Prayer: The Weapon of Our Warfare

By Ade Esan

Some people do not believe in prayer, rather they believe that everything happens by chance. To such people, whatever will be will be, with or without prayer.Others believe that God knows everything and can do anything, and that He does whatever He chooses to do. So He does not need anybody prompting Him or reminding Him of His duties by praying. I am sure these group of people have never experienced the power of prayer. God enjoins us to pray without ceasing. He wants us to ask, seek and knock in order to receive, find and have doors open before us, Prayer brings about supernatural manifestation of the power of God, and anyone who has experienced this manifestation will testify that prayer is indispensable. This book is filled with instances of such manifestation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781463410988

Ade Esan

Ade Esan is the minister in charge of The Good News Bearers, a.k.a. 'The Mobile Church.' He is a minister with passion to reach out to the sick, the poor, the hungry, the homeless, orphans, widows and prisoners; ministering to them wherever they are. He served as a volunteer chaplain in Nashville, Tennessee., and undertook an evagelistic mission with his family to Euorpe. He resides in Randallstown, Maryland with his wife, Olukemi and their three sons: Daniel, David and Victor.

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© 2011 by Ade Esan. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 09/09/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4634-1100-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-1099-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-1098-8 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011908642

Printed in the United States of America

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

ALL TYPES OF PRAYER

Chapter 2

WHY PRAY AT ALL?

Chapter 3

GOD IS LOOKING FOR AN INTERCESSOR

Chapter 4

SOME PRAYER WARRIORS IN THE BIBLE

Chapter 5

MOTIVATED BY LOVE

Chapter 6

CHARGES TO THE SHEPHERDS

(Pastors and Spiritual Leaders)

Chapter 7

CALLED TO PREACH?

(A testimony of the power of prayer)

Chapter 8

ESSENTIALS FOR ANSWERED PRAYER

Chapter 9

FASTING—AN OUTSTANDING TOOL

Chapter 10

GOD REWARDS OBEDIENCE

Chapter 11

HINDRANCES TO PRAYER

Chapter 12

PRAY UNTIL SOMETHING HAPPENS

Chapter 13

MAY THE LORD DEPEND ON YOU?

Chapter 14

QOUTABLE QOUTES ABOUT PRAYER

Acknowledgement

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to:

my beloved wife, Olukemi Atinuke,

and our three precious sons: Daniel Oluwadare,

David Tolulope, and Victor Olugbemiga.

My immediate Prayer Partners

"We do live in the world, but do not fight in the same way the world fights. We fight with weapons that are different from those the world uses. Our weapons

have power from God that can destroy the enemy’s stronghold places… ."

(2 Corinthians 10:3-4, NCV)

Introduction

Believers are enjoined to pray without ceasing or continually; without stopping (2 Thessalonians 5: 17). In other words, we are not to pray just when we have a problem or face an unpleasant situation, we are to pray when things are going fine as well. We are to pray when we feel like praying and also when we don’t. We are to live a lifestyle of praying, to make praying our habit or a way of life. The very air that we breathe should be saturated with prayer: Be earnest and unwearied and steadfast in your prayer [life], being [both] alert and intent [your praying] with thanksgiving. (Colossians 4: 2 Amplified)

We are to be such habitual pray-ERS that God would easily recognize our voices each time we pray, because He hears them always. He would say with pride, That is my daughter, Jane, praying for her sick friend and praising me for life, or That is my son, James, praying for his unsaved friends, or that is my boy, Steve, interceding for his country and the people in government, or that is my girl, Rachael, crying to me on behalf of the sinners, the sick, the homeless and the drug dealers in her neighborhood; good job my children, keep it up, your answers are on the way, I am very proud of you.

You may be thinking, But I do not have much time at my disposal, I am a busy guy, I have to work hard and take care of my family, or my work is time demanding, I hardly have time for anything else. These are legitimate excuses. God wants us to be responsible and to take good care of our family. Really He says in His word that we should do whatever we do with all our might, and to His glory. At the same time, the saying that where there is a will, there is a way applies here. No matter how busy we are, we still find time for activities that are important to us, and that we consider top on our priority list; sports, exercise, leisure, date and so on. Same way if we consider prayer top on our life’s priority like God wants us to we will find time in spite of our busyness to pray. For instance, when a visit to a doctor for a routine checkup results in a deadly diagnosis, to such a person, nothing else matters but prayers and God, because such is in a desperate situation. But we do not have to wait to be in such an emergency situation to pray. We are to pray in good and bad weather; whether things are going our ways or not. We are to be God’s friends, talking to Him at all times and listening for Him also to talk to us, because He still talks to those who care to listen.

