STRONGHOLDS

In 2 Corinthians 10:4 it says “The weapons we fight with are not weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete.”

From this we deduce that God has given us the weapons we need to defeat the enemy. All we have to do is to use them.

What is probably the greatest weapon we have as sons of God?

Lots of singing?
Powerful preaching?
Enthusiasm?
A college degree?
Good leaders?
Maintaining the status quo?
Saying that we believe the bible is the Word of God?

The fact is, it is none of the above. Our greatest weapon is prayer. Through prayer we can accomplish victory over Satan, which is why he doesn’t want us to do it. Meeting once a week for an hour to pray is not prayer.

The New Testament Church met daily to pray. One hour a week!! Makes me feel ashamed.

Satan has many strongholds in society such as the education system, homosexuals, feminism, alternative families, child abuse, and the biggest one of all, the murder of millions of babies in the womb. Governments are frantically running around trying to cope with the onslaught. The end result is zilch. Moral degradation is happening every day and is going to get worse because the church does not pray.

When we pray, we are saying we don’t have the answers. We are asking God to equip us for the battle. Most prayer meetings we tell God our problems but rarely listen to his answers. We certainly don’t want to know his plans for his kingdom. It seems that the fact that we have met for prayer is sufficient. Whether anything happens seems irrelevant.

We seem to treat prayer as just one part of our religious programme, instead of making it the most important part of our gathering together. The part that should take priority over everything else.

I know of one church where the leadership prays for 10 minutes a month when they meet together. Is the church growing? Is the church fulfilling its commission? Not a hope in hell, or heaven.

You can go to jail for injuring or killing a dog. The government pays you to kill your baby. That will not change until the church takes up its most powerful weapon of prayer, corporately, until it hurts. That will save more babies lives than any other activity.

One final point, people say “well, I pray at home for these things.” Fine, keep doing it but you cannot escape that most of the prayer in the New Testament Church was corporate. Why is this? Simple. The scripture teaches there is power in numbers and even more when they are in unity.