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Sermon preached on Ephesians 6:18-20 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 10/11/2026 in Petaluma, CA.
Sermon Manuscript
Rev. W. Reid Hankins, M.Div.
Prayer. What does your prayer life look like? Do you think about it in terms of spiritual warfare? Well, today is our last sermon on this spiritual warfare section. And yet, there may be some sense in which we have saved the best for last. For today, we come to consider prayer as described in verses 18-20. If we are to engage in this spiritual battle, and if we are to be strong in the Lord, we will need to be praying. Today’s passage teaches us some important aspects of how prayer is to be utilized doing battle with Satan and all the evil spirits. First, we’ll consider that we are to pray in the Spirit. Second, we’ll consider “all” the ways this passage says to pray – it mentions four specific things. Third, we’ll consider the request here to be praying for Paul and what we can learn and apply from that. I hope slowing down and thinking about prayer today will be a great encouragement to your prayer life. Satan is out to get us. This passage reminds us of the role prayer has to play in standing up under the enemy’s attacks.
Let’s begin in our first point to consider how we are to pray in the Spirit, as verse 18 commands. Now, I wanted to use this first point as the place to ask how does prayer fit into this passage on spiritual warfare? Paul has just described the spiritual armor God provides. He identified six pieces of armor. Some have then wondered if prayer is the seventh piece of gospel armor. The simple answer is that from a literary standpoint, no, Paul doesn’t identify it as part of the whole armor of God. On the other hand, clearly Paul intends for you to make use of the power of prayer in this spiritual warfare. Just look at the structure of this whole passage on spiritual warfare in verses 10-20. The first four verses introduce the spiritual warfare. The six items of this spiritual armor are given then in the next 5 verses. Then last three verses close out the section, primarily dealing with prayer. While the armor verses are clearly a central focus, there is actually more attention given to prayer than any of the six pieces of armor individually. So, I would say, don’t think of prayer as just another piece of the armor. Think of it something bigger than that, part of how you appropriate all the armor pieces. We are called to take up and put on and use these different pieces of the gospel armor. Prayer is an essential part of how you do that.
And I think the idea here that we are to pray “in the Spirit” helps to make this point to us. Again, I believe this reference to the Spirit is to the Holy Spirit, i.e. the third person of the Godhead. The idea of praying in the Spirit helps us to see that prayer is more than just any single piece of armor but something more fundamental to it all. Remember that this passage began by telling us that we battle not flesh and blood, but the spiritual forces of evil and that we need the power of the Lord to fight. How else will we battle spiritual forces but by the power of the Holy Spirit, a power we appropriate in prayer? We can see this by the two main prayers that Paul already gave us in this epistle. Back in Ephesians 3:16, Paul prayed that the Ephesians would be strengthened with power by the Father through his Spirit in their inner being, so that Christ may dwell in their hearts through faith. Paul’s prayer in chapter 3 builds on the prayer he prayed in chapter 1. There, Paul prayed for God to give them the Holy Spirit to be working in their hearts, so that they might even know the same power that rose Christ Jesus from the dead and set him above all these spiritual forces of evil. Paul’s prayer for the Spirit’s work within Christians shows why we need to be praying in the Spirit as we battle the enemy. To pray in the Spirit begins with asking the Father to work powerfully in us by the Holy Spirit, that we would personally know and have all this gospel armor through our saving knowledge of Christ and our union with him.
Let us further try to define what all is meant by praying in the Spirit, because it certainly can sound mystical. While there is surely something mysterious about how the Spirit is at work through our prayers, to pray in the Spirit does not refer to praying in some mystical state of consciousness. In other words, praying in the Spirit is not what Christian mystics advocate, often referred to as contemplative prayer, where they want you to move beyond words to somehow then experience the presence of the Spirit. Nor does praying in the Spirit refer to praying in tongues as some charismatics might say, where they don’t even understand what they are saying. Just because something is done “in the Spirit” doesn’t mean that it involves some ecstatic spiritual state. An example is in 1 Corinthians 12:3 which says that no one can truly say, “Jesus is Lord,” except “in the Holy Spirit”. There, someone speaking in the Spirit uses ordinary language but the Holy Spirit was genuinely at work in the person confessing that Jesus is Lord. So too, praying in the Spirit is a supernatural work of the Spirit within us even though the prayer uses plain speech with intelligible words. Paul’s prayers in this epistle model this for us. For example, Paul prays in Ephesians 3:14-19 and surely he is there praying in the Spirit. He prays with understandable words with specific requests for the sorts of things the Bible tells us to be praying about. That’s what we see in all the prayers of the Bible. Consider the Lord’s Prayer, or all the psalms, or any other prayer in Scripture. They use words and seek to pray according to the Lord’s will. They are prayers that include things such as praise of God, thanksgiving, confession of sin, and petitions.
