Is Praying in My Mind As Effective as Praying Out Loud?

0:00Joshua has a really good question and it's one of those questions where I've been kind of trying to play it out in my mind and I want to hear what you think of it. He asks this, is praying in my mind just as effective as praying out loud or does prayer only have power when actually spoken to up this question a notch because why not? Could I cast a demon out in my mind? Good question, Joshua. I appreciate that. You know, my father, he became a Christian when he was 74. We recount his coming to faith through the book of lettuce from the skeptic where, you know, corresponding about different matters of the faith. But he became a Christian at 74 and then at the age of 75, he started having strokes and each stroke took away a little bit more of them than any of Bell's palsy which made it really

1:03hard for him to speak. His mouth was always kind of crooked and this probably was six, seven years later, just a couple years before he died, but he had had another stroke and visited him in the hospital and he was laying in bed and you know, could hardly talk and he asked this question and it's kind of enduring to me because my father was once such a proud man and, you know, fairly arrogant and very opinionated and what not. But he's laying in bed and he just, he asked me this question. Does the, I said, Dad, you know, since you have a lot of time on your hands now, I'm going to commission you to be my prayer warrior. I want you to be praying for me and my family and my ministry and, you know, and I listed the things that we are involved in, it could just keep on covering them in prayer and he got a guy to read, he said, I'd be honored too.

2:04But then he asked me this question, I, you know, I have trouble talking now. There's a good Lord, hear me if I just think the prayers on my head. And I reassured him, yeah, Dad, you know, God knows your thoughts and so you can just think the prayers and that's fine. So, you know, it's okay just to pray in your mind. In fact, you know, I don't know how to pray without ceasing and that looked like a lunatic unless I'm just doing most of the prayer in my mind. You don't want to walk around, you know, in the grocery store, you know, hey Lord, why you never will, what cereal I should buy, you know, or whatever. But I am constantly communing with God in my mind, you know, and trying to listen to God in my mind. And that's where the listening takes place. In my mind, you know, at a very intuitional level, I encourage everybody to be open to that and to be practicing that, pray without ceasing, make it a habit of your thought all day long. Having said that, the Bible puts a lot of emphasis on spoken words and the power of spoken

3:09words. It's consistent throughout and that's a very, you know, ancient view. Your word goes forth and it encompasses much. And so there's a power in the spoken words. And atop of that, when you can pray and when you have times of prayer and you speak it out loud, the brain registers it as more real than if you're just thinking it. There's a, yeah, concreteness to it. And so when possible and not looking like a lunatic, when you're in your prayer closet or whatever. I encourage people to pray out loud because God is right there and you talk to Him like you talk to any friend that's right right there because God is your friend and God is right there. So there's a power in spoken words. When it comes to casting out demons on the one hand, I want to say, yes, you can cast out demons in your mind. In fact, that's, I think, a central part of discipleship. You know, right now, everyone's thinking, oh, boy, the wacko.

4:09You know, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10, that the weapons ever were for unoccurringable their spiritual to the tearing down of strongholds whereby we come against every thought and every imagination that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. His concept of strongholds there is simply that where the demonic forces have got a strong hold, you know, the word possession, it's often translated possession in the New Testament, but the word is demonizumai and that's the middle voice of being demonized and it just means for any area of your life that's been rendered passive with regard to the demonic activity. It could be a habit of thought, a habit of your imagination or whatever, but it's a thing that is not consistent with what you know about God in Jesus Christ, but it lingers. It's always there. It keeps coming back to you. And Paul says, our job is to take every thought captive to Jesus Christ. All those areas of thought that are inconsistent, that are demonized, that are rendered passive

5:13with regard to demonic activity, our job working with the Holy Spirit and being empowered by the Holy Spirit is to bring those all under the reign, the loving Lordship of Jesus Christ. And so I would say, yes, come against everything in your mind that's not of God and take authority over it in Jesus name under the power of the cross, by the power of the Spirit and bring a captive to Jesus Christ and that's an active discipleship. Now having said that, I'd also say that for real deep strongholds, things that with the enemy really got its claws and deep, whether it's because of, it's been reinforced for many, many years by your activity and your thinking and whatever, the Bible places a lot of emphasis on praying for one another. And in the Bible, whenever we see Jesus casting our demons, it's because he was there and he was rebuking the demons. And so if there's a real stronghold in our life, I encourage people to invite people who they know and trust, to pray for them, to come against the spiritual authority.

6:16Prayer is just, it's a labor of love in the spiritual realm. And but it operates kind of on the same principles as labor in the physical realm. And you know, it's some physical task you can do on your own. It's lightweight. You can carry it on your own. But other tasks require other people to be involved. And the heavier the thing is to lift them, more people you need to have help you lift it. And it's the same way in the spiritual realm. Yeah, there are things in our mind that light strongholds that we can come against and take captive unto Jesus Christ and all the rest. But if there's something that does not get kicked that way, then call in help. Colltequting in the kingdom is meant to be done in community. And so invite the community around you to pray for you and cast that sucker out several thus says he words of the wacko boy'd thus says the words of the wacko buoyed thus says the words of the wacko boy'd