Equipped

May 1

Without prayer, man is left helpless in a hostile environment. Anyone who ventures into the sphere of nature known as the wilderness—to scale high peaks or to enjoy the verdant beauty of the forest—has been counseled to carry a weapon to assure safety from attack by the predators that inhabit those places.

It would be ill-advised on the part of anyone to presume that a hike into the habitat of wild creatures might not pose the threat of danger. Although it’s true that bears and mountain lions prefer to avoid contact with humans, there are those times when, for some inexplicable reason, they choose to engage.

The fallen world in which mankind finds himself is a wilderness. It is a locale that is inhabited by a predator whose intent is to undo the one who is tempted to sin, the one who is a seeker of truth, even the one who is a blood-bought child of God. This evil entity places allurements before the one whose will is weak so he becomes ensnared by temptation; he places deception before the searcher to confuse his quest for truth; he sets a snare to trip the feet of the one who’d resolved to walk the path of truth.

But in I Peter 4:7 the Word supplies a weapon against the ploys of the stalker who inhabits the darkness. Here he says, “The end of all things is near, therefore, be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can watch unto prayer.” Watch. Pray. Because we know we are in a wilderness fraught with the dangers of temptation, and deception; that the evil one has set as a snare to trip our feet, we must employ the defensive weapon we have at hand—prayer in the mighty name of Jesus.