Now someone else has taken center stage: Stephanie Myer is the author of the “Twilight series, as series last year which sold 600,000 copies in 2008.   For those of you who are out of the loop, it’s a series of books having to do with vampires.  There’s this one person who lives in our area—she read the same book in the series four (4) times!  I understand she gave up an entire weekend and spent every waking hour reading the Twilight Saga.  Is that popular, or what?  So, I have a real money-maker in mind—how about a series nobody’s ever thought of and I could make a killing by writing it: a series of books about Christian vampires.  It would sell like crazy in churches.  Maybe not.

John Grisham is another author.  He can write so that if you will read the first page or two, you can’t put the book down.  Give him three minutes, and he makes you keep turning all the pages.  I especially recommend his book, “The Testament,” because it contains a statement about God’s grace in it, in that one of the characters tells another, “Christ died for all your sins.” 

I was watching an interview with Grisham, and they asked for his secret; how did he write his books?  I leaned forward to catch his every word because I’d like to have my windshield ground to my prescription. 

Part of his answer was that he thinks of the ending first and then writes the book.  So, writes backwards.  (That was helpful because I usually can’t think of a beginning, so I’ve been doing it all wrong.  No wonder I don’t a windshield ground to my prescription.)    

That’s what I want us to do.  Let’s look at the last statement about the armor of the believer and think backwards, that is, think like the devil.  What does Satan want to get you to do so that you will not “Pray in the Spirit with all kinds of prayers and requests,” to keep you from “praying for all the saints.”  Let’s look at prayer from his standpoint.  (Eph. 6)

Let’s do this by borrowing a page from C. S. Lewis who wrote the brilliant work, “The Screwtape Letters” and let’s say that Satan, not needing to worry much about handling you and me, assigns a bush-league demon to hinder and cripple CLC.  Let’s say that his name is Apollyon and he’s a minor league demon, one of whom is assigned to CLC.  In the letter, let’s say that his superior is writing to Apollyon and in his letter, he comes to the subject of prayer and how to produce a church which is prayerless.  Let’s use our sanctified imaginations and imagine that the letter would sound something like this:

Directive to Apollyon, Minor League Demon, Double Alpha farm system assigned to hinder, cripple, and shut down CLC:

“You asked about the matter of promoting prayerlessness at CLC.  Don’t be afraid to try your hand at it because it’s easy to do because of the nature of the human creature.  Learn these simple principles and you will produce a congregation filled with just the type people we want:  a people in the pews every Sunday, but prayerless and if not completely prayerless to so render them that their prayer life is nothing more than a nod to the Enemy.

     1.  The human creature is remarkably short-sighted.  In spite of the Enemy’s telling them that troubles and adversities are part of living a life dedicated to the Enemy, they delude themselves into believing that as long as they’re serving the Enemy, there will be no problems or difficulties. Promote sermons from the pulpit of CLC which re-enforce such an idea.  For example, use the pastor to tell them that the Enemy wants them wealthy and healthy, to encourage the idea that if they’re facing a difficult problem, something is wrong with them, or better yet, that the Enemy doesn’t love them.  Focus their attention on the NOW, not the future.  The human creature is remarkable in that he doesn’t take into account what’s coming, as I said, he’s short-sighted.  He thinks that problems and temptations happen to others, not to him.  Remember those three disciples of the Enemy?  They were warned what was coming and being told to pray that they not fall into temptation, what did they do?  With no forethought, and in spite of being warned, they went to sleep.  Learn from this.  Use every means possible to convince them that their lives are a playground NOW, not a battleground.  Those three and the other eight of the followers of the Enemy failed badly that night in Gethsemane because they were so short-sighted, they didn’t pray. 

     2.  Promote an ignorance of their weaknesses as human creatures.  Get them to think that they’re courageous and loyal.  Make them appear strong in their own eyes.  You can do this by helping the pastor to sermonize on a series of sermons titled “Human Potential and You.”  Human beings fall for such a series of worthless sermons every time.  Have the pastor say over and over again, “You can be and do anything you want to be and do.”  Encourage him to treat the congregation as children and have them repeat meaningless slogans over and over again during the sermon.  Human beings love clichés even if they aren’t true.  We’ve found that the more slogans they recite, the less they think through anything.  The best thing is to make them think that a slogan is in the Bible, like “God helps those who help themselves.”  Benjamin Franklin really did us a favor by writing that one.  Make sure the pastor listens to Oprah Winfrey at least once a week and reads the books of the great self-help preachers we’re promoting in places like Texas .  Also have him read old copies of the Readers’ Digest for inspirational stories of people who went out and “did.”  The pastor will be easy to lead this way because he’ll notice that such “Yes we can!” sermons are attendance builders, so he’ll cooperate with us, though unknowingly so, which is all to the good.  Remember how confident the students of the Enemy were?  One actually bragged that he would never forsake the Enemy, no matter what the others did.  Then he got so scared, he denied he even knew the Enemy.  They think so highly of themselves, yet they are such sniveling cowards.  The Enemy had warned them, but they didn’t believe Him.  The stronger homo sapiens thinks he is, the more he becomes “homo sap.”  The person who believes himself strong sees no need of prayer and, if you can get him to call it a crutch, you could be promoted to the major leagues.

