Dear Anglican friends,
I’ve just come off a zoom school with our inaugural SOMA School of Prayer cohort. I’ve been working with author and screenwriter Susie Wright.
Susie took us into a place of prayer advocated by Tyler Staton in Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools. The idea is that instead of praying in the ‘active voice’ (I do), or the passive voice (I am done to), you try and find the middle voice instead (I join in doing), where you join in praying what you quietly discern God is asking you to pray.
There were two questions she introduced to shift focus from ‘slot machine’ prayers (gimme, gimme, gimme) or ‘whatever you want God’ prayers (I dunno), to a more attentive way of being (here I am Lord). We were asked to hold quiet together on zoom for 4 minutes and simply ask:
- What do you want me to know, Lord?
- What do you want me to do, Lord?
After waiting and listening our prayers were transformed. The previous week we had tried something similar. The whole course is based on Romans 8:28-29, and week one just covered v28a: ‘We do not know what to pray’. This week focused on ‘the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness’ – hence the ‘middle voice’ questions. When looking at ‘we don’t know what to pray’ we focused on asking the Holy Spirit to help us by ‘praying in us, with us, for us and through us’ [try it before you next pray], as well as the Jesus Prayer,1 and the excellent book Susie has revised and edited A Diary of Private Prayer by John Baillie (1 million copies in print!). It’s quite a revelation when you first pause before praying and acknowledge the bible truth that we really don’t know what to pray, and all we can bring is our weakness, asking the Holy Spirit to help us.
Anyway, I digress, although hopefully that has whetted your appetite for the next SOMA School (of prophecy, spiritual warfare or leadership). Because it reminded me of a time recently where I was speaking to a meeting in a church that clearly needed some deliverance ministry. As I was preparing to step up and speak I could sense a demonic presence with its hands in its ears, tongue out making bedlam to confuse and stop anyone hearing. I knew I was due to come back a week later with a little team of deliverance advisors, because the incumbent (vicar), new in post, had sensed the same sort of thing. It was almost impossible to get a hearing in that environment. But I thought it was a good chance to get people thinking in the ‘middle voice’ to try and work out what the battle was that they were in in the churches they had come from. So I asked them if they could answer two questions:
- What would the ‘angel of your church look like.’ (an old idea from Walter Wink, where you try to prayerfully imagine how a spiritual being would look, behave and locate themself if they personified what the church was spiritually like).
- How would Satan try to attack your church if he felt the need to undermine whatever you were doing for the Kingdom?
The results in that deanery were fascinating. I wonder what you might discern ‘in the middle voice’ about the place and community in which God has put you?
The team went in to pray the following week. Some mature and alert intercessors sensed all sorts of interesting and sad things. We prayed for victory over the darkness in the way we have been trained by the Lord to do so, and today the vicar reported back that something had changed after our prayers and they had had a very good Christingle service two days later.
That leads me back to our walk through Revelation to Pergamum, the third in the trio of great cities in Asia, briefly the regional frontrunner, loyal to Rome, with a history leading back four centuries to Alexander the Great through a family dynasty derived from Alexander’s general Lysimachus. A place that the enigmatic verse 13 describes as ‘where Satan has his throne’, and then again, ’where Satan lives.’
These are the words of him who has the sharp, double-edged sword.I know where you live – where Satan has his throne. Yet you remain true to my name. You did not renounce your faith in me, not even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was put to death in your city – where Satan lives.
Nevertheless, I have a few things against you: there are some among you who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin so that they ate food sacrificed to idols and committed sexual immorality. Likewise, you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans.Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. [Rev 2: 12-16].
To help us understand this reference to Satan we take a little detour to the 39 articles:
Even after the 1975 declaration of assent, all clergy and bishops are required to affirm their loyalty to the historic faith as set out in the 39 articles, the Scriptures and the Creeds. While the Doctrinal Commission insisted that it should not tie down the person using it to acceptance of every one of the Articles, they nevertheless also affirmed that Articles as a norm within Anglican theology and so all licensed clergy are required to ‘affirm your loyalty to this inheritance of faith as your inspiration and guidance under God in bringing the grace and truth of Christ to this generation.’
Article XVII speaks clearly of the Devil. It talks of him thrusting ‘carnal persons’ either into ‘desperation, or into wretchlessness of most unclean living, no less perilous than desperation.’ As the devil does not feature in the Creeds (which are after all affirmations of what we believe about God, not about fallen angels), the other historic formulary that we assent to as Anglicans is the Scripture. And unless you’ve swallowed the Barthian coolaid it is clear that both the Devil who tempted Jesus, inspired Judas to betray him, was warned about by Jesus as wanting to ‘steal, kill and destroy’ believers, and the legion of demons and unclean spirits Jesus spends a substantial amount of time and energy dealing with, are not ‘nothingness’, but in fact, very real.
CS Lewis has more magnanimous way of spotlighting those who diverge from the Articles and Scripture on this matter:
“No reference to the Devil or devils is included in any Christian Creeds, and it is quite possible to be a Christian without believing in them. I do believe such beings exist, but that is my own affair. Supposing there to be such beings, the degree to which humans were conscious of their presence would presumably vary very much. I mean, the more a man was in the Devil’s power, the less he would be aware of it, on the principle that a man is still fairly sober as long as he knows he’s drunk. It is the people who are fully awake and trying hard to be good who would be most aware of the Devil.”2
Later today I am meeting with a team member who has written a book of his 35 years experience as a deliverance advisor. Sadly he has stage four cancer, and this book will perhaps have to be just one part of his great legacy. But it details authorised and well recorded, gentle, patient, humble ministry that brings freedom, light and hope from the powers of darkness. By contrast two people this week have told me about ‘training’ days in different dioceses that begin with a worldview that there is no actual spiritual problem to deal with.
