Spiritual Warfare
Come and pray. . . The Jerusalem Talmud, Berakhot 4:4 (8b)
Pray – The Jerusalem Talmud, the shorter of the two great collections of rabbinic material, includes the following instruction:
“One who is called upon to lead services is not told, ‘Come and pray,’ but ‘Come and kerav – offer our sacrifices, seek out our needs, fight our wars.”
Weiss comments: “The word kerav, here meaning ‘battle’ or ‘combat,’ is related to the word karov, ‘close.’ This term perfectly captures the combative yet intimate nature of prayer—the need to draw close to God in order to challenge Him.”[1]
Have you prayed like this? Have you stood before the Lord and challenged Him, fought with Him, argued with Him—as Abraham did, as Moses did? Have you considered the intimacy of argument, the fervor, the intensity? Or are your prayers patterned according to the acceptable social etiquette of religion. Cautious, plebian pabulum designed more to placate than to debate. Where did we learn to pray as if we were imploring a Policeman not to give us (please, pretty please) a ticket to hell? Do you think Yeshua prayed like Walter Mitty? Was Moses’ middle name “Milquetoast”? Abraham Heschel wrote, “a man’s prayer is answered only if he stakes his life on it.” That means prayer is a life and death activity. Where have you been while the cosmos is shaking and God is quaking?
The religious community opines about spiritual warfare quite often, but the problem seems to be that we expect some angelic host to do the fighting for us. We plead for intervention instead of sharpening the weapons we have been given. We bow our heads and fold our hands like good little supplicants instead of slicing our way into the presence of the Most High, blood running down the thigh as we cut apart His inattention to the matter. “O Lord, why does Your anger burn against Your people whom You have brought out from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?” is the opening of an amazing battle.[2] It is not a battle with the forces of darkness, the evil demons or Lucifer, as is so popular among those who have accepted medieval views of the “Enemy.” It is a battle with YHVH, an attempt to argue that YHVH’s decision is incorrect! It is a man, Moses, standing up against GOD! Are you kidding? Is this even conceivable? But, of course, it is. It is intimate argument, the kind, I suspect, that God loves. How much more do you think He appreciates, no, relishes, prayer that is so intense that it is unafraid to object?! Would you rather have passive compliance or fervent dispute? Who taught you the kindergarten view of prayer—and why do you insist of remaining a child? As it is said, “the time of prayer is a time of combat.”[3]
Topical Index: prayer, kerav, karov, battle, close, Berakhot 4:4 (8b)
[1] Avraham Weiss, Holistic Prayer, p. 54.
[2] Cf. Exodus 32
[3] Sefat Emet, Pesah 5660
I tend to be more like the masses Moses led out of Egypt…I would rather have someone else go up that mountain.
Fear and Laziness wait behind that door and desires me.
Prayer is a lovers’ tussle: where any seeming perception of misunderstanding or misalignment is so intolerable that everything else gets dropped while the truth is pursued. “WHY were you not where I expected you to be?” “Did you look away when I wanted to know why you were talking to someone else instead of to me?” “I thought we were together on this; why do I feel alone here?” “I was afraid I had lost you!” “Are you mad at me? I have to know!” Lovers’ language and lovers’ quarrels.
Mostly I battle with myself these days: I have done most of the biggies with Him, and I now know pretty well that it is going to be me, at the bottom of that pile of distance, that is out of line, so I just go ask to be shown where I am out of line. Distance is intolerable to love, and the sin that creates that distance I grow to hate when I seek Him and feel so alone. Prayer is a two-sided affair for me, where I show up and ask “where are You”, which is to say to Him “please show me where I SHOULD be!” and then listen for Him to answer. Prayer is where I open up my heart to hear the answers to the questions that He lays on my heart to pray. I have to ask how I should pray a lot! I don’t know!
What amazes me every time, though, is that He has never refused a request for wisdom and understanding. My receiver can be messed up, though, and the transmission can fail, but the fault is always going to be on my end. The set of the heart is going to determine the quality of the conversation, for it is to my heart that He speaks, and it is my heart that gets changed and reset by that encounter, so it is my heart that I have to bring “in spirit and in truth”. Reason follows along behind, struggling often to keep up, and so often it is only later that my head will begin to understand what my faith had no problem with.
Heart to heart is a place that mental cognition can often lag far behind in, and if we insist on praying from a mental exercise – although it is vital that we DO understand – perhaps it may be because we don’t know that the heart is better at understanding than the head is. So many times I have thought a perfectly understandable thought – so it seemed – but my heart could find nothing comprehensible about it; it remained cold and lifeless: but it has never failed that if my heart responds to truth – any truth, eventually my head will wrap itself around it, and when it does, it will always make perfect sense. The head is insane in the places it is in sin, but the heart just breaks. I think it is easier for love to fix a broken heart than it is to convince insanity that it is insane. Love operates from trust, after all; not from think tanks.
i’m A Soul Man
Prayer is a strange/foreign/amazing thing. I’ll cut to the quick here and say, God can handle “anything” we may want to throw at Him. He is ready to receive the “good, the bad, and the ugly.”
