Connecting Communications
By Anthony Casperson
7-30-22

The battle’s in full swing. You’re fighting for your life. Or at least the life of your digital character. But then, the action pauses. And a little box comes to the foreground. “Communications interrupted. Please reconnect to a controller.”

It usually happens when the batteries have died in a wireless controller. But the ability for the fight to continue requires that communication between the input and the display be reconnected. There’s no effect in the battle until this communication occurs. And it effects not only your player character, but also every other fighter in the battle.

We can see something similar in our spiritual warfare when it comes to prayer.

As we come to the conclusion of our blog series on spiritual warfare, we come to this prayerful piece of the armor of God. One that often is forgotten.

Usually, when we speak of the armor of God, it ends in verse 17 with the sword of the Spirit. But prayer is another offensive weapon related to the Spirit. We see in verse 18 that Paul’s sentence continues by pointing out that all of this armor would be useless without us connecting to our God, the one who empowers us through his Spirit.

However, prayer isn’t just so that we can be empowered ourselves. But also, so that our brothers and sisters in Jesus can be given the power to fight on as well. See the Apostle’s command for us to be vigilant in our watch as verse 18 continues. And in this persevering watchfulness, we should also intercede for our fellow followers of Jesus (the saints).

What are these interceding prayers for? So that they can keep on in their own part of the spiritual battle. Paul gives the Ephesians a practical application in the very next verse. He asks for them to pray for him that he might be able to boldly proclaim the gospel—which is one aspect of this warfare in which we take part.

If we also look at 1 Tim. 2:1-4, we can come to understand even more application of this prayerful piece of the armor of God. (Although, we must look back at 1 Tim. 1:18 to see the connection of Paul’s words to a waging of good warfare.) In these verses, the Apostle tells his protégé that one of the first things he’d recommend as Timothy leads others in this spiritual war is for prayers of various kinds be made for others, including those in authority.

And these verses also remind us that the reason for this prayer-powered war is so that we can live a peaceful and quiet life. A life pleasing to the God who empowers us. Thus, we must continue to connect to him so that the battle can be waged until he brings us about peace through his gospel.

So, let’s keep vigilant in connecting to our power source. Not just so that we can fight on, but that our brothers and sisters will be able to fight on as well. All with the perspective of those who seek peace.

Pray for the Spirit to move in the lives of those who hear the gospel, so that they might find peace even as we continue to wage war against the powers of this sinful world.