Greetings, my friend,

Welcome to The Arsenal, your bi-monthly resource for training and equipping you to live a set-apart lifestyle.

⚔️ This Week’s Training: Your Role in Prayer

I want you to recall the last big request you made of The Father in prayer. Perhaps it was for wisdom for making an important career decision, or maybe it was asking Him to help you purge a negative habit or personality trait from your life, just to name a few examples.

Whatever the case may be, many believers often fall into this bucket: we often say our prayers, sometimes quite ardently, but then we just go about our daily lives without intentionally watching for His intervention to help us out! And because of this, sometimes we miss opportunities to take advantage of His help we prayed for and end up not improving in that area we struggle in at all.

What do I mean by this? Allow me to give you a practical example.

Let’s say that a man has a problem with losing his temper because he lacks patience. He recognizes this and the potential damage it can cause to his relationships, so he spends some time in prayer asking for Yahweh’s help in overcoming it. But then a couple days later, his wife takes a little too long to get ready for church service, and he gets frustrated with her and it starts a big argument on the drive there. That afternoon after church, he apologizes to his wife, and they make up.

Then the very next day, one of their children was running through the kitchen again even though he had already told them not to several times that week. In the process, they knock a couple dishes off of the counter and they shatter everywhere. Lo and behold, he overreacts again, and it upsets the child. After apologizing to his child for yelling like he did and telling his wife he’ll do better with their child next time, he began to ask himself, “Father, why am I still like this? Why aren’t you helping me?”

As it turns out, maybe He was trying to! And this man had missed his opportunities to improve on controlling his anger.

So, how can we avoid this mistake?

Think of character-building like a sport, or any other type of skill. It takes many hours of consistent practice and a dedicated mindset in order to master your skill and become a professional. So why wouldn’t mastering yourself and your bad habits be the same way?

I believe Yahweh understands this, and I also believe sometimes He places us in certain situations over and over that test us in a particular area. Why? To see if we’re truly willing to change like we had prayed about and also to give us an opportunity to act differently than we always have!

The thing to remember is that mindset is key. If the husband and father in our example had approached those two scenarios with a mindset of continuous improvement, and one that wanted him to be his best out of love for his God and fellow man, things probably would’ve turned out a lot differently.

How so? In both scenarios, at the point he began to get frustrated, that was an opportunity for him to stop and think for a second about how he was reacting. By approaching a situation in this way, it then makes room for the Holy Spirit to take over and convict him of how he might be internally reacting at that moment, and consequently, give him an opportunity to do better.

📖 A word from the Word

With all this in mind, I want you to think back on any struggles you’ve had with particular issues after you’ve reached out to Yahweh about them. How did you react in that situation? Did you just simply give in to your flesh and let your emotions run the show? Or was your immediate inclination toward loving Yah and also those around whom your sin affects?

I want to emphasize these biblical truths in this situation here too. Consider the following verses:

Once again, the Holy Spirit, the One Yeshua calls the Helper, is the source of godliness within us. It would be in our best interest to listen to Him as best as we can, because it’s the only way we can overcome our human nature.

I’ll also add this: It may seem unkind or unfair to many that such a powerful God who created the universe doesn’t just take away any particular issue we may be dealing with in that moment after we cry out to Him about it. And while there are some cases that The Father uses to demonstrate His might, like addicts being supernaturally delivered, for example, and then being lead to speak about it, the majority of us are seemingly left to combat our problems daily via spiritual warfare.

Why is this? One explanation may be that if The Father were simply to remove every roadblock that stood in our path, what would we gain in the long run? How would we truly learn how to improve ourselves? And how would we learn to handle difficult situations in life? Because the truth is, it’s dealing with those difficult situations that cause us to rely on Him in the first place.

This might seem cruel to some, but it’s for our own good. And like a parent is to a child, sometimes tough love is needed for us to be our best. As it is written:

Don’t become angry or jealous, brothers and sisters, when you see others whose spiritual journey is seemingly a cakewalk, or that they never seem to have as severe of issues as you do. Because, as Scripture shows, anyone who has truly submitted their life to Messiah’s leadership is going to have difficult times. And don’t forget, those who endure much struggle are also the best at masking it around others.

Here’s the Bible’s solution: rejoice in trials (James 1:2), and recognize that any time you experience difficulties in life, especially in regard to things you’re struggling with and working hard to overcome, it’s The Father’s way of making you an even better version of His precious child He created you to be. And in the end, you’re going to look back and be able to do nothing but praise Him for loving you in such a way that many people never could.

💪 Your Action Steps: Making the Most of Prayer

1. This may seem obvious, but pray about the things you’re dealing with! Many are too prideful to admit they struggle with something or need a little extra help figuring something out. Don’t be that person: You’re only hurting yourself and those around you. And after all, we’re called to cast our cares upon Him, because He cares for us! (I Peter 5:7)

2. Develop a mindset of awaiting opportunities each day to show your problems who’s boss, and learn to stop and let the Helper within you guide you into becoming an overcomer. Learn to hear what that still, small voice sounds like, and choose to walk in what He says to resist your fleshly tendencies (Galatians 5:16-17).

3. Love Yahweh and your neighbor as yourself to help you overcome (Mark 12:30-31). Too often, we selfishly don’t consider the impact our struggles have on those around us if we don’t do our best to view each day as a new chance to improve with The Father’s help. So I challenge you: let’s change that!

I hope this has given you a new perspective on prayer and how I’ve seen Yahweh use it in my own life. And as always, I encourage you to pray on what you’ve read here today and apply it, especially the Scripture I shared.

Until next time, keep running the race, and press on toward your upward calling in the Messiah Yeshua.

Shalom.