The Principles of Prayer XXXI

 If Jesus gave everything for me, what makes me think He will be content and satisfied with only half of me? If He laid down His life that I might have life, what makes me think that He will accept anything less than my all? These are the questions the practitioners of casual Christianity refuse to answer, and do all within their power to avoid answering.

The reason is obvious. They know that situational faithfulness, superficial understanding, and inconsistent obedience are not only less than what God deserves but also less than what He will accept. Even so, they find more pleasure in their sin than they do in the presence of God, and as such must justify their duplicity, if only to themselves, because acknowledging the reality of their current state would compel them to make a choice. You can’t have both. It’s either or. Either you choose God, or you prefer the world. You can’t have a bit of both, or rightly divide your heart wherein half belongs to God, and half to the destructive practices that are slowly killing you.

A halfhearted prayer or attending church every other Sunday doesn’t offset rebellion or sin. It’s akin to the guy who insists he wants soy milk in his latte because it has less fat while downing a dozen donuts in a sitting and washing it down with a few puffs of his lavender scented vape.

During all the craziness a couple of years back, when everyone was convinced that a diaper across your face was the best way to achieve immortality, there were a handful of memes depicting an obese individual in a mobility scooter yelling at a gym rat for not wearing their mask insisting that they were endangering their health by not wearing one. The air may have been the last nail in the coffin, but you chose to hammer a bunch of nails in before that final one all by yourself.

The seemingly little things men fail to do consistently over time, such as praying, fasting, reading the Word, and walking circumspectly, weaken their spiritual immunity to the point that some small sin or vice they otherwise would have resisted without much effort will be their downfall. It’s not that the sin was so overwhelmingly tempting that they could not have resisted it had they possessed a vibrant relationship with God, it’s that they were unable to resist it because they had forsaken the practices that made them strong long ago, and now, any old virus leaves them on the floor gasping for breath.

A consistent prayer life strengthens your spiritual immunity. The attacks will come; they always do. They are inevitable, yet the stronger you become in God, the easier it is to resist them, deflect them, and be unaffected by them. There are layered reasons as to why we should pray. There are layered reasons as to why we should fast, and know what the Word of God says for ourselves, and not from some secondhand interpretation by someone who’s trying to sell us a course or a new book.

God isn’t some bitter schoolmarm who’s just trying to give us extra homework for no other reason than to keep us from enjoying our free time. When we are commanded to pray and seek His face, it’s not because God has low self-esteem and needs validation. We are commanded to do these things for our own spiritual well-being, so that we might be able to do as the Word says, putting on the whole armor of God, and standing, having done all to stand.

The less consistent your spiritual succor, the less time you spend in the presence of God, the weaker your spiritual man becomes. It’s as basic a principle as calories in, calories out when it comes to weight gain or weight loss. Knowing that the less time we spend with God, our spiritual man suffers and grows depleted, our priority should be to spend ever more time with Him, understanding the benefits thereof, and seeing it for what it is through spiritual eyes, rather than physical.

Norman Schwarzkopf, a famed US Army General, once said that the more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war. It is an apt principle to apply to our spiritual growth as well. Once spiritual battle is upon you, it’s hard to grow your spiritual man with any noticeable consistency. You’re too busy fighting the fight, and whether or not you were prepared for it before it began will determine how difficult a time you will have during it.

If you’ve ever wondered how some men weather the storms of life seemingly unscathed, while others are wholly undone by the slightest breeze, it’s because those who stand amid the tempest took the time to build up their most holy faith, they took the time to cement their relationship with God and anchor themselves in the Word long before the storm clouds started to gather.

If we are given a season of relative peace, it’s not so that we squander the time pursuing the things of this earth, but to solidify our faith and trust in the God we serve. It’s to grow our reliance upon Him, identify where we are lacking, and shore up the weaknesses, so that when the battle is raging, we will not retreat or surrender, but press ever onward toward victory.

I can’t will spiritual strength into you. The best any of us can do is point to the Word and tell you what works. Growing your faith, growing your spiritual man, and growing your prayer life are individual endeavors we must pursue as individuals. It’s not collective, and just because a handful of people in the congregation are pressing in and growing in God doesn’t mean we will likewise grow if we fail to do what they are doing.

We know prayer works because the Bible says it does. It’s not anecdotal. It’s not like it worked for one out of ten individuals throughout scripture, but for everyone who dedicated themselves to it. It’s akin to people insisting that fire doesn’t burn because, for those who have gotten burned, it was an anecdotal experience. Not so. Everyone who puts their hand in the fire will burn themselves. Therefore, it’s no longer anecdotal, but absolute and proven. The same goes for prayer. It doesn’t just work for some people, it works for all people who purpose in their hearts to devote themselves to spending time with God and in His presence.    

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Posted on 23 May 2025 | 11:41 am