The Weapon of Prayer

Elizabeth Elliot Devotional

News came one day which indicated that a matter I
had been praying about had deteriorated rather
than improved. "What good are my prayers,
anyway?" I was tempted to ask. "Why bother? It's
becoming a mere charade." But the words of Jesus
occurred in my Bible reading that very morning
(and wasn't it a good thing I'd taken time to
hear Him?): "If you, bad as you are, know how to
give your children what is good for them, how
much more will your heavenly Father give good
things to those who ask him?" (Matthew 7:11,
NEB).

Are you as often tempted as I am to doubt the
effectiveness of prayer? But Jesus prayed. He
told us to pray. We can be sure that the answer
will come, and it will be good. If it is not
exactly what we expected, chances are we were not
asking for quite the right thing. Our heavenly
Father hears the prayer, but wants to give us
bread rather than stones.

Prayer is a weapon. Paul speaks of the "weapons
we wield" in 2 Corinthians 10:4-5. They are "not
merely human, but divinely potent to demolish
strongholds" (NEB). The source of my doubts about
its potency that morning was certainly not the
Holy Spirit. It was the unholy spirit, the
Destroyer himself, urging me to quit using the
weapon he fears so intensely.