phone. Choose to open your app and just read a verse and pray over that verse. at that moment. The idea is like the message you heard from Jeremy, the vine, like you're just constantly depending on the vine for strength and virtue. So how much does that happen? So, Paul would agree with the hymn, would he not? He calls us right after mentioning the armor. Of course, each piece put on with prayer. Pray all prayers at all times in the Spirit. But now we need to answer the question, why? Why do we need to do that? That's the remaining question. So the second half of verse 18, he tells us, pray this way with this in view. or your translation may say, to this end. So here's the purpose, here's the reason, here's the cause of the prayer, and he says, be on the alert, or being alert. Either way, it means you're praying because you're alert. You pray because you are alarmed. You pray because you are fearful of yourself at sinning against people and hurting people. Remember David in the Psalms? He's like, keep back your servant. His prayer is keep me back from presumptuous sins. Who can discern the error of his ways? You see that? So, to not pray is to think, I'm good, I see, I'm aware, I'm self-aware, I'm aware of my circumstances, I know how to go out and in and come in and all of that. That is a kind of pride that leads to disaster. Which we can then learn from, hopefully, like Peter. You remember this same wording The same idea. Jesus was trying to tell Peter the same thing, really, that Paul is trying to tell us here with prayer, that the powers against you are aiming to make you fall. Satan has asked to sift you like wheat. And it's like, you're so arrogant. I had to be a Job and you're my child and I had to pray for you. And He's saying, but I have prayed for you. And like many have said, the reason we know the Apostle Peter as the Apostle Peter, not the Apostate Peter, is one prayer. And so, three times Jesus comes to Peter and says, watch, pray, be on the alert. But He's not. Why is He not? Well, you can see he had just got through talking about who was the greatest. He had just got through saying he was willing to die for the Lord. He had just got through saying, well, I won't forsake you. Even after the Lord gives a sermon, and often this happens like this, in a sermon like this, you say, oh, that's just kind of hype and work up, and it ain't that serious. That's exactly the way Peter was. Even if the Lord Himself were to tell you, you are going to fall, we have such arrogance in us that we will say no. That's incredible. And so this is one of those, like we say, there's the school of the classroom and the school of life. This is one you seem to have to learn the hard way as a Christian. Peter did. It's amazing, the three's, the rule of three there. Three times come praying for him. Three times he denies the Lord. Three times, Peter, do you love me? And it's woven into the narrative. He says, be ready, watch, it may come in the evening, it may come in the night, or when the rooster is crowing. And then all of this happens with them. It's the same language here. And so Peter in his epistle, he comes to write his epistle. You think he's learned and grown? He says in chapter 1, who are kept by the power of God through faith. And then in chapter 5 he says, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, like a roaring lion prowls around seeking someone to devour. I've told the story, I mentioned Don Johnson already earlier, Roy Fish. I was a new Christian, not long, maybe a year, maybe two years. He was a professor at New Orleans and he had come up for some meetings and I happened to be there. He was such an old man, like, I mean, he was old. I think it was sort of like, wow, kind of he's still teaching like MacArthur's age, but a little worse health. So he was early 80s. And he was there. And there was a little bit of a Q&A. It was kind of like right before Q&As got popular. But he was there and some other younger people talking. And someone asked him this question about reading your Bible every day and praying every day. Do you actually read and pray every day or whatever? And I can't remake it. You can't remake a man. He's already gone to be with the Lord. The way he talked about his weakness was just so real to him. And he just looked at us in disbelief. Like, what do you mean go a day without praying? As the biggest bunch of fools imaginable to think that you could go one day without prayer. And he was convinced he was too weak. He had to. He had to. It's like Jesus told Martha. There's only one thing necessary. You don't have to eat. You don't have to have peanut butter on your sandwich. You don't have to sleep eight hours, but you have to pray. You have to. It's necessary. Do you pray because you're alert to the very real possibility of sinning and ruining relationships? Is that a motive for your praying? Do you pray realizing that's how the Lord taught us to pray? They thought, Lord, how did you just go through that wilderness? We just saw you went through the wilderness. You were baptized. You went through the wilderness. Forty days? Knights, and you came through obedient and here you are, teach us to pray. What does He say? Pray then in this way, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Prayer is the means God uses to keep us from temptation. People pray often when they go to surgery or something like that because they know they are in danger and they know they need God's providential help. And Roy Fish and the Apostle Paul and Jesus knew He was in danger all the time in this age. And he knew he needed providential help. He knew if he just stopped, and what I'm saying is you can joke and play and still be alert. You can eat and laugh and go to the movie and still be alert. But the only way you can do it is by praying. You have to be constantly praying. Otherwise, the guard comes down, and you find what? Be honest. You find that right in the middle of brushing your teeth, you got into an argument with your wife. How? How? How did it just suddenly arise like that? Lack of prayer. Lack of prayer. It just comes up immediately in the most unlikely of places. But before... So you can see how Paul would say then, pray all prayers at all times in the Spirit, but just before we finish, he adds two more all phrases about the alertness. So let me make a comment about them. He says, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition. This means you have to push, you have to