So far in this series on prayer, we have looked at a few types of “bad habit” prayers you might have heard: Magic Words prayer, the Let God to the Talking prayer, and the Father God Jesus Christ Glory Hallelujah prayer. We now turn to another shocking type of prayer you might hear in a prayer meeting or from a pulpit.
This type may be the worst because although the person thinks they are talking to God, they actually spend a good portion of the prayer talking to the Devil.
Have you ever heard a prayer like this? You probably have.
Here is an example of a prayer I heard quite recently:
God, we thank you for your many answers to prayer this week, and—Devil! I rebuke you in the name of Jesus—and God, may you guide us and direct us this week according to your will—Satan! I bind you and cast you out with the authority of the name of Jesus!—and God, we especially want to lift up to you today Sister Maynard—Get out Satan! Get out! Leave her alone!—who is struggling with the flu this week—Evil spirit of the flu, get out of her! Leave foul demon!—may you use your power and might to restore her to health…
I’m not sure God likes to share prayers to Him this way. Half of the prayer is a conversation with Him, and the other half is a conversation with the devil. I know that they are praying against the devil, but such a practice is not learned from Scripture (the opposite is actually taught: 2 Peter 2:10-11; Jude 9).
When we pray to God, we should not spend time also talking to the devil.
When you pray, talk to God, focus on God, glorify God, and listen to God. Don’t waste any time or words trying to talk to the devil, rebuke the devil, or cast out the devil. Satan is already defeated. You don’t need to give him a second thought (or even a first).
Do you want to pray like never before?
Do you what to talk to God like you talk to a friend? Do you want to see more answers to prayer?
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Come on. I regualy attend prayer meetings, there are groups of people who spend their whole life in praying together, Jesus took three disciples to pray for Him in the garden, why because He knew the power of it. In the prayer meetings I attend we quite often have the same burden put on us by God in what or who to pray for. I’m sure the satanists are praying or a regular basis together, why do they pray together because they knowni its powerful. We are told that where 2 or more Come Together int Name I will be in the midst of them.
Have we learnt nothing from Jesus “have ye not heard hast thou not seen” Come on, stop making up phylosophy, read what Jesus said and did. When Jesus was with His disciples did He send each of them into a room to pray, come on.
If you haven’t got it now, I wonder if you ever will. Will be easier if I translate it to the Greek?.
Clive
By the way I would never pray that way you said you heard someone do. I think the evil one gets enough publicity and assistance as it is. When we pray in a group we ask the Lord to lead us in any way that we with our feeble minds can apprehend, this can be in words, a piece of scripture, a picture or a scene like a vidio, a smell or touch. We first ask God to protect us from any other spirits that may want to lead us astray. We share what we receive and pray into that. We meet for prayer for various reasons, we may prayer for a particular person, government, situation, country etc.
To me corporate prayer is the life blood of the Church. Don’t give up and cause division. Clive
Clive,
Maybe this type of prayer is rare. I don’t know. I work in a religious setting where I hear these types of prayer several times a week (and all the prayers I have talked about in the past couple posts). This group is also quite legalistic and judgmental, and nothing I try to teach about grace, love, and forgiveness seems to make the slightest difference.
Of course, maybe my last few posts on the subject of prayer have not been as lovingly worded as they should have been, so I need to examine my own heart as well.
You make some good points about prayer, and I think that in general, we are in agreement on the what, why, and how of prayer.
Beginning tomorrow (11/23) I will start focusing on what Scripture says about prayer, and how we can use prayer to encourage more love and service in the community.
Sorry Jeremy, if the people you are with are the way you say they are, I feel you need to find a few like minded friends who will wait on the Lord and take His lead. Jesus said never make a vow, Matthew 5 v 34 as it’s another form of judgement on someone, look what happened to King Saul when he swore many times one example was in 1 Samuel 14 v 44, this type of bragging is a sin and can be used to bully. Jesus said let your yes just be yes and your no the same.
Showing off spiritual gifts to make you look good is just as dangerous as you are not being true to the heart, God knows our heart which is the most deceitful thing. Jeremiah 17 v 9 + Proverbs 12 v 20.
Enough said. Clive
Clive,
I and some like-minded people are waiting on the Lord and trying to follow His lead.
Regarding the scripture references, I am not sure I follow your point since I don’t talk about vows in this post.
I enjoyed your article. I would like to bring to your attention that God Is Love, this means we pray that the Devil is forgiven, just as we pray to also be forgiven. Love your enemies is not excluding spirits. Eating animals, although permitted means you are not ready for complete redemption. Restoration is a reconcilation between the Devil, the spirit of the Devil which humans have in their blood to God. We go as one voice seeking to be with one God. This is a problem christanity can not grasp, Jesus gave you an example of what it means to love one another, yet divison and chaos resulting in the split of the church does not speak highly of acknowledgemen of the cross. The Jewish people did not need Christ. They only needed correction of how to be real or truthful,basically not to do things with lip service while living, performing to acts or deeds to God and others. This is found in what christians call the Old Testament. The God of Jacob who is one with Jesus, meaning we belong to God, set up atonement once a year, Yom Kippur, where the priest would per God perform the sets required by God to clear your sins and the community for that year. Christians can not understand why, this is because the Jews are faithful, obedient, and love God and others, that is why they are the chosen people of God. It would be the Jews that bring a chance for coverage into their family. Jesus is a Jew, on the cross He reminded the world to come, forgive them father for they do not know what they are doing. This is the message of LOVE. Makes no difference who you are or what you believe, judgement is in th hands of the God of Jacob, I AM who I want to be. This is to clear the mind of hatred of anykind. The Devil needs prayers to be accepted into the family of God again. If God created something it means it has value. We all have a speck of LIGHT in our being, from the Creator, when all said and done that speck will return to pure LIGHT. To end the suffering early requires repentance and prayer for yourself, yet most foremost, you need to feel for the suffering God, your Maker, who feels the hate His creatures have. Begin to view creation as one, one creation trying to unit with one God, and not losing anything, even the fallen angels. We are a family, animals, plants, air, soil , etc.
