2 Chron 7:12-14, Then the Lord appeared to Solomon at night and said to him, "I have heard your prayer, and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice. If I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people, and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray, and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. 
	Before our recent break, we began to look at what the Lord desires from His church with respect to what it means to pray. We are not discussing those memorized prayers recited rotely from ritual or custom. We are not referring to those ceremonial dissertations labeled prayers that are read at various social functions. We are talking about what it means to come before the Lord, both individually and corporately in a way that both honors and reverences God and touches His heart in true communication, child to father. It is that laying before Him the whole measure of our heart and letting Him know in word and in thought and in deed just how much we truly value Him and all that He does day in and day out. It is that relationship communication which is a heart to heart oneness, spirit to Spirit, which will seek and settle for nothing less than His will to be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.
We have been using this text in 2 Chronicles as the umbrella of God’s instruction to us to pray effectively after His heart. We must come before Him in contrite humbleness, acknowledging that He is the Lord God Almighty, Creator of the heavens and the earth, and we are but the creation of His Hand. We must learn to pray. We dare not come before Him with our assumptions and in presumptuousness. 
We need to honor Him in praying unto Him, giving voice to the honest reflections and purposes of our hearts coming into line with His plan and His will in Jesus Christ. We must seek His face, look to Him, value Him, bow down to Him, and give Him praise and adoration as the One Who holds all things together through His Loving-kindness and His Grace and His Mercy and His Omnipotence and His Omniscience. We need to come to Him in saving life of Jesus Christ, with Jesus as our covering, our Right standing and holiness in the presence of the most Holy and Just Lord God Almighty. It is in Christ that we have any standing before His throne of grace and judgment. We are audacious fools to think that any prayer offered apart from the intercessory work of Christ will have any answer from the One Who has so freely given that access through the death and resurrection of His Only Begotten Son. 
And the final component that we have stressed as the foundation of effective prayer is that we must turn from our wicked ways. It is not enough to mouth the words; we must walk the walk as stipulated in our current day vernacular. We must acknowledge that we are sinners and then turn from that sin, by the power of the Holy Spirit in us and seek to no longer have any part of it. That can only be as we desire this and ask the Lord to make it very much now the true course of our lives. If we choose to hold onto that sin, if we cherish the sin more than we cherish God, then we must not be surprised when our prayers are nothing more than words uttered aimlessly into space. Our lives need to give expression to the prayers that we covet to be answered by our Savior and our Lord as we honor Him in obedient reverence. 
This, then, brings us to a matter that is plaguing the church and the members of the church with exceeding burdens and distractions in the manner of both prayer and living life on this earth. There is so much undo emphasis given to the Devil within the church. He takes time and energy and emphasis away from those who should be focused on the life that God has given us in Jesus Christ. 
We want to consider this aspect here as the last part of our foundational pavement to our study of prayer. We do so in order to have done with it once and for all, no longer allowing ourselves to be dissuaded from effective prayer through a fear of one who is now powerless and impotent in the lives that have been eternally saved by the blood of Christ. The evil one has no place in our lives any longer and he deserves no more attention from us.
The Apostle indicated as much in Eph 4:26+27, as he was making it very clear that the manner of life of the Christian was no longer under the control of the old nature with its emotional displacement through the schemes of any power other than Jesus Christ. Eph 4:26+27, Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity. There is no manner in which we are to allow the enemy to have opportunity to exert any influence within our hearts, our minds, our souls, and our fellowship with Jesus Christ and with one another. 
He is very real. That is not the argument that we are making. His forces are legion, but they have nothing to do with us any longer now that we are in Jesus Christ. The Devil does scheme and plot and will take advantage of any area into which that access is granted him. We know this from the Apostle’s writing to the Church at Corinth, in 2 Cor 2:9-11.
2 Cor 2:9-11, For to this end also I wrote that I might put you to the test, whether you are obedient in all things. But whom you forgive anything, I forgive also; for indeed what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, I did it for your sakes in the presence of Christ, in order that no advantage be taken of us by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his schemes. 
    	The enemy schemes and plots, manipulates and attacks those who give him that opening. He does have power over all who do not belong to Christ. Many Christians, however, blame him for those things that happen in their lives as the natural course of our deterioration in this realm, when, in fact, he is so far removed from us by the resurrection power of Jesus Christ. Why we still allow him access within our lives that are sealed and protected by God’s Omnipotence and God’s Omnipresence, as spelled out so vividly for us by the Apostle Paul in Eph 6:10-20, is playing into his shackled hands. 
	Let us read this wonderful passage together and see Who is really in control of our lives, day, after day, after day! Eph 6:10-20, Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God, that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming missiles of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints, and pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak. 
    	Notice the key truth of this wonderful passage is to stand! The Lord works in us and we give ourselves to Him in prayer and in the study of His Word and in the full confidence that we are protected by the armor of God and we stand! We do not run around chasing after the enemy. We stand, firmly rooted in Christ, like those giant redwood trees, the oldest living things on earth, standing firmly rooted against all the gale force winds and the raging forest fires and the ravaging attacks of violent natural forces, we stand tall and firm and eternally rooted in Jesus Christ!
	When the Charismatic movement first began, there was such an emphasis on chasing Satan out of the houses where we were holding Bible studies. It would be a room by room search demanding that the Devil get out. Such fears and such giving a place to the enemy are still too common within many churches. There is no true understanding that the enemy cannot be in the presence of the Lord and would never want to be where the Word of God is being taught. Where Christ is proclaimed and where He is present, the enemy will flee without an invitation to do so. He cannot be where the light of Christ will expose him and strip him of his darkness and his tools of fear and baseless accusations and deceit. 