Now, if you are listening carefully, you’ll note that I’ve told what praying in the Spirit is not and I’ve also told you what it looks like. But I’ve not yet really defined what praying in the Spirit is. To help us understand what it is, I point you back to Ephesians 2:18 which says that, through Christ, Christians have access to the Father in the Spirit. That explains that we pray to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. In other words, our prayers are addressed to God the Father, and we have an audience with the Father because Jesus reconciled us to him through the atonement. And Jesus then has sent the Holy Spirit to dwell with us. When we pray, the Spirit of Christ is inside us. The Spirit moves us to prayer, attends our prayer, and guides our prayer. Likewise, being in the Spirit describes the spiritual mode in which we exercise that prayer. Some people mistakenly think that it is more effective to pray in a church building. But praying in the Spirit is not about being in some special physical location. Since the Spirit dwells in us, we can pray in the Spirit wherever we are. And so, praying in the Spirit is the ordinary way a biblical prayer is offered by the Christian. It is a practice done with our souls intelligently engaged in prayer according to the way the Bible teaches us how to pray. It’s not something you have to do special, like flipping a spiritual switch as if it were some higher form of prayer. If you are not a Christian, you cannot pray in the Spirit. But if you are a Christian, then we have the ability and privilege to pray in the Spirit. Realize that and be encouraged.
Now this does not mean that a Christian can’t sinfully falter and pray in a way that is not in the Spirit. Remember, Ephesians 4:30 spoke about how we could grieve the Spirit. So, here are some examples of how you might pray but not be praying in the Spirit but instead be grieving the Spirit. If you pray in order to be seen by men, as Jesus called hypocrisy in Matthew 6:5, then that is not praying in the Spirit. If you pray with sinful lusts, asking for things you shouldn’t as James 4:3 describes, that is not praying in the Spirit. If you pray without faith, with the double-mindedness described in James 1:6-8, that is not praying in the Spirit. These are just examples that show that not all prayer is actually prayer in the Spirit. So this is why Paul can command us to pray in the Spirit. We ought to discern if the way we are praying is consistent with the Spirit who dwells in us, as we draw near to God in the Spirit.
This leads us now to our second point to consider “all” the ways this passage says to pray. What I have in mind here is that verse 18 uses the word “all” four times, clearly for emphasis. These “all” statements help us to think about how to pray with a certain comprehensive nature in these four areas. I will identify each of the four “all” statements and reflect briefly on each to encourage our prayers to be so comprehensive.
The first “all” statement in the Greek appears second in our text. It is that we are to bey praying “with all prayer and supplication.” Now this comes across a bit wordy both in English and the Greek. Praying with all prayers uses the same root in both. And while prayer and supplication can be distinguished, they are generally considered synonyms. The word for supplications carries a slightly greater focus on making prayer requests, but technically the Greek word for “prayer” has that emphasis too. So, Paul’s deliberate wordiness surely has the effect to say that whatever form or kind of prayer that you are praying, make sure it is prayed in the Spirit. Since we already talked about praying in the Spirit, this now gives us a chance to remember that our prayers can take on various forms. You can pray privately by yourself. You can pray with your family and household. You can pray in a small group. You can pray at church with the congregation. You might be the one verbally leading the prayer. You might be the one following along in your heart with the one praying, adding your amen in affirmation. Your prayer might be a formal prayer, or it might be a quick “spurt” of a prayer said in a moment quickly to the Lord. While this “all” statement reminds us to bring all these prayers in the Spirit, it also reminds us that prayer can take various forms and may we see how each is part of how we do battle against the devil and seek to find our strength in Christ.
The second “all” statement is that we are to pray at all times. Now while we can certainly cultivate having an ongoing spirit of prayer, this language of “all times” probably doesn’t have in mind “every second” as much as “in every opportunity.” To pray at all times in the Spirit is to see that every occasion is an opportunity to pray. If you ever think, “I wonder if now is a good time to pray,” or “is this something I should pray about,” the answer is yes. Now that doesn’t mean that if you are driving on the freeway that you should suddenly close your eyes and bow your head to pray. That might be instead a time for a more quick, informal prayer said with your eyes open! A mature Christian should aim for dedicated times of prayer like we see commended in Scripture, where we will have more formal and concentrated prayer. But the devil won’t necessarily wait for one of those set times to attack you. You need to be ready to respond with prayer whenever the need or opportunity arises.
The third “all” statement is that we are to “keep alert with all perseverance”. Keeping alert is the idea of being on the watch, being spiritually vigilant, not falling asleep, spiritually speaking. The idea of keeping alert is an important biblical theme when it comes to prayer. Remember, how Jesus in Matthew 26:41 told his disciples while they prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane that they need to watch and pray, that they may not enter into temptation. Our prayer is an opportunity to be spiritually on the alert against the enemy. Of course, the word “all” here is particularly attached with the perseverance. The alert prayer must be done with all perseverance. We can think of the perseverance the disciples needed when Jesus told them to watch and pray because they kept falling asleep instead of persevering in their prayer. But we can especially remember the admonition of Jesus in Luke 18 with the parable of the persistent widow. In that parable, Jesus explained the value of repeatedly bring the same request to God until the answer is found. Now, he must not mean that we pray the same prayer over and over again like a mindless mantra, since elsewhere he says we shouldn’t pray with vain repetitions like the heathens. Rather, Jesus was saying we shouldn’t lose heart as we regularly return to the same requests and in long suffering continue to lay our prayer needs before the Lord. So then, the idea of alertness and perseverance complement each other. As we do spiritual battle with prayer, we need to be aware at any moment the needs before us, while still regularly and consistently bringing matters to God in prayer.
