Demons are the force operating behind false religions, idolatry, magic and witchcraft (Deut.32:17; Ps96:5; 1Cor.10:19-20; Rev.9:20-21).
Satan and his demons are in a state of continual war against the church and God’s people individually. All believers are exhorted to combat all levels of evil spiritual forces in the unseen realm (Eph 6:10-15), till we have the victory and breakthrough in the level God has allowed us to battle in for victory.
Worship is prayer and prayer is worship. Worship Him with a purity of heart and clean hands. Lift your heart to Him and glorify His Name. Sing to Him in a new song, rejoice, and worship in freedom without a concern of others around you. Your only audience is God.
"Even them I will bring to my Holy Mountain, and make them joyful in My House of prayer …… for My House shall be called a house of prayer for all nations."(Isaiah 56:7)
This scripture actually speaks of an intercessory song. This scripture is a key to us. The words of prayer in Isaiah actually mean 'Tephillah', which in itself means a prayer set to music and sung in formal worship. The word 'Tephillah' occurs 77 times in the Old Testament. You could safely interpret the verse this way. 'My house shall be called a house of prayer and praise.' Music cannot be separated from prayer in most of the Old Testament.
Many intercessors go around with long faces. If we as intercessors don’t maintain joy in intercession, the enemy will take our strength from us. Satan loves to break down intercessors through grief and sorrow over all the problems they pray about. If they allow this and do not allow themselves to be released from their burdens, filled with God’s Spirit, and refreshed with His joy and strength, they will become wounded burden bearers.
Since prayer and praise are linked together in the Word of God, they lead us into the courts of God, into the Holy of Holies. Here is a scripture, relating worship and prayer, leading into warfare.
Praise the Lord! Sing to the Lord a new song, and His praise in the congregation of the saints …. Let them praise His name with the dance; let them sing praises to Him with the timbrel and harp…Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand, to execute vengeance on the nations, and punishments on the peoples; to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; to execute on them the written judgment – this honour have all His saints. Praise the Lord! Psalm 149:1,3,6-9.
In the above passage, praising God executes vengeance upon the heathen. It binds kings with chains, and nobles with fetters of iron, and executes judgment. Pretty powerful intercession! In other words, worship is spiritual warfare.
Aggressive, strategic prayer is an essential component in reaching unreached people groups. Unreached peoples are, by definition "churchless" people. However they may be delineated by ethnic, linguistic, or social features, unreached peoples are those which do not yet have a flourishing church planting movement announcing and demonstrating the gospel of the Kingdom.
God intends for churches to be an open display of obedience to
Christ. Satan works to deny that obedience by trapping a people in society-wide presumptions about reality.
We're not sure how these strongholds get their start; probably by trapping people in their own high-minded speculations as they pursue self-sufficiency. But we can see that in settings in which Christ is not obeyed - where there is no church - such strongholds go unchallenged, sometimes for centuries, gaining strength with every passing generation. Bold, determined spiritual warfare is required to weaken and dislodge these fortresses of presumption which are blockading "the knowledge of God" and denying "the obedience of Christ" (2 Cor 10:3-5). No amount of human persuasion can liberate an entire people from such darkness.
Prayer is utterly essential. Only God can move by His mercy to open such society-wide blindness to the light of Christ.
In 1993 Piper published Let the Nations Be Glad, which he famously began with the lines:Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship
doesn't. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their face before the throne of God, missions will be no more. Missions is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever.
Piper goes on to affirm that worship is the goal of missions:
In missions we simply aim to bring the nations into the white-hot enjoyment of God's glory. The goalof missions is the gladness of the peoples in the greatness of God.
and also the fuel of missions:
Passion for God in worship precedes the offer of God in preaching. You can't commend what you don't cherish.
There is nothing outside the scope of God's Kingdom. It represents a total, global transformation. It is a vision of the entire cosmos, purified of evil and full of the glory of God. This is the end to which the Kingdom advances.
The Kingdom of God is any realm where Christ the King reigns – where His will is done. His Kingdom is God’s total answer to man’s total need, and that is good news. The nature of the Kingdom of God and its members provides a framework for personal transformation that will move outward bringing transformation to communities and nations.
The Son, therefore, came, sent by the Father. It was in Him, before the
foundation of the world, that the Father chose us and predestined us to become
adopted sons, for in Him it pleased the Father to re-establish all things. To
carry out the will of the Father, Christ inaugurated the Kingdom of heaven on
earth and revealed to us the mystery of that kingdom. By His obedience He
brought about redemption. The Church, or, in other words, the kingdom of Christ
now present in mystery, grows visibly through the power of God in the world.
This inauguration and this growth are both symbolized by the blood and water
which flowed from the open side of a crucified Jesus, and are foretold in the
words of the Lord referring to His death on the Cross: "And I, if I be lifted up
from the earth, will draw all things to myself".
All of us are called to this union with Christ,
who is the light of the world, from whom we go forth, through whom we live, and
toward whom our whole life strains.
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