I don’t know about you, but I have never really felt like I was much of a prayer warrior. I should be, particularly as a member of the military who should understand the need to ask for resources to fight battles, and as someone who has deployed – prayer being an essential connection and help to my wife and family when I am away. I would call myself more of a prayer firefighter – when there was a fire I would reach for some prayer and try and put the fire out with it. Not really what God had in mind for a healthy prayer life. I was using prayer only as a reactive weapon rather than realizing that it was even more effective as a preemptive weapon. What surprised me was that the tool I most needed to start praying better was right in front of me.

For thousands of years, this psalm has been an inspiration, comfort, and promise for warriors in harm’s way. It is amazing to read the ancient descriptions of warfare described by the psalmist, and compare it to what we see in the global war on terror today. Insurgency, snipers, suicide bombers, IEDs, environmental terrorism—they seem to fit into the words “fowler’s snare”, “deadly pestilence”, “terror of night”, “arrow that flies by day”, “pestilence that stalks in the darkness”, “plague that destroys at midday.” What does God have to say in Psalm 91 that can calm our fears and help us to face the challenges?