The fourth “all” statement is that we are to be “making supplication for all the saints”. Think about what we’ve just considered: all our prayers and supplications, given on any and every occasion, so we are alert and persevering in prayer. If you find yourself praying like that, then a question to ask yourself is how much are your prayers for yourself versus your fellow saints? I would imagine many of us are more focused on our own needs than the needs of others, when we pray. But, Jesus here commands us to be praying for all the saints. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be praying for your own needs. Certainly, the armor pieces give us plenty of things to be praying that we would take up and put on. But do you also pray this for all the saints? Now this would include general prayers. We should pray for the peace, purity, and unity of the church. We should pray for the worship, discipleship, evangelism, and fellowship of God’s people. But surely, it should especially include specific things. What specific threats might the church be facing? What areas of growth does the church need? And these specifics should get to the member level. What does so and so need? If you see a need in someone at church, do you pray about it? This is part of being alert and on the watch. Don’t just wait for someone to ask you to pray for them about something. Be on the look out for the spiritual needs of your fellow saints, and pray for them regularly.
Now these four “all statements” have helped us to think a little bit about how we should be praying. This last “all statement” naturally leads to our third point for today. Paul told them to be praying for all the saints and said that includes praying for him. The mighty Apostle Paul needed the prayers of the saints. Let’s turn now in our third point to see what Paul asks for prayer about.
Paul’s prayer request is regarding his preaching. He asks that words be given to him as he seeks to proclaim the mystery of the gospel to others. His reference to the gospel reminds us of the ready shoes of the gospel of peace. Paul, especially, as an apostle is one who will need to be ready for every occasion God brings that he would open his mouth and speak the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ to others. But Paul’s prayer request is not just for the right words, but also for the right manner of delivery. He asks for pray for his boldness. He uses two forms of this word in verses 19-20, again bringing emphasis here to his request. You could say that he wants people to pray that he would boldly preach with boldness. So then, when we are seeking to pray for all the saints, we should find an application here from Paul’s own request to prayer. The obvious application is that your pastor also needs your prayers that God would give him the right words to say and the right ways to say them. Please, as you pray in the Spirit, will you also pray for me?
Paul goes on to describe himself as an ambassador in chains. As a minister of God’s word, he represents Christ’s heavenly kingdom here on earth. He brings the gospel of the kingdom to call people to come unto Jesus in faith and become a part of his kingdom. This is the wonderful and gracious offer of salvation that Paul as an ambassador heralds in a very official way. Otherwise, the warning is that one day Christ’s kingdom will come in judgment and those who have rejected this gospel will find the fury of the Christ on the day of his coming.
But let us recognize the audacity of the fact that this ambassador of such good will is in chains, verse 20. That may be why Paul needs prayer for boldness. But it is rather audacious that an ambassador of heaven would be met with imprisonment. Even the pagans normally treat ambassadors from other hostile nations with more honor and respect than that. But here shows the ruler of this age is yet at work. Satan and his demons yet incite the world to rage against Jesus and his people. The fact that Paul is an ambassador in chains confirms the spiritual warfare is still going on. Yet, the fact that Paul asks for prayer shows that prayer is a powerful weapon we have in this fight.
Trinity Presbyterian Church, today we’ve consider the importance of prayer in this spiritual fight. Now, something I hope you remember is that as I took you these last six weeks through the spiritual armor, I showed you how Jesus himself took up and wielded each item. That showed us that Jesus is our mighty savior, and told us why in all this we need to look to his strength and not our own. The same is true even for prayer. Remember how fervently Jesus, during his earthly ministry, prayed. Remember the example where he did spiritual battle against Satan by praying for Peter since Satan was going to sift him like wheat. Or, remember Jesus’ high priestly prayer in John 17 where he specifically prayed this for his disciples, “that you keep them from the evil one.” And Romans 8:34 tells us that this didn’t stop after Jesus returned to heaven. No, even now, he is at the right hand of God interceding for us amidst all the attacks of the enemy. So yes, we pray. But our prayer looks to the power of the one who himself is yet praying for us. In our prayer life, let us have the confidence that Jesus our Mighty Savior continues to intercede for us and for our salvation. May this encourage our prayer life as we seek God’s grace to withstand the enemy until the return of our Lord. Amen.
Copyright © 2026 Rev. W. Reid Hankins, M.Div.
All Rights Reserved.
