How fitting to surround our National Day of Prayer with two posts about prayer and our Prince who unceasingly prays for His people. Wednesday we looked at Preemptive Prayer and today we will focus on Protective Prayer. “I do not ask that you take them out of the world,” Jesus prayed, “but that you keep them from the evil one” (John 17:15).
It is instructive to note that Jesus did NOT pray to God that His people would be spared from hardship, trials, and suffering! His protective prayer was not for insulation and isolation from the challenges of daily living. No, our Lord was praying for protection from Satan, the old master whom we once served. Jesus knew that Satan would not give up his former servants without a fight. Jesus understood that if Satan had his way with us, we would live little lives marked by self-righteous, self-reliant, self-absorbed, and sin-filled service of self rather than the Savior.
What our Lord knows well—and what we often forget—is that disciples of Christ need to be fitted for heaven in the fires of hell. The winds of trial . . . the storms of testing . . . the difficulties of discipleship are all designed to drive the roots deeper and deeper into the soil of the sanctified life. If we are to be ready one day to wear a crown, it will be because God has given us the grace to carry our cross. If our Lord, known as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, the God-man who was perfect in every way, suffered on our behalf, should we who are sinful by both nature and habit shrink back from the struggles of this life? May God forbid it!
Mark this well, believer: if there be no devil to do battle with and no worldly enemies to fight, there is evil enough inside our own hearts that requires protective prayers from our Prince of Peace. Steve Brown said, “God is bringing you to the end of yourself.” My beloved friend, Pastor Tullian Tchividjian, agrees: “The sooner God brings you to the end of yourself, the sooner you can begin living for God.”
Let us take sword to every enemy we must face today, knowing that we fight not in our own strength, but in the strength of our Lord. NEVER FORGET THAT…AMEN
Grace for the Race 