     3.  Encourage the idea, “I/we can handle it.”  This is a priceless strategy and one of the finest flaming arrows our leader has devised.   This strategy plays to the great weaknesses of pastors and church boards—their insufferable egos.  The pastor is especially vulnerable to this arrow as are most deacons and elders in that they love to appear wise and as having “all the answers.”  This will lead to, if not the cessation of prayer, to only token praying, since the human animal likes to think he’s in control and certainly capable of dealing with anything and everything.  Remember that one special student on the inside of the Enemy’s inner circle—he thought he could save the day with a sword in that garden that night and went on a murderous rampage.  Unfortunately, he didn’t kill anybody, since he was a fisherman and not a swordsman.  Maybe if he’d have killed somebody, we could have incited the arresting party to kill all of those students and then there would’ve been no one especially trained to preach that good news we hate so much.  But I digress; don’t worry--it’s easy to deal with these ego-encrusted human beings. 

     4. Keep them isolated from the real battles.  As I recall, those disciples, although forewarned in that Upper Room that night, were putty in our hands because they’d never seen anything like what we threw at them.  Their inexperience played right into our claws.  The Enemy had given them perfect training, the problem was they themselves.  They didn’t believe the Enemy.  So, when you’re dealing with CLC, see to it that the pastor encourages them to read books on witnessing.  We don’t care how much they read about it, as long as they never getting out there and witness for the Enemy.  Suggest to the pastor that he spend a lot of sermon time exhorting the people to do something for the Enemy, rather than telling the church what God has done for them.  Discourage his telling people what the Enemy has done for them because we find that when they understand all He’s done for them, they start to love the Enemy more and more and that really motivates them.  Encourage them to hear sermons on witnessing, especially ones that produce guilt (which is a non-starter for the homo sapiens) but after they hear those guilt-producing sermons, help them invent “good” reasons why they can’t witness.  The two best “reasons” we’ve found are, “I don’t know enough” and “Evangelism isn’t my gift.”  Oh, yes, there’s one more, “I’ll just live the life before them.”  (It was a master stroke of genius when our infernal leader came up with those three.) You can see the logic in our strategy in that “I’ll just live the live before them,” because that infernal good news has to be spoken, they have to hear that the Enemy died for their sins, rose from the dead and promises everlasting life to any homo sapiens who trusts Him and Him alone.  (The “live the life only” strategy is a brilliant one because it shuts them down and makes them think they’re doing the Enemy’s will.)  But back to prayer: help them find good books on prayer and read them.  Promote SS lessons on prayer--we don’t mind that, just so long as they don’t pray.  It’s always good to keep them from groups who do pray.  To be around those who are good role models in prayer doesn’t help our great cause.  Reading and hearing sermons about prayer makes them feel good and that’s what we want.  Keep them feeling fat, happy and satisfied, and in front of their TV sets watching the weather reports; isolation is the key.  We’ve learned that if they’re in the battle, if they’re out there doing the Enemy’s will, such as witnessing, and then with all the guff and opposition we give them, they unfortunately become great prayer warriors and we can’t have that!

     5.  American Christians are well suited for prayerlessness because they’ve been taught all their lives that the most important thing is to be efficient.  Efficiency is ingrained in them and prayer doesn’t appear efficient to them.  Promote that idea.  Remember the human being has been trained all his life to be a “doer,” and he doesn’t think of prayer as “doing.”  It was a sad day for our demonic team when one of the Enemy’s church leaders refused to wait on those widows’ tables and said, “Instead of helping the widows, we, the Apostles, will give ourselves to the ministry of the Word and to prayer.”  It is highly unfortunate that the Enemy put that in the Bible, but we can work around it; just have pastor-teachers give lip service to that statement, but keep them busy with administrative things such as filling slots in the middle school departments of their churches.  Keep them busy, as long as they’re not engaged ministering the Word and praying.  This is easy to do because they always get high praise for being busy with busy work.  This should work well in the case of the pastor at CLC because that moron has such low self-esteem; just make sure he’s complimented for his busy work.  Get as many pastors as you can into as many social functions as you can, particularly denominational functions as this appeals to their egos too.  All these functions make them appear to be “efficient.”  If they ever learn that prayer is an efficient use of their time, things won’t go well for us.

     6. Encourage urgent prayer requests.  If they must pray, keep their prayer requests focused on illnesses, which they never seem to run out of.  They’re either sick or they’ve heard of someone who is.  Although they know it’s OK to pray for the sick, what I’m saying is that you should make sure that’s the only thing they pray for.  Keep John 4 from their minds so they won’t pray for harvesters to go out into the battlefields, and keep them out of Romans so they won’t pray like Paul did for our captives, the lost.  (It was another sad day when Paul wrote, “My heart’s desire and prayer for Israel is that they might be saved.”)  If they ever start keeping an evangelism prayer list, what will happen?--we’ll lose more captives.  One other thing, keep them away from the book of Colossians where Paul asked for prayer for the ability to present the good news of the gospel clearly.  We need to encourage all those who give the gospel to get things so garbled that they actually work to our advantage.  Keep them focused on the urgent requests of foot and respiratory problems and away from the aforementioned.  If they want to pray for a dandruff problem, feel free to let them go ahead, coming boldly before the throne of grace.

“Well that’s about it from here.  Please take this directive in the evil spirit in which it was intended.  And remember, we’ve got That Holiday coming up, so make sure they start fighting to “Keep the Enemy in Christmas.”  Have them petition and picket to have their government issue Christmas stamps; have them boycott stores that refuse to play Christmas carols, but don’t allow them to even think of going out and telling others about the Enemy and what He has done for them.

“If I can be of any service to you let me know.  I wish you well………Your Infernalness, Brimstone.

We don’t need more books on prayer; we don’t need more sermons on prayer.  We don’t need more devotions on prayer.  We need to “Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.”  We don’t need to be made to feel guilty about not praying, we need to “be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.”  We need to pray for our fellow soldiers, as he says, “all the saints,” all the believers.

Put down their good books on prayer; take the CDs on prayer out of the player. Pray. 

So how should we conclude this study?  Not with a benediction, but with a time of prayer.