devote yourself to it. Your head may be bobbing. I mean, that's a good question. Are you ever praying in such a way that you just fall asleep while you're praying? Because you're pushing yourself to pray. You may need to stop on the way to church and get a coffee and get four shots of espresso so that you can come to the prayer meeting and be alert to pray. This means you may wake up in the morning and just want to lay there and want to sleep longer, but you have to push yourself to get up because time is such a thing. You've got to get ready at this time and leave at this time and I've got to get gas. And this all takes devotion and perseverance and endurance because there's these forces like, well this and well that and well and well and well and well and you just kind of passively get molded by the world in such a way that you're not praying. It takes effort. That's why often it says devote yourself to prayer. It's work. You know, it'd be easier. In one way, I would rather come over to your house and fix your porch. You know, help with that. Some of the guys together and go carry boards and swing a hammer and like run to Lowe's and pick something up. In a way, that's easier than an hour of prayer. It's hard to pray. And sometimes you feel like it was a waste of time. Did we do nothing? Did we just waste an hour here? Could we have been working on the porch? You know, it takes faith to pray. It takes reminding yourself that this is a meeting. All of which is to say, it doesn't just happen. It takes effort. So, look at the word, all, with all perseverance and petition. This is amazing to me. Paul is saying, give it all that you have. Draw a circle around your perseverance, your ability to endure something and push through something. And he's saying, whatever that is, give all of it to prayer. That means when you start feeling like, no, push back against it and pray. And just with everything in you, push to pray. I mean, this man believed prayer was a means of grace. And that's often the problem. I mean, like, his theology was correct. He could give you Romans 9 and then right after that say, my heart's desire and prayer to God is for their salvation. He could give you Ephesians 1, and then the second half of it say, for this reason I pray, having heard of such and such. When you work out, maybe you decided, well, I'm going to do three sets of 20 or something. And you get about halfway through the second set. And it's just burning and you just feel that desire to just stop. What do you do? You push through it and finish the set. That's the word for endurance. Bear up under and go further. Push back against the force. Isn't it amazing? Paul is saying, do that with prayer. when you feel the urge. So maybe that's why some of us haven't prayed a whole lot, or we've floundered in it, because we're just submitting to all the pushes, the forces, and not realizing that, oh, God has called you to push back against that force. To be resolved to do it. I mean, the whole idea here is clearly that this takes effort. So do you do that with prayer? Now the question becomes, do you do that with prayer? Do you push yourself to pray? Can you make it through the whole prayer list? Let's just have a moment of honesty. Do you ever pray through our church prayer list? Or do you just pick a few? He says, with all perseverance, and that all governs, the perseverance and the petition, all petitions. Some of us don't have, Ravenhill used to say, you men that are impressed with your masculinity, that you can pump iron. He said, how much endurance, how much stamina do you have to pray? And some of us would have to say, I don't even have the endurance. If I just were to start at our church prayer list at the top, I don't even have the endurance to get through it all. And you might say, I guess I'm not even praying for the things on the prayer list. Lastly, he says, the specific kind he has in mind, he says, be on alert for all the saints. That means every Christian here, not just women or men or people in my clique. You know, moms like you, pray for the moms. Sure, pray for the moms. But it's not like pray for my little group. No. It's not a sectarian thing. And it's not even our church only. It means saints. Is there any person that you view as a Christian that you find yourself not wanting to pray for? He says, pray for all the saints. So do you experience that? Isn't that a wondrous question to ask? Do I experience praying for saints here? And I have such an Irenic spirit and a magnanimous soul that it stretches out and I'm bringing in and including other saints into my heart and praying for all the saints that I know of. Somebody mentioned Gilbert Barr when he was here at the last conference. He was sitting right here and we were talking and he all of a sudden said, you know what Jeffrey, sometimes at night time I go out into my yard and I don't know what to pray. I say, Lord be with all your people all over the world. Encourage all the children of God all over the world, wherever they may be. And I was just thinking, there's a guy in Hesmer, or wherever he's down there, goes out into his backyard at night and prays for all the saints all over the world. And you just wonder, like, I wonder how many things are done in connection to that. I think it was Mack Tomlinson in his biography, he wrote a biography on Lytton Ravenhill, and he had met him when he was young, you know, young preacher, family, starting out. And he met Ravenhill like 40 years later. And they were talking and Ravenhill told him with a clear conscience, he said, I've been praying for you every day without fail since I met you, that you would stand firm. What a thing! Can you imagine that? Somebody's been praying for you for 40 years. The whole time you didn't know it, you just thought, oh well, I've been doing pretty well in my Christian life and somebody's been praying for you. 1941. A day that Roosevelt said would live in infamy. Pearl Harbor happened. Over 2,000 Americans killed. Many wounded and sick and messed up severely after that. In one way, the diagnosis would be they weren't alert. They weren't watching. They weren't ready. And I want to tell you that there are Christians in the Christian life, I hope it doesn't happen to you, but sometimes it happens that a true Christian is not on the alert. And they fall in their Christian life severely because of it. There is a safety net underneath us, this armor we talked about. If you fall, I don't want