“By means of all prayer and petition, praying at every time in spirit and watching unto this in all perseverance and petition concerning all the saints” (Eph. 6:18). We should pay particular attention to the phrase “watching unto this” in this verse. What does “this” refer to? By reading the context we know that it refers to prayer and petition. The apostle said that it is not enough to pray at every time by means of all prayer and petition; we also must be watchful in the matter of prayer and petition. On the one hand we have to pray, and on the other hand, we have to be watchful. What does it mean to be watchful? Being watchful is to be awake and to survey and keep surveillance by keeping one’s eyes open. Being watchful is to be on the alert for any danger or emergency. Being watchful in prayer and petition is to have the spiritual insight to discern the stratagems of Satan and to expose his aim and the method of his work. We will mention specifically a few things that we should be watchful in with respect to prayer and petition.
Prayer is a kind of service and should be given the utmost priority. But Satan’s strategy is to put everything related to the Lord before prayer and make prayer the least important matter. In spite of the fact that we have been reminded of the importance of the matter over and over again, not many people pay much attention to prayer. Many people are enthusiastic about attending preaching meetings, Bible study meetings, and other meetings of the church. They are interested in these meetings and make the time for these meetings. But whenever there is a prayer meeting, the number is amazingly low. Despite many sermons that remind us that our chief service is prayer and that if we fail in our prayer life, everything else will fail, we still neglect prayer and consider it to be something quite dispensable. Despite the facts that problems are piling up and that we acknowledge with our mouth that prayer is the only way to solve them, we talk more than we pray, and we worry and resort to methods more than we pray. In brief, everything comes before prayer; everything is important. Prayer is always placed last and considered least important. One brother who had a deep knowledge of the Lord once said, “We have all committed the sin of negligence to prayer. We must all say to ourselves: `You are that man!’” Indeed all of us have to say to ourselves that we are that man! We cannot blame this one and that one for not praying. We ourselves have to repent. We need the Lord to open our eyes to see afresh the importance and value of prayer. At the same time, we have to realize that if we had not been so deceived by Satan, we would not have been so negligent concerning prayer. Therefore, we must be watchful, discover Satan’s stratagems, and detect his wiles. We must not allow him to cause us to be relaxed or blind.
After we understand the importance of prayer and have consecrated ourselves to serve and work in prayer, Satan’s attacks will come upon us, one after another. We will feel that we cannot find time to pray. While we are intending to pray, someone will knock at our front door or will come to our back door; either the grown-ups will be arguing, or the children will be causing trouble. Either someone will be sick, or someone will encounter some accident. Before we intend to pray, everything is peaceful. When we want to have a specific time of prayer, many matters will immediately come to us, one after another. Many unexpected and unforeseeable things will encroach upon us like an army waiting in ambush. Countless problems will come and stop us from praying. Many things will come our way to try to push away the time for prayer. Do all these things happen accidentally? No, they do not happen accidentally. This is a planned and prearranged strategy of Satan to stop us from praying. He can encourage us to do many things, but he will try to eliminate our time of prayer. He knows that unless spiritual work is built on a foundation of prayer it will not have much value and its eventual result will be failure. Therefore, his strategy is to cause us to become busy in other things and neglect prayer. We are busy in work, visitation, providing hospitality, and preparing sermons. We are busy in the morning and busy in the evening to the extent that prayer is pushed into a corner, and we do not have much time to pray.
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