Praying for God’s glory means letting His sovereign wisdom decide what to do with your prayers and your life. It means keeping our focus on Him and on His glory over our own. “Prayer is not a convenient device for imposing our will upon God, or for bending his will to ours, but the prescribed way of subordinating our will to his.” When we can’t pray and mean “Your will be done,” we are essentially telling God “My will be done.”

Discerning our motives in prayer isn’t always cut-and-dried. As justified sinners, we should always be suspicious of our sinful hearts. “The temptation to misuse prayer is native to us and comes . . . automatically to every believer,” writes Ole Hallesby.1
Our goal behind evaluating our motives should also be to have a pure heart before God—not necessarily to have prayers answered according to our liking.
The following diagnostic questions overlap a bit, because it’s easier to expose dirty motives by shining light on them from several angles. If you can’t answer the following questions in the affirmative, then your prayers are out of bounds and it’s time to check your heart.

Am I Praying for God’s Glory?

God calls us to do all things for His glory (see 1 Cor. 10:31)— including prayer. This is why Jesus teaches us that “whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (John 14:13). When we pray for our own glory, we clash with God’s purposes and exalt ourselves over Him. And our sinful motives often disguise themselves so well that we think we’re seeking God’s glory when we aren’t.
W. Bingham Hunter describes one subtle way of secretly seeking your own glory as “praying with faith in your faith.”2 This type of prayer twists the good promise of answered prayer into a formula. If I pray with enough faith, I will get what I want! And this not only doesn’t glorify God but also doesn’t often work. Hunter explains how praying this way leads to frustration:
When the answer is not forthcoming, we are left only with questions: Did I have enough faith? Did my friends who prayed with me have enough faith? Should I have fasted or perhaps claimed a different promise? Attention is centered on prayer methods and techniques for generating faith. Thoughts center on us. Then they begin to shift with measurable envy toward those who apparently had enough faith: Why him or her and not me? The progression may end in speculations about the reality of God’s love, justice and goodness. The results? We feel alienated from ourselves: we have too little faith. We feel alienated from others: they had enough faith. And we feel alienated from God who set up such a system in the first place. Essentially we are telling God how to glorify himself in our lives . . . and he wouldn’t do it.3
Praying for God’s glory means letting His sovereign wisdom decide what to do with your prayers and your life. It means keeping our focus on Him and on His glory over our own. “Prayer is not a convenient device for imposing our will upon God, or for bending his will to ours, but the prescribed way of subordinating our will to his.”4 When we can’t pray and mean “Your will be done,” we are essentially telling God “My will be done.”
A few questions will help you to evaluate whether you are praying for God’s glory:

Would the desired answer to your prayer cause God’s name to be praised?
Would your desired answer to this prayer bring you closer to God or push you away from Him?
How would your desired answer to this prayer impact others? Would it help you to love them more?
Would Jesus pray this prayer in the same situation?5

Am I Praying in Line with Scripture?

This question provides a helpful litmus test for our motives. If we ever pray for something that’s forbidden in Scripture (and thus outside of God’s will), we cannot expect to receive the answer we’re hoping for—and we likely have an idol in our lives to repent of. R.C. Sproul exposes one particularly heinous way of doing this:
Professing Christians often ask God to bless or sanction their sin. They are even capable of telling their friends they have prayed about a certain matter and God has given them peace despite what they prayed for was contrary to His will. Such prayers are thinly veiled acts of blasphemy, and we add insult to God when we dare to announce that His Spirit has sanctioned our sin by giving us peace in our souls. Such a peace is a carnal peace and has nothing to do with the peace that passes understanding, the peace that the Spirit is pleased to grant to those who love God and love His law.6
Don’t miss Sproul’s last point: peace isn’t from God if it’s a “peace” we’re feeling when our actions are flying in the face of scriptural truth. We should weigh every prayer and every motive against God’s Word.7 When we are clearly at odds with the Word, we need to repent. When we aren’t sure, we need to ask God to reveal sin in us and to consider what negative desires and powerful emotions may be warping our prayers.

Am I Pursuing Humility and Holiness?