Whew! A lot to digest here….
While your ideas appeal to me, I am not sure I can find evidence for them in Scripture. Jesus died, it seems, only for humans, to rescue us from sin, death, and the devil. I do not read anywhere that Jesus died to rescue the devil from himself, or from his own sinful rebellion. Maybe this is some mysterious plan of God yet to be revealed, but so far, it seems that He has not revealed this part of His plan (if it exists).
I thank you for being open minded to reply to my comments. I have no issue with your insights. Let GOD be the judge and director of our path. God bless your spirit.
I have to say, this resonates with me, in a sense that by trying to deny the very fire of human passions (that we control in order to thrive amongst each other as a team, rather than “lower passions”)… not to be ignored, as they come back tenfold (maybe the only number I should use for these things is [seven], yet I don’t fully comprehend why. I haven’t had the privilege of learning the scriptures from an early age). If I would pray for those who have submitted completely to wanton desires, ( I’m too close to that right now to pray for anyone without being reminded that I am yet not worthy…). The fire that fertilises the soil is also the fertiliser within us, too… but to dig too deeply into the details would defeat the “point” of Exodus anyway, surely… I digress. If I Were to pray for the aforementioned, then, surely the fallen Angels deserve deliverance too..? It seems odd that a man’s many transgressions against the Word may be forgiven, while G-D’s “favourite” was seemingly punished for all eternity for what was done.
Unless, of course, the Fallen one was given the role of presiding over all of this world.
As you can tell, I have many questions… as for whether that is the cause or a symptom of my own suffering, I do not know.
Many thanks,
Alex
I noticed that in some cases…very disturbing! Why focus on the Devil?!
Right? It is disturbing.
Is that common in your area of the country? I can’t recall ever hearing anyone rebuke Satan during a prayer in the Deep South. My family attended Methodist and Presbyterian churches though so I don’t know what the common practices were in evangelical and Pentecostal churches.
It is more common in the Pentecostal style churches that place an emphasis on deliverance ministries and casting out demons, etc.
I don’t believe that demons exist. I believe that the idea of demons and evil spirits entered Judaism from contact with the Greeks and the Persians. Satan is an angel who is on a mission from YHWH to test us. He is not an “evil spirit” who defies YHWH in order to torture us or form his own kingdom. Only a fool would attempt to defy the Entity who created him and all of the Universe as well. I do not believe that Satan is a fool.
Jeremy is this true..?
@ Redeeming God ?
Derrick Murithi is what true?
Comment by kelly
Her view is definitely one of the possible views about demons. I personally hold to a view that makes satan and angels as fallen “powers.” The Walter Wink trilogy is excellent on this. http://amzn.to/2ydG3eS
In the Old Testament, Satan is clearly a “tester” who simply provides temptation but does not force anyone to do anything. This is obvious in the story of Job: Everything that Satan does *to* Job is done to try to tempt Job to curse YHWH and he does it with YHWH’s permission. By the time of the New Testament, the public conception of Satan had changed into that of a demon or devil that could possess people or otherwise force them to do things that they didn’t want to do. People who claim that “the Devil made me do it” are simply making excuses for doing something that they knew violated YHWH’s commandments. This is a convenient way to avoid responsibility for one’s own actions, just as people try to claim that they were “under the influence of alcohol” and not in control of their actions when they committed a crime. I don’t believe that Satan can possess people or can force them to do things against their will. Instead, I believe that Satan is working as YHWH’s agent to tempt people. That is specifically the reason why Satan tempted Yehoshua: It was his job.
Martin Luther did the same. But I wouldn’t call it ‘prayer’, but warfare.
https://youtu.be/dhMuWn2dnUw
This is the scene, where he is rebuking the devil.
Yes. Another peeve is when the pastor starts preaching to God in the guise of prayer.
Oh right! Commanding God to do things. This, apparently, shows real faith.
“Lord, you know that you are a righteous God, and you do not tolerate sin, and those who stray from your law will be called to account….!” Like we have to remind him.
My wife and I have been musing over the idea how the big claim is how the devil has no power. Yet, these same characters also look for demons under every rock and spend a good chunk of prayer time rebuking and casting out whatever demons they think are giving them grief. So, these guys should answer, does the devil have power…or not?
Give me a break. Either God is Who He says He is, or we must all be on alert, as the devil might soon take over.
Sheesh.
Prayer 24/7. Why interrupt it so others can hear us so they don’t have to have a conversation w God and so we can have a phony audible one so our ego gets stroked. Dead serious. ?
I wonder how much time u have actually spent serving In a pastoral setting either in the States or the Majority world as u come across OS’s as being extremely arrogant
Thank you Jeremy for this post. I agree we need to not mix up our prayer talk. The Apostles didn’t. However, Paul when confronted by the women with a false prophetic spirit rebuked it and told it to leave the girl. He actually was addressing this being and cast it out, which it didn’t want to do and of course through the authority of Christ. When looking at 2 Peter 2:1-16 it deals very much with nasty false prophets deceiving believers and praying against things they knew nothing about. It seems to me its very specific aiming directly at these wolves in sheep’s clothing. Not aimed at prayer in general. In Jude it has a similar theme where it shows we deal with the forces of darkness through the authority of God not by our own aggressive language. So my take away thought is don’t pray like these these false prophets. Finally I have had to help many people coming out of occultic beliefs. They are oppressed and deceived and you cant ignore their plight. During prayer these dark forces must be confronted.