you to think, oh well, I fell and so there's no hope. You always walk with a safety net underneath you. As a Christian, if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father. But like Alistair Begg said, in a sense you can pull the nail out of the board. The sin can be taken away, but the hole is still there. The consequences in this life are still there. The damage is still there. So I think What Paul is saying here, the reason he could come from such an encouraging text about the armor and it's so wonderful, you just get to put on the Lord's victory to just urging us to pray like this is to say, yes, if you fall, you have this armor, but try not to with all your might. Try not to. It damages you. It damages your family. It damages the church. It damages the church at large and the testimony. It wreaks havoc. Sometimes irreversible, consequential havoc. So listen to the emphasis of Paul. Once more, with these four alls, with all prayer and petition, pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints. You can't have a more thrust forward, all out view of prayer. It's not hard to segue into the Lord's Supper for this Sunday because the Lord's Supper originally was in connection to the very same message as it happened with the disciples, particularly Peter. They had the Lord's Supper, they went to Gethsemane, and they were prayerless. And he said the same words to them. Keep watch. You need to be alert that you might not enter into a temptation. Do you ever discourage yourself? Maybe you sin against me. I sin against you. You think to yourself, this is such a precious relationship to me. I hate that I sin against it. All of those thoughts should drive us to pray. It's like, Lord, help me to know what to say. Help me not to use the wrong word, a trigger word. And it all comes from having your heart in the right... Paul says that we may know how to address each one. There's a sense in which grace allows you to know what to say. So, as you take the Lord's Supper this morning, some thoughts to tie this into it for your meditation. If you're not praying in this way, which I assume all of us are not, this explains why we can so quickly, just right over the food in there, right while waiting in line to get a roll or something, fall into a bad attitude. Just like that. and be so anxious. Some of us have been struggling with so many anxieties, issues and tissues, I'll call them. And yet, if we're embarrassed to be honest, we would say, Noah hadn't been praying like this. Anywhere close to this. We must use God's medicine for the malady. What I mean is, if you're like that in your heart, you say, my heart's not right. My heart's in the bad. I'm struggling with this event, that event. In a way, as a gospel minister, it would be to ask, are you praying anywhere near the way the Lord's Apostle tells you to pray in Ephesians 6.18? And if the answer is no, then the follow-up should be, an exhortation, okay, go and do this, and then after you've been doing this for at least a few days, then, if you're still in this spot, let's pick back up and talk about this. You see, often we don't even employ the right means of grace. And we're out searching, you know, for medicines and books, and some of us started our Christian life not really praying. You just got off on the wrong foot. Somehow that grace was missing, and here you are, you find yourself, and I'm just kind of not a praying person. That still doesn't change the text. It still doesn't change the fact that the Lord is calling you to be a praying person. So, you can fix it. You don't have to stay in that state. It's not like, well, that happened, so I'll just ride it out. No, no, no. Just turn it. Come under the verse. Even if you just turn it a little, just start turning it the correct way. Grow in it. Find some way to grow in it. And then finally, some of us, there's been some life event as to why we're not praying. It's been a significant life event. And maybe the Lord's Apostle, His grace through this Word, you can hear Him say at all times, at all seasons, pray, and that may restore you to praying. Meaning, even when you don't feel like it. Because now, the fact that you don't feel like it is no longer an excuse to not do it. Because at all times means when you don't feel like it. So when you say, I would pray but I don't feel like it, yeah, that's what he said. Pray when you don't feel like it. Which kind of means there's going to be some times in your Christian life where you're in this spot. And so you're just in the spot where you have a unique opportunity to obey the command of the Lord in a unique way. And finally, some of you don't pray because of a much larger event in your life called the fall. And you're dead in sin. And that's why you don't pray. You were born in Adam. You've been headed toward the dust ever since. We were just hearing about, you know, Ms. Donna this morning. Where she's at is where we're all headed. And it's just the illusion of it taking a little while to get there to make us think we're not headed there. It's because of sin, and you were born in sin. And the apostle's message to you is there's nothing you can do to make God be proud of your performance, to turn His head and think, oh, well, I will treat you differently. But there is something in God where there's hope. Chapter 2 says, but God is rich in mercy. So it's not about us being rich in anything. We're poor. But He's internally motivated. He's so beautiful of a God that He's rich in mercy and has such a great love and an immeasurable grace that you qualify. Because you're unqualified, you qualify. to put on display His grace. Because the fact that you could give Him no reason to love you, now sort of gives Him a reason to love you. Because now we can put on display that it's all about who He is and showing His beauty and not yours. And so I just want to remind you again that if you're not praying, it is not a matter, as we say, of if but when you destroy the person beside you. The people in your life you love the most, mark the words, you are going to destroy them with your sin, because you are a sinner. So, you must call on the name of the Lord. You must pray the very first prayer, Lord, save me. Rescue me. And you pray that until you have assurance. You open your Bible and you pray that until you have assurance. So wherever you are, this alertness of prayer we think on this morning and take the Lord's Supper and then have our fellowship meal together.