(By Captain Thom Moffitt) – I opened my mail the other day to find a poster and information on the upcoming Commissioning weekend. It’s being described as a “Prayer Summit: An interactive weekend for Salvationists focused on prayer, praise & purpose”. Even prior to seeing this, I’ve been spending a good amount of time lately assessing my own personal concepts of prayer. As a Salvationist, is my prayer different than that of say, a Methodist? Do I pray for the Christianizing of the world or claim power in the name of Jesus different than say, the Baptist? As with most things Army, I realize that how I have been taught to pray was learned generationally.
Salvationists in America, generation to generation by example of what we have seen and been taught, associate prayer with calm emotions and deep distress. We pray our hopes, dreams, fears and anxieties, our agendas, and our needs. We are more accustomed to peaceful prayers that ask for more love, joy or hope; or passive prayers that ask God to remove the stress of our lives so we don’t have to deal with them or be deeply emotional about them.
Ephesians 6:18 (NLT) reads, “Pray at all times and on every occasion in the power of the Holy Spirit. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all Christians everywhere.”
I have come to realize that my previous understanding of prayer made my prayers weak! Praying “at all times and on every occasion” was more like “before meals, before I fall asleep, and the four minutes we allocate to it on a worship plot between the singing of our second congregational song and the taking of the offering on a Sunday morning”. Where’s the power in that?
Now I pray violently! Violent prayer aggressively and fiercely challenges the enemy’s agenda. It actually does violence to the enemy’s work. It is highly emotional and deeply exhaustive, and reflects a militant “to-the-death” clash of the kingdoms. Now my prayers instill fear in the heart of the enemy and real strength to me when I feel my weakest.
What violent prayer does not do is make people out to be our targets. Let me be clear; the exercise of violent prayer does not expect any type of physical or visible violence to come as a result of these prayers.
Most of us associate anger with sin; even when it’s perfectly in line with the holy anger Jesus expressed in Scripture. Hostile emotions against the enemy are often suppressed, and we miss their motivating potential for our prayers. These “negative” emotions are often appropriate fuel for our conversations with God. So rather, in order to make best use of that fuel, we must first move beyond some of our assumptions.
Generationally we have fostered many false assumptions about prayer. We misunderstand the investment of time most prayers must take. We underestimate the energy and conflict involved in most of them. We confuse the passive and active elements in our role and God’s.
As we consider the amount of time it takes to pray, we wrongly think in terms of simple transactions. We text, we chat, we communicate at the speed of light; so we tend to do that with our prayers. We underestimate the amount of energy and conflict necessary to prayer. The enemy tries to make our life a grueling obstacle course; so too with our prayer. We believe God wants us to relax and enjoy our lives so we’ve taken the activity – the physical movement and action – out of our praying. We have forgotten the struggle we are made for; the battle God created us to fight.
As Salvation soldiers we must be persistent in our contending for the Kingdom because one brief moment or one territorial inch can have a lasting impact on the course of a kingdom. The stakes are high. There can be no negotiation. Right and might are on the same side, and our battle cry is the Lord’s Prayer. Now is the time to engage; to be marking our territory, as the Army of Salvation.
We are The Salvation Army! A Revolutionary Movement of covenanted Warriors exercising Holy Passion toward Winning the world for Jesus. Let’s pray like it.
This article excerpted with additional commentary from my instructors’ notes on violent prayer for the War College Chicago Term 1 course Basic Warfare. For more information check out: Tiegreen, Chris, Violent Prayer: Engaging Your Emotions Against Evil; Multnomah Publishers, 2006
About the Author
Nate Irvine
Nate Irvine works as the Director of Youth Evangelism and Discipleship for the Metropolitan Division of The Salvation Army. He makes his home on the north side of Chicago, and attends the Irving Park Corps. Graduated from Trinity International University with a BA in Biblical Studies and a minor in Spanish in 2006, he lives to see God's Kingdom here on Earth, and The Salvation Army live true to it's calling. When he's not working, he can probably be found watching hulu, enjoying music, or just hanging out.
(1) I feel like there could be a more important and constructive way to approach our intentions on praying than comparing and contrasting the Army with another denomination. That's my opinion. It sounds like a competition, not your intention? sure. Let the us, as salvationists understand it's not.
(2) I don't think one can be "emotionally calm" in prayer when they have deep distress. And (if implied) be connected with "peaceful & passive prayers" when one is praying in deep distress. Also (if implied) deep distress is something "dealt" with while a person is praying and is deeply emotional in its own right…
(3) It seems that "Emotions" in the context of prayer in this blog is given the benefit of the doubt of it possibly being a negative thing. Meaning, used/expressed the wrong way. Maybe what is meant by use, or lack there of, about emotions in prayer should be considered.
(4) "now i pray violently"… how? what doe it look like to pray violently?
"Generationally we have fostered many false assumptions about prayer. We misunderstand the investment of time most prayers must take. We underestimate the energy and conflict involved in most of them. We confuse the passive and active elements in our role and God’s."
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^Generational generalities, there's always room to explain and be more specific when speaking like this
(5) Revolutionary movement has yet to come back to the Army in America. More importantly to the church of America. (this is me just being picky)
For starters … why anonymous? it’s suspect …
1) yes, not a competition, in fact it’s not the point of the article to “approach our intentions”, rather an opening observation that in my study of prayer I have noticed that different denominations approach prayer differently.
2)perhaps emotionally numb –
3)I think i understand what you are saying here. Again, this article is excerpted – I would suggest you read the book referenced at the end for more on this issue.
4)As is the case with most of these postings, we are asked to limit the size and I had already exceeded the recommended limit with what I wrote. Sorry I wasn’t more specific – perhaps you may want to register for next year’s War College session and take the class!?
5)So we give that up to the enemy?