7. We have surveyed the Christian soldier with his harness on. From head to foot he is clothed in arms supernatural. No weapon of defence or offence is lacking, that the spiritual combat needs. Nothing seems to be wanting: yet everything is wanting, if this be all. Our text began: "Be strong in the Lord." It is _prayer_ that links the believer with the strength of God.
What avails Michael's sword, if the hand that holds it is slack and listless? what the panoply of God, if behind it beats a craven heart? He is but a soldier in semblance who wears arms without the courage and the strength to use them. The life that is to animate that armed figure, to beat with high resolve beneath the corslet, to nerve the arm as it lifts the strong shield and plies the sharp sword, to set the swift feet moving on their gospel errands, to weld the Church together into one army of the living God, comes from the inspiration of God's Spirit received in answer to believing prayer. So the apostle adds: "With all prayer and supplication praying at every time in the Spirit."
There is here no needless repetition. "Prayer" is the universal word for reverent address to God; and "supplication" the entreaty for such help as "on every occasion"--at each turn of the battle, in each emergency of life--we find ourselves to need. And Christian prayer is always "in the Spirit,"--being offered in the grace and power of the Holy Spirit, who is the element of the believer's life in Christ, who helps our infirmities and, virtually, intercedes for us (Rom. viii. 26, 27). When the apostle continues, "_watching_ [or _keeping awake_] thereunto," he reminds us, as perhaps he was thinking himself, of our Lord's warning to the disciples sleeping in Gethsemane: "Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation." The "perseverance" he requires in this wakeful attention to prayer, is the resolute persistence of the suppliant, who will neither be daunted by opposition nor wearied by delay.[175]
The word "supplication" is resumed at the end of verse 18, in order to enlist the prayers of the readers for the service of the Church at large: "with wakeful heed thereto, in all persistence and _supplication for all the saints_." Prayer for ourselves must broaden out into a catholic intercession for all the servants of our Master, for all the children of the household of faith. By the bands of prayer we are knit together,--a vast multitude of saints throughout the earth, unknown by face or name to our fellows, but one in the love of Christ and in our heavenly calling, and all engaged in the same perilous conflict.
"All the saints," St Paul said (i. 15), were interested in the faith of the Asian believers; they were called "with all the saints" to share in the comprehension of the immense designs of God's kingdom (iii. 18). The dangers and temptations of the Church are equally far-reaching; they have a common origin and character in all Christian communities. Let our prayers, at least, be catholic. At the throne of grace, let us forget our sectarian divisions. Having access in one Spirit to the Father, let us realize in His presence our communion with all His children.