How to Bring Prayers to Spiritual Warfare

Spiritual warfare prayers equip you for battles you can’t see. If that idea is new to you, try these simple and powerful tips to get started.

Are you praying for a loved one? Someone you know is dangerously careening towards the edge of a cliff—a bad choice, an addictive lifestyle, an ungodly mindset—a literal life or death moment? Sometimes a quiet prayer doesn’t cut it. Sometimes heads bowed and hands folded don’t match the dire situation and grave consequences.

The Spiritual Warfare Battle

“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)

There are times for quiet prayer. Heartfelt whispers do reach heaven. But there are also times to pull your spiritual sword out of its sheath and brandish it with everything inside you. To fight the good fight of faith. To wrestle in prayer until you see the results. To pray God’s kingdom and His will into the earth and into your son or daughter’s life.

The Weapons of our Spiritual Warfare

“The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:4-5 NIV)

You pray differently when you’re desperate. You pray differently when you understand that God has equipped you with spiritual weapons that can rescue your child or friend from the grip of darkness. 

These spiritual weapons are mighty to tear down strongholds of addiction or immorality, and powerful enough to demolish arguments that rage in people’s minds, holding them back from the true knowledge of God. 

These are the kind of prayers that bust through prison doors, breakthrough long-held lies, that set the prisoner free.

Your Prayers Matter

“The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months.” (James 5:16-17 NKJV)

It’s called wrestling in prayer. Have you ever done that? Have you ever spent all your energy, all your voice, crying out in desperation for the outright saving of your loved one?

Every prayer counts, but I challenge you—if you have a loved one on the brink of disaster—let your eyes be open to the warfare raging in the heavens over their life. Understand the spiritual battle and your role as God’s child to push back the dark forces trying to take them down.

God’s Word is Powerful

“For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow.” (Hebrews 4:12 NLT)

Get desperate. Get armed with the word of God and inspired by the Holy Spirit. Believe in the power of God working through your prayers. 

Fight. Wrestle. Trust. Believe.

This is not an anxious prayer. This is a faith-filled, confident-in-God prayer. You know God can save. You know God can deliver. It’s His desire, His will and His hope for all the good things of His kingdom to happen in the earth and in your loved one’s life.

Now pray it through. Care enough to cast aside your religiosity and pray the kind of prayers that will have effect. Win the battle. Save their life.

“Hannah was praying in her heart, and her lips were moving but her voice was not heard. Eli thought she was drunk…” (1 Samuel 1:13 NIV)

Does it have to be loud? It might be. But—it doesn’t have to be. There are many times I’ve wrestled in prayer as I’ve walked my neighborhood, or in the middle of the night when the rest of the house was sleeping. 

And then there are times when I’ve had the house to myself and cried out. Or gone to a field where no one could hear me but God—and the dark forces gripping my loved one’s life—and spent myself in prayer.

Wrestling in Prayer During Spiritual Warfare

“And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.” (Luke 22:44 NIV)

Jesus sweated drops of blood. Elijah wrestled for the rain to come. Eli the priest thought Hannah was drunk as she struggled in prayer. Get bold. Get brave enough to put your name on the radar of the demons destroying your loved one’s life.

“One day the evil spirit answered them, ‘Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?’” (Acts 19:15 NIV)

The key is caring enough and believing enough that your prayers matter. They can have great effect if you’re willing to step out of your box of what prayer should look like and join into the great battle of the ages.

Come, Kingdom of God!

“When you pray, say: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” (Luke 11:2 NKJV)

Slay the giant. Take back what belongs to you. Have the confidence in God’s word and what He has said to press in with your prayers. Pray as Jesus taught, for God’s will to happen in the earth.

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Want more help around spiritual warfare and prayers? This article might help: 7 Ways to Fight Spiritually for Your Children.