Satan is a theologian! Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying theologians are evil or demonic! But Satan knows that to defeat Christians, he needs to distort or confuse our theology – anything the Bible teaches. In the Garden of Eden he fed bad theology to Adam and Eve. God told them not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or they would die. Satan said, and I quote, “You surely will not die!” That’s what I call ‘bad theology’!
Throughout Old Testament history, Satan perverted God’s truth, and he got more sophisticated. He got Israel to treat God’s law like a bunch of rules to be followed, instead of a way to love and worship God. That’s why Jesus excoriated the Pharisees for emphasizing the letter of the law, but ignoring the spirit of the law.
Satan has kept on spreading bad theology throughout church history. He got people to believe Jesus was only a man, or that He wasn’t even human, just a spirit. He got preachers to teach that believing in Jesus isn’t enough to save you – you need to follow their rules as well. He prompted theologians to say miracles never happened, and that the Bible is full of errors. Yes, Christian theologians have taught all these things!
But alongside all these, there is a more surreptitious lie – a vague idea that Satan plants in the minds of millions of Christians. It’s about prayer. It’s the idea that since God is “sovereign” – He is all-knowing and all-powerful, He has already determined everything that will happen – who’ll go to heaven, who’ll go to hell, and everything in-between. We can’t change anything. This is ‘the skin of a truth, stuffed with a lie.’
God is sovereign – but the idea that this means we’re just robots with pre-programmed destinies – like chess pieces on a board, and God is playing both sides – is the opposite of what we see in biblical history, and what we learn from biblical teaching. Why does Satan market this deception so much? I think it’s because of what it does to prayer. If we start to think that prayer is just a ruse, that it doesn’t really change anything, we won’t feel the need to pray as much. And Satan knows that if he can get Christians to stop praying, he’ll have us right where he wants us: Weak, confused, self-centered, short-sighted, and defeated!
Let me clearly state what is everywhere evident in Scripture, and down through history. Within the sovereignty of God, He has allowed that our prayers will move His hand. In Jesus Christ, God empties Himself of His glory to come to our level. In prayer, He submits Himself to pay attention to, and respond to, our prayers. Prayer changes things!
Prayer is like a wartime walkie-talkie for Christians who are on the front lines in the battles of life. Some wrongly think of prayer like ordering take-out: I want something, so I give God a call, and ask Him for it. But when we recognize life is a battle, we see our need for prayer: It’s a call for divine reinforcements as we live out our wartime mission for God.
A century ago, Methodist minister Samuel Chadwick said this: “The one concern of the devil is to keep the saints from prayer. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles when we pray… Prayer turns ordinary mortals into men of power…It brings fire. It brings rain. It brings life. It brings God. There is no power like that of prevailing prayer.”
In sermons during the month of January, we talked about trusting in God, focusing on Jesus, abiding in Christ, and walking by the Spirit. But without prayer, we’re doomed to fail. Read Luke 18.1-14. Jesus knew that in a short time He would be gone, and His disciples would be left on their own. So He talked with them about prayer. What He said is vital for us in these ‘last days,’ too!