	This passage speaks so plainly of the truth that our battles are spiritual battles, but they are waged against all the forces of wickedness and evil by the Lord, Himself. We stand firmly rooted in Him and in His Word and obey Him as He commands. The spiritual conflict is within us and it concerns our willingness to obey and to set aside the remnant of who we used to be in utter opposition to who we now are in Jesus Christ! There are those daily conflicts that war within us as to whether we will now fully trust in the Lordship of Christ or seek to usurp His place with our own vile and deceitful self-serving and selfish means and methodologies.  
	James brings all of this to the forefront as he so plainly expounds in James 4:3-8, if you would turn to it. James 4:3-8, fully puts into perspective how we are not praying after the heart and will of God. 
	James 4:3-8, You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: "He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us"? But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, "God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble." Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 
    	It is all the matter of drawing close to the Lord God Almighty. If we do so, the enemy will flee. If we obey God, that will be the very resistance that James is preaching. It is not a matter of our searching for the wicked one and then facing him down on some spiritual battlefield. It is simply learning to pray after the heart of God and obeying the Lord. That obedience gives no area of our lives for the enemy to even try to exploit. It is back to not letting the sun go down on our anger, not opening ourselves to any of the lies and the accusations and the threats and the doubts that would weaken our obedient, daily walk in Jesus Christ!
	The Apostle Peter further encourages us in this in 1 Peter 5:6-11, where he shows us that obedient humbleness in Jesus Christ is our victory in this life. There should be no fear of the enemy, but rather the full knowledge that what we suffer in this age is working in complete line with the glory of God being revealed livingly in us.
 1 Peter 5:6-11, Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety upon Him, because He cares for you. Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you. To Him be dominion forever and ever. Amen. 
As well, John, the writer of the Revelation of Jesus Christ, in Rev 12:10+11 notes that the accuser, the enemy will be thrown down by the Lord. The devil is the accuser, as we know so very well, but his accusations are baseless and will be revealed as such through the manner in which the saints live our lives in the daily testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
Rev 12:10+11, And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, "Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accuses them before our God day and night. "And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even to death. 
Again, it is not a face-to-face combat on our parts. It is very simply that our lives, in obedience to the Lord and to His Word, by the power of the Holy Spirit, show the truth that the accuser cannot camouflage or distort or deny.
	Please bear with me a little longer this morning as I truly want to lay this whole issue to rest for the remainder of our discussion of prayer as well as for the remainder of our glorious walk on this earth. It would be well to not have to deal with this whole subject any longer in our minds, in our hearts, in our souls, and in our spirits. 
	There are several scriptures in the Old Testament that highlight the fact that it is the Lord Who will deal directly with the enemy, removing that obligation from the hands of His beloved people. The first is the Prophet Zechariah, in Zech 3:1+2. 
Zech 3:1+2, Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the Lord said to Satan, "The Lord rebuke you, Satan! Indeed, the Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is this not a brand plucked from the fire?" 
	Notice that it is the Lord who rebuked Satan in the defense of Joshua. It was not on the head of Joshua to do so. He simply trusted the Lord to fight the battle and the Lord did so.
	The next prophet for us to consider is the Prophet Zephaniah, if you would please open in your Bibles to Zeph Chapter 3, verses 14-20. Zeph 3:14-20. As we read this, please note the essence of joy and triumph with which it is filled. There is no fear of the enemy, or loathing or anxiety or trepidation concerning him.
	Zeph 3:14-20, Shout for joy, O daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem! The Lord has taken away His judgments against you, He has cleared away your enemies. The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; You will fear disaster no more. In that day it will be said to Jerusalem: "Do not be afraid, O Zion; Do not let your hands fall limp. "The Lord your God is in your midst, A victorious warrior. He will exult over you with joy, He will be quiet in His love, He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy. "I will gather those who grieve about the appointed feasts — They came from you, O Zion; The reproach of exile is a burden on them. "Behold, I am going to deal at that time With all your oppressors, I will save the lame And gather the outcast, And I will turn their shame into praise and renown In all the earth. "At that time I will bring you in, Even at the time when I gather you together; Indeed, I will give you renown and praise Among all the peoples of the earth, When I restore your fortunes before your eyes," Says the Lord.   
	This is the triumphant declaration of the Lordship of Jesus Christ as He will crush all those who come against Him. That fully includes the evil one and all his forces of darkness. No one and nothing will stand against the Omnipotence and the victory of the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ!
	This is our certainty as is so wondrously proclaimed by the Apostle Paul in Rom 8:33-39. This is our spiritual anthem of victory and peace and assurance now and evermore, if you would please read along with me in joyous celebration of our placement into Jesus Christ! 
Rom 8:33-39, Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, "For Thy sake we are being put to death all day long; We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered." But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 
    	We now put this whole consideration of the fact that we are to give the enemy no further place in our thoughts and in our minds and especially with respect to hindering our effective prayer lives to rest with one last passage from the Apostle Paul. It is the effective fact of what the Apostle declared as the final nail in the enemy’s coffin in Rom 16:20. Rom 16:20, And the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you. So be it and Amen!

This morning’s benediction is 2 Cor 4:6. For God, who said, "Light shall shine out of darkness," is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. Amen.