After James explains the danger of praying with impure motives, he shares how we can repent of them. He quotes from Proverbs, which says that “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6; cf. Prov. 3:34), and then he presents this litany of commands:
Submit yourselves therefore to God.
Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.
Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
Be wretched and mourn and weep.
Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. (James 4:7–9)
And then he closes with what ties everything he’s been saying all together: “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you” (v. 10). Essentially, James sandwiches commands to repent between two calls to humility.
Being humble before God is a key part of testing our motives, because it (1) recognizes that our motives may be out of whack and (2) acknowledges that God both knows our sinful motives and is able to reveal them to us. If we want to properly discern our motives, we need to pursue humility and holiness, because a life of sin and pride will cloud our spiritual vision and make it difficult for us to discern our true motives.
James commands holiness and reconciliation with God. The “double-minded” person mentioned in James 1:8 is someone who claims to love God but actually loves sin. James says in verses 7 and 8 that a double-minded person is unstable in his ways and “must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord.” Does sin have a grip on your heart? Those who love Jesus keep His commandments (see John 14:15). In humility, repent of any double-mindedness in your life and pursue God as your greatest love. A healthy life of prayer must never be divorced from a faithful life of Christian obedience.
This article is an excerpt from the chapter “I Have Mixed Motives” of Kevin Halloran’s book When Prayer Is a Struggle: A Practical Guide for Overcoming Obstacles in Prayer. Pick up a copy of When Prayer Is a Struggle for more gospel encouragement and practical tools for growing in prayer. Visit www.kevinhalloran.net to learn more about the book or to connect with Kevin. Used with permission.

O. Hallesby, Prayer, trans. Clarence J. Carlsen, updated ed. (Minneapolis: Augs- burg Fortress, 1994), 122.
W. Bingham Hunter, The God Who Hears (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 1986), 161.
Hunter, 161–62.
John R. W. Stott, The Letters of John: An Introduction and Commentary, rev. ed., Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1988), 188.
This last question is a paraphrase of Hunter in The God Who Hears, 198. 76
R.C. Sproul, The Invisible Hand: Do All Things Really Work for Good? (1996; repr., Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2003), 209, quoted in Paul Tautges, Brass Heavens: Reasons for Unanswered Prayer (Adelphi, MD: Cruciform Press, 2013), 27.
It’s also worth mentioning here the utility of regularly praying Scripture, which helps us to keep our hearts and motives tied to the truth of the Word. Doing so is a prayer-filtering mechanism that makes discerning our motives easier and more automatic.

When church discipline is done properly, the holiness and good of the church are promoted. The negative outcomes of discipline are never desired but are a grace from God for the blessing of His church.

When I first started attending a Reformed church, I remember an announcement that was made about a former member who had been excommunicated for the sin of contumacy. I had grown up in a mainline denomination where formal discipline was never spoken of, much less practiced. I was wholly unfamiliar with the process. I had never even heard of the word contumacy. When I looked it up after the service, I learned that contumacy is a stubborn refusal to submit to authority. I knew the elders to be kind, gracious, and faithful men. Even though I didn’t quite understand what was happening, it confirmed to me that this was a church that took seriously the commands of the Bible.
This episode was perhaps my first encounter with negative church discipline, which concerns the correction of church members and the administration of censures. To understand negative church discipline and how it works, we can look at one obligation, two guides, three goals, and four outcomes.
The one obligation of the church toward its members is the command of Jesus to shepherd the sheep. The prophet Ezekiel warned of bad shepherds who cared nothing for the sheep. These bad shepherds abused, neglected, used, and even devoured the sheep (Ezek. 34). By contrast, Jesus proclaimed that He is the Good Shepherd of the sheep. He would love, care for, and protect them. The Good Shepherd would lay down His life for the sheep (John 10). He would be the Good Shepherd pictured in Psalm 23, whose rod and staff would comfort the sheep. The elders of the church are the undershepherds of Christ in how they lead the congregation (1 Peter 5:1–5). This pastoral care and comfort include discipline to keep and guide the sheep.
As Ezekiel warned, shepherds can be harsh, overbearing, and abusive. We can see this in some churches even today. Scripture therefore provides two guidelines to steer church discipline away from abuse. Discipline must be guided by decency and order (1 Cor. 14:40). Formal discipline must follow the process given in Scripture. Matthew 18 gives a decent and orderly process whereby if a brother sins against you, you are to confront him privately. If he does not repent, then you are to take along one or two brothers as witnesses. If he still does not repent, then you are to take it to the church. This is done in a decent and orderly manner by giving the offender an opportunity to fairly state his case before the elders of the church. He ought to have a chance to defend himself against the charges against him. The deliberate nature of the process often takes time. Those in the midst of the process may see that as a problem, but it is a feature of the system, not a bug. We do not want such important decisions rendered hastily. Decency and order require thoughtful, patient, and measured responses. If, however, a person is found to be in sin—and especially if he is unrepentant—he is to be disciplined, possibly to the extent of excommunication.
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The torch now passes to us, the revived company of Christ’s End Times army. Having been lavished with incomparable blessings and equipped with Heaven’s full authority, it is our charge to carry His unstoppable advance into every sphere of society. Through the weapons of the Church, the means of grace, faithful evangelism, and multiplying discipleship, we push forward Christ’s Kingdom invasion into territories still held captive. Brothers and sisters, the war for the world’s soul rages on! Will you take your place among the ranks of this fearless battalion? The Commander calls us to urgent duty—to see every enemy of God rendered helpless at the throne of Christ as the knowledge of His glory overspreads the Earth like waters covering the sea.

