Prayer Warriors

The original The Exorcist came out in December 1973. Naturally, my high school friends and I had to see it. My parents advised against it, and I’m sure God would have agreed with them had I asked His opinion.

But the dark side can be compelling to impressionable teenagers.

So we bought our tickets, grabbed popcorn and Cokes, and settled into red velvet theater seats for a film that would repay us with nightmares for years. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

I sometimes wonder if there were prayer warriors somewhere who sensed we needed covering — silent saints called by God to stand in the gap for foolish boys flirting with darkness.

Since then, life has offered plenty of experiences that became fodder for nightmares. Some I volunteered for. Others found me without invitation. And during one particularly restless season, I awakened to a reality I had once only read about:

Our battle is not against flesh and blood.

It is against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places.

So when people tune in to the latest news from the Middle East… when headlines warn of escalation… when talk of terrorist sleeper cells in our homeland drifts across the screen… I understand the tightening in the chest.

I’ve felt it.

My heart remembers both strategic and tactical nuclear alerts in the 1980s.

The muscle memory of readiness is still there.

The low hum of global tension and a weapon system that is numb to its catastrophic potential.

The awareness that things can change. Boredom one moment, and conditioned acts from “the neck down” the next.

The heart rate rises.

But here’s how it’s different today.

I know how the story ends.

If fear governs the soul, no amount of self-defense training, target practice with a new Sig Sauer, or stockpiling pork and beans will ultimately prepare us for what may come.

Physical readiness has limits.

Spiritual readiness does not.

When we lay down panic and take up the armor of God, we step into a completely different realm. We become prayer warriors — not encased in iron or steel – but in God’s Will.

Revelation 12:11 tells us that believers overcome satan by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. That is not metaphorical comfort, but spiritual authority.

When we testify — in our own lives — what the blood of Jesus has done for us, fear loosens its grip.

We do not deny the darkness; we just refuse to be ruled by it.

As sometimes faceless prayer warriors, we can stand in the gap for neighbors gripped by anxiety and depression. We can intercede for a nation that feels unstable. We can pray peace over sleeping and waking nightmares.

And in doing so, we sleep well ourselves.

Not because the world is calm.

But because Christ is victorious.

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“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Ephesians 6:12 (NKJV)