Well, you may be wandering what you would be praying about all the time; you are blessed with a good job, a good family, you and your family are healthy and you are doing great financially. The thought running through your mind might be, ‘I don’t have any big problem, so I do not have to bother God talking to Him all the time, I will leave that chance to the unfortunate ones with big problems.’ You are right if you are thinking only about yourself and your immediate family, and your personal and family needs alone. But this is not so if you see yourself as a child of God, a unique member of the Universe He has created, and His representative here on earth. This line of thinking will give you the sense that God has put you here in this world for a purpose, part of which is to stand in your priestly office (according to Revelation 1:6, every believer is a priest). You will see it as part of your responsibilities to present the problems of people around you in the neighborhood, school, work place, and even people far away in other places that you have never been to before God. Also, you will sense that Government and those in authority in your locality, state, country and other countries all over the world can make use of your prayer. With this in mind, I believe that you will realize now that you have a lot to pray about.

There a lot of problems all over the world. People are living in abject poverty in many parts of the world, with barely little to eat and little to put on as clothes. People are homeless; living in shelters, under bridges and trees and some under the open sky, with rain, dew and sun beating on them indiscriminately. People are suffering from chronic, debilitating diseases—in constant pain and in need of healing. Doctors have given up on some people and all they can hope for is divine intervention. People have been mentally and emotionally wounded, and medical science has not been of much help to them. In some countries around the world, bullies and tyrants are in power; destroying the lives of the people they are supposed to protect, stealing and looting from their nations’ treasuries with impunity, building mansions for themselves all over the world, and having billions of dollars in their bank accounts in foreign countries, especially in Europe, while their citizens are languishing in poverty, dying of hunger and sickness in millions due to lack of affordable healthcare system. A lot of evil is going on in the world; a lot of things that are contrary to the plan of God for mankind. I believe that things like these sadden God, and He wants His people to call upon Him about them so He can effect a change. So, you have a lot to pray about, and God is depending on you to fulfill this obligation. This is your Father’s (God) world; the whole universe is your constituency or area of operation. You are not limited to your own little world with your own little family and neighborhood, you can affect the whole world through your prayer. Even though you are limited physically by geographical location, and you can only be at one place at a time, your earnest prayers can reach the four corners of the earth. Your prayers can reach where you will never reach physically in life, and do what you can never do with your own physical strength and ability; but you and I need to have the desire to pray, and put our desires to action by praying relentlessly and watch God in action.

Ade Esan

Chapter 1

ALL TYPES OF PRAYER

Prayer is not just about asking God for something. Supplication or making a humble request for something for ourselves from God is just one of different types of prayer, not the only one. In Ephesians 6:18, the Amplified version of the first part reads "Pray at all times (on every occasion, in every season) in the Spirit, with all [manner of] prayer and entreaty." The word ‘manner’ in this verse means kind, type or sort. This shows to us that there are many types or sorts of prayer, and this verse enjoins us to pray all the types of prayer, not just one type. By far the most common prayer is the prayer of supplication; asking God to do something for us and our immediate family members. Reverend Kenneth Hagin says most of the time our prayer, Christians and non-Christians alike, is like that of a man who always pray; ‘Lord, my name is Jimmie, and I’ll take all You’ll gimme,’ or like that of another man, married with two children whose daily prayer is like this; God please bless me, bless my wife and our two children, four of us and no one else, Amen.

We may not use the exact words of these two men when we pray, but if all we think and pray about is ourselves and our immediate family, we are praying only one type of prayer and not praying all types as we are supposed to. This (bless only me) prayer is selfish and self-centered. We owe it a duty to pray for our friends, neighbors, coworkers, people in authority over us; supervisors and bosses at work and people in government-council men and women, mayor of our cities, Representatives and Senators, Governors and our President, even if we don’t like them.

Moreover, human needs are many and problem, an unwelcome visitor, knocks on people’s doors indiscriminately. Your needs might be met, and probably you are problem-free. Well, you are fortunate, but there are millions of others around the world who are not as fortunate as you are, who need your prayer. What about taking a little time to thank God for His blessings? Many things that we have and take for granted, some people