Prayer is not always “neat and orderly,” or “prim and proper..” Prayer covers the Alpha and the Omega and everything between the up and the down or the East and the West. “Unto Thee, O LORD, do I lift up my “soul.”
My friends, we have a God who hears prayer. (Try it, – you’ll like it). “Unto Thee shall ALL flesh come..” Yes, “let everything that breathes..” – every “breathing creature” —pray.
But to come before the One who is (yes) thrice-holy, we “sinners” (remember ALL have sinned!) must be properly “prepared.” Yes, “fools will rush in..” – don’t do it!! “If we say we have no sin,we deceive ourselves and the Truth is not in us!”
We must be still, (stop right here!- “Selah”) and get a good “scrubbing.” Our first petition? “Cleanse Thou me from secret faults.” LORD, I need a bath, I’m filthy! Cleanse me, wash me.. and then? “Cover me.” I need (He has promised to meet our needs) desperately – a covering. A covering, an atonement, in the blood of the Lamb. And God Himself has provided [Abraham] Himself, a Lamb.
To pray is to prepare. God will not fill (and neither should we!) a dirty cup.
Ahh, but we have tHis promise.. “draw near to God and (?) He will draw near to us!!” The invitation to pray is to “whosoever will.” We were made to pray. Prayer transforms the pray-er, the one who prays.
Do we “need” to pray? Lol! – Do we need to breathe? ~ Bless the LORD, O my soul.. (yes) Bless His holy Name.. [Why?] Because the LORD is [always] good. His Love endures/remains forever! Unto Thee, O LORD, do I lift up my soul! O my God, I trust in Thee! Let me not be ashamed, let not my enemies [without and within] triumph over me! And this prayer I offer, at Your invitation, in and because of the Name that made this prayer possible, that wonderful Name that is above every name and for this, I give You praise… Amen.
I love how this TW ties in with Roi’s Note about Self Sacrifice on November 14. He said, “a sacrifice is basically us drawing near to the presence of our father,” and, “the Hebrew word for battle is Krav…sounds familiar? Well, who ever said that bringing our hearts near God’s presence is an easy thing to do?” Today Skip wrote, “prayer is a life and death activity,” and quoted Sefat Emet, “the time of prayer is a time of combat.”
Sacrifice, drawing near, battle, inner parts…. In English these things may have some abstract connection that is disjointed at best, but in Hebrew the words literally jump off the page as belonging together, being intimately connected to each other. No wonder our prayers are neutered. Understanding that there is combat inherent with drawing near makes the whole concept of prayer being a battle make sense. And if I am battling as I sacrifice myself, the offer ought not to be flaccid but filled with every fiber of my being. Wow, huge aha for me today!
Well said, Kelli. The concept of “challenging” God cannot be understood from a modern Christian perspective. It’s a bit like iron sharpening iron — a chemical event which ALWAYS creates sparks; but in modern religious thought, in modern society, we don’t like sparks. We don’t like it when PEOPLE challenge our ideas; we cannot imagine challenging God! Yet, when we fail to do so, we are missing “the intimacy of an argument”. We are missing the God-given opportunity for sharpening; the “combat inherent with drawing near”. It’s a sorry state of affairs when we would rather placate than debate an issue. The Sages understood that debate is practiced among men and then with God. We have a lot to learn.
Oh my, yes, we have a lot to learn. And unlearn. I so appreciate the iron that you bring to discussions; I’ve learned a lot from you.
I do not understand completely. How must you have an argument with him. Must it be aggressive or questioning his decisions.
Or all of these and more. Read Job. Read the imprecatory psalms. Read Moses’ argument with God about the people. INTENSITY! Questioning. PASSION. Defense. Not the grandfather God with the Spirit of psychotherapy. Isn’t that ho God presents Himself to Cain, and Cain refuses the offer. Are there not times in your life when you really wanted to say something to Him but thought better of it?
OK so in other words when you pray you must show deep emotions such as happiness, anger, embarrassment,and grief ect. So G-d doesn’t want you to pray with only one emotion but many others
Amein! Prayer is a war cry for YHWH to be on our side, desperate-
“Are You for us? or against us?” A REAL prayer!
Just two days ago, we prayed for ABBA to shut up an abusive husband, from overseas, who came to visit his wife, who kept herself away from him. In less than 2 days, the verbal abuse began. We prayed that he will leave and he did willingly without saying much, though not without much confrontation from her parents, who had tolerated him for many years, and me.
It was an Chanukah miracle!
This is very enriching TW.