After the Apostle Paul spends some time explaining the individual items of the armor of God, he concludes saying that after we’ve put on the armor and taken up the shield and the sword, we must be “…praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.” (Ephesians 6:18). James Boice puts it this way, “…you and I can be clothed in God’s armor—having the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, our feet shod with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit—and yet fail to triumph because we do not call upon God.”

Prayer is often perceived as a secondary effort, something the cheerleaders do while the real warriors are in the midst of battle. This is a grave strategic misconception. Prayer, in fact, is one of the most potent offensive strategies of a Christian Warrior. Boice shares an illustrative anecdote: “A significant military disaster of the early Middle Ages was the defeat of the knights of Charlemagne in the approach to a narrow defile in the Pyrenees. It is recounted in the Song of Roland. What makes the story so poignant is that the defeat was avoidable. Roland, the commander of Charlemagne’s rear guard, could have summoned help from the main body of the army simply by sounding his great horn Oliphant. But he chose not to. Pride restrained him. Because he failed to invoke his secret resource, Roland’s troops were slaughtered. Similarly, many Christians can attribute the secret of a defeated life to a lack of prayer.”

There is an intimate connection between the Armor of God and prayer. Many Christians grew up singing the old hymns of the faith, and one of them is “Stand up, Stand up for Jesus.” You’ve probably sung it many times. The first Stanza goes like this:

Stand up, stand up for Jesus, ye soldiers of the cross;
Lift high His royal banner, it must not suffer loss.
From victory unto victory His army shall He lead,
Till every foe is vanquished, and Christ is Lord indeed.

A later Stanza and one that addresses this final exhortation about the role of prayer in our daily battles with the powers of darkness says this:

Stand up, stand up for Jesus, stand in His strength alone;
The arm of flesh will fail you, ye dare not trust your own.
Put on the Gospel armor, each piece put on with prayer;
Where duty calls or danger, be never wanting there.