WATCHING AND PRAYING BY THE SPIRIT

To watch and pray is to keep alert and then pray, being mindful of the alert result. Watching relates to sight; so its determined under the action of light. When you watch, you observe, you notice, and you discern. In life, watching is possibly done with the eyes of your body (corporeal sight) and the eyes of your spirit (inner man). 'Watching' comes before 'praying' in order or in position.

Reference: Matthew 26:41 New American Standard Bible (NASB) 'Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.'

Jesus said to keep watching and praying. He never said, pray before you watch. The order shows that you cannot accomplish much with a prayer that is not motivated by vision. In the above verse, Jesus went ahead to say, 'that you may not enter into temptation'. That means the reason why people fall into temptation is that they ignore the order. When you watch before praying, it means that your vision has motivated your prayer. Effective prayer must be based on what you see, and we can watch and see through our spirit because the spirit is willing.They pray before watching, instead of 'watch and pray'.

If we can't see in the spirit, our prayer can become unlimited and unyielding because effective prayer must be in line with your vision - what you watched, observed or experienced in the spirit. Some people's prayer lives are weak because of their visionless prayer. Prayer must be based on what we see as we watch. If we walk in the spirit, when we open the eyes of our spirit widely, what we behold should lead us to prayer.

Since watching has to do with sight, as a born again Christian, you have two areas of sight - your spiritual sight and your natural sight. Your spiritual sight is the eyes of your heart (see Ephesians 1:18 NIV). Matthew 6:22-23 also talked about the eye as being the lamp of the body. It reads, 'if your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!' The phrase in the verse, 'the light within you' shows that Jesus acknowledged that there are diverse lights. This implies that we have to be careful about the light we embrace or walk in. In God's sight, its not everything called light is truly light. Some people watch and pray but their watch is observed under the wrong light. light denotes varieties of revelation.

For instance, if all you cultivate around you is consciousness of how powerful the enemy is and how his evil works are intimidating, that light will motivate your prayer life. When the eye in the body is not healthy, its not functioning under the true light or revelation; so you pray only with the wrong perspective. This is why many who function with the consciousness of the enemy, and always discuss the works of the devils, promote the demonic presence around them. So our Lord Jesus calls that light within them, a great darkness. Even though its light, its the wrong light because its a great darkness. But to them, that revelation is light, its never darkness.

If all you are always conscious of, is demonic presence, your prayer life will be focused on fighting them. When you can't create and nurture an awareness of the presence of God or angelic assistance around you, your utterances will keep acknowledging evil presence and fighting the already defeated devil and his cohorts. Stop fighting the wrong fight. In Christ, we've been called to fight the good fight of faith (see 1 Timothy 6:12). Its a good fight because, instead of fighting the devil, we practically exercise our victory over the devil by demonstrating our faith in the finished works of Christ. We don't fight the devil; we live above him and we precisely take authority over all his works and put him where he belongs - under our feet. You can watch and locate the enemy’s activity and terminate it, but not to focus on fighting him and magnifying his presence round you.

God wants you to improve your watch (vision) because if you can't see properly, you can't pray the right way. Just like Elisha did, you must train your spirit to see what others are not seeing but it can only be possible under the right light. The servant of Elisha was seeing the situation wrongly because his vision was influenced by the wrong light. Elisha watched and saw safety and dominion (see 2 king 6:14-18). So Elisha prayed the right prayer. If the servant prayed, his prayer would be based on fighting the enemy surrounding them, but for Elisha, he was absolutely in charge of the situation because the eyes of his body was healthy and his whole body was full of light. In other words, he watched in the spirit and so, his prayer was based on the consciousness of divine response and assistance around him.

Scripture Reading - Mark 13:33; Luke 21:36; 1 Corinthians 16:13;1 Thessalonians 5:6-8.

Exuberant Declaration: I watch regularly in light of the right revelation because the eyes of my heart are flooded with true light. Thus, I pray with the accurate knowledge, discernment, judgement, perception and awareness, thereby making effective changes in my world, where and when necessary. Glory to God.