Imagine you lived in Pergamum, where Jesus himself says, ‘Satan has his throne’. Imagine you went to the institutional church of that ancient city and said, ‘I think we have a problem here.’ And imagine if the response was, ‘well some people may experience something that they feel may be something like Satan, but evil isn’t a thing really. It is just an absence of good, if that. So why not get in a circle, sing kumbya or get on with something important, like administration. And if you are really bothered about it, go and see a doctor and he’ll give you some pills to make it go away. But don’t worry. It’s not real, really.’
Friends, that is close to what is being taught in some of our training. How can ignoring spiritual problems Jesus himself clearly taught and eqipped us how to deal with, not be a recipe for continued bondage of the church?
The authorities don’t want to talk about it, lest they get sued for malpractice. The secularists look on it as a redundant and dangerous viewpoint (but they think the same about belief in God). The bishops and clergy who are ‘less aware’ of it, may be indifferent to or against putting their head above a parapet to deal with it. The lawyers remember historic malpractice from 40+ years ago and from it make bad law. The materialists medicate.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Medication is the answer for chemical imbalances. Maverick ministry should be reigned in and not encouraged. Safeguarding must be in place. Malpractice must be learnt from and avoided. No-one should use spiritual power (real or perceived) to manipulate or abuse others. Good practice is vital.
But what if what is needed is a ‘sharp double-edged sword’? A ‘sharp double-edge sword’ to deal with spiritual danger. Danger which in Pergamum could lead either to martyrdom or being enticed to ‘sacrifices to idols or sexual immorality.’ Jesus with a sharp double-edged sword in his mouth is exactly how the Lamb is recorded as turning up in Pergamum.
Taking the image of the Imperial power (the sword), he proclaims through this twice repeated image (and that repetition it unique to the letter to Pergamum), that He, Jesus, is mightier than the Emperor and his forces. Mightier than Satan. Whatever the object or place in Pergamum that might have represented Satan’s seat to the church, whatever might have been a dangerous stronghold over the spiritual atmosphere of the place, Jesus was, and is and ever will be stronger. Jesus ‘The Lamb’ WIns. And he has a sharp sword in his mouth.
Dear Anglican friends, what if we are in a fight for our spiritual lives, and we have barely glimpsed what that fight is against? What if all the bitterness, infighting, cruelty, and self-replicating wretchedness is because we are losing that battle. When we take up arms against each other because we do not notice that behind every trauma-driven tweet, bitter blog, and sour speech is another dynamic at work. ‘An enemy did this.’ [Mt 13:28]. Paul told the Ephesian church (perhaps battle-scared himself from that prison), that we do not fight and ‘struggle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.’ [Eph 6:12].
If he was right, we are poorly prepared for it.
If he was wrong… can you really explain this mess we are in as a world, a nation, a church, without reference to evil?
A few years ago I had to review a book titled Bound to Sin. In it Alastair McFayden tries to argue that the sheer evil in the world is inexplicable without some malevolent force driving it along. From that he argues that as that evil has not entirely prevailed, there must be a good God as well, counteracting such evil.
It’s hard to sell as an argument, but he has a point. The world is in a spiritual mess, requiring spiritual resources to rescue it. It’s looking for a Lamb who Wins, with a sharp, double-edged sword in his mouth. Conquering the conquerors. Our hero.
Wouldn’t it be a shame if we substituted the sword with a baby’s rattle and dressed him up nicely in a bow for a nativity scene?
But I digress…. and I return to where we started, with the middle voice prayer.
I stop. I wait. I ask the Lord:
‘What do you want me to know?’
…and then…
‘What do you want me to do?’
I pause… and as I do so I remember Charles Wesley’s great hymn ‘Soldiers of Christ Arise, and put your armour on’
with its second verse:
Stand then in His great might,
with all His strength endued,
and take, to aid you in the fight,
the panoply of God.
From strength to strength go on,
wrestle and fight and pray;
tread all the pow’rs of darkness down
and win the well-fought day.
Dear friends, Jesus says ‘I know where you live’ to us too. He knows the battles we face and the ones still to come. He is more than equal to them all. He is triumphant whatever the immediate circumstances. So let us put on ‘panoply of God’, our armour. Skill up. Fear, not. And stand firm.
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- ‘Jesus Christ. Son of God. Have mercy on me. A sinner.’ Prayed rhythmically and repetitively over an extended time, this is a deep prayer of the church. See Barrington-Ward, Simon The Jesus Prayer, BRF, 1996 for more details. ↩︎
- C.S. Lewis. God in the Dock, “Answers to Questions on Christianity,” William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1970, 56-57. ↩︎
Read More in this Series
The Lamb Wins Whole Series Catch Up : Introduction: Chp 1: Hope is Here | Chp 2: First, Love: Ephesus | Chp 3: Fear Not: Smyrna | Chp 4: I Know: Pergamum | Chp 5: Tolerate This: Thyatira | Chp 6: Wake Up: Sardis | Chp 7: Hold On: Philadelphia
Your name is like honey 