Craig T. Owens

If you’ve ever locked horns with the devil in spiritual warfare, you know that he’s a schemer. Paul wrote to the church at Corinth to remind them that we shouldn’t be unaware of his scheming. And Peter said that the devil is always on the prowl, like a scheming lion looking for a place to attack.

So it should come as no surprise that since my message was about unity in the Body of Christ that the devil’s scheming would be to bring about disunity. There was just a weird mood happening yesterday. In fact, in our pre-service prayer time, I felt prompted to pray out loud that God would knock down any distractions to what the Holy Spirit wanted to do.

I saw it coming … I prayed hard against it … and my prayers knocked down the enemy before he could fully implement his devilish scheme.

Well, not exactly.

Yes, I did feel prompted to pray against distractions, but I should have been praying against disunity too. As a result, I could feel the fight all morning. It would be more accurate to say that I could feel something all morning. It wasn’t until I got home and commented to Betsy about what I had been feeling that I got clued in. She said, “What did you expect? You were talking about unity today, so obviously the devil is going to attack that very thing.”

Duh! Why didn’t I see that? I’m so grateful for a godly wife who catches these things for me.

But I learned something yesterday. I learned that my prayers need to be more specifically-targeted prayers. Sort of like the “smart bombs” our military uses that are laser-guided right on target. Like Paul said, I’m not going to be unaware of the devilish scheming.

Spiritual warfare is always hard work, which is why in Paul’s teaching on spiritual warfare he told us to keep on praying for each other.