Introduction
From the most humble of beginnings, Jesus launched an unstoppable invasion of Satan’s realm that would shake the foundations of the world and wrestle back control from the prince and power of the air. With just twelve unlikely men, this peasant Rabbi from Nazareth set in motion a spiritual tsunami sweeping over Jerusalem, flooding through Judea and Samaria, and eventually inundating the entire Roman empire – toppling history’s greatest superpower from within.
What started as a fringe rabble of outcasts and nobodies exploded into a global force that now totals over 2.5 billion worshipers, with no signs of slowing. This was no accident in human history. This is not the story of a band of losers who bumble along in a world getting rotten until their Savior tractor beams them back home to the mothership. This was always the Creator’s intent – that His image-bearing people would multiply and fill the Earth with true worshipers who willingly obey His reign (Genesis 1:28). Though sin brought devastation and ruin, Jesus, the greater Adam, has restored humanity to her purpose. He has forgiven us of our sins and re-invested us with our original Adamic authority to advance God’s Kingdom to all peoples and places, leading the Church to bring God’s blessings to every family and ethnicity on Earth (Genesis 12:1-3). Just as Jacob prophesied, the nations will one day rally under Judah’s scepter of righteousness, rendering complete allegiance to Shiloh, who is Christ the King (Genesis 49:10). From that tiniest mustard seed, a revolution was unleashed that cannot be stopped until it has brought the entire world under the shade of its branches. This is the kind of unstoppable Kingdom that Jesus is building.
Beyond the book of Genesis, we looked at how the Exodus and the story of Israel prove the doctrine of Postmillennialism. We saw how the era of the kings collapsed in fantastic failure but looked forward to a true and better King who would make good on all of these promises. We saw how God gave the people of Israel Postmillennial anthems to sing in the book of Psalms. And how He gave them postmillennial hopes and promises throughout the prophets. Last week, we examined how the Gospel of Matthew proves a postmillennial eschatology, where Christ’s Kingdom progressively grows and expands, filling the entire Earth before His return. Through Jesus’ parables, teachings, proclamations, and the Lord’s Prayer itself, Matthew paints a stunning portrait of how this Kingdom will take over the world like Georgia Kudzu.
And that is what we are going to be talking about today. We will show how the Kingdom landed on the shores of Earth like the Americans upon the beaches of Normandy. We will show how Jesus eradicated the fiercest enemy of His Kingdom, which is the devil and His demons, along with the unlikely loyalists who aligned themselves with His vision. In conclusion, from the Gospels, we will see how this Kingdom that put down its enemies in the first century will build and grow throughout all centuries until there is nothing left for it to conquer.
Phase 1: The Arrival of the Kingdom
For centuries, the prophets strained to glimpse through the veil, longing for the day when Heaven’s invading force would storm the sin-stained beaches of this embattled world. Isaiah foretold a light shattering the darkness (Isaiah 9:2), a Son given who would bear endless peace upon His shoulders (Isaiah 9:6-7). The Prophet Malachi proclaimed the Lord was coming, but who could endure the day of His arrival (Malachi 3:1-2)?
At last, with the coming of Christ, the longships of God’s Kingdom were sighted on the horizon. As the prophesied Dayspring from on high (Luke 1:78), Jesus marched through the dusty paths of Palestine, sounding the trumpet blasts that the long-awaited invasion was now imminent – “The Kingdom of God is at hand!” (Mark 1:15) John the Baptist’s voice echoed from the wilderness – prepare, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near (Matthew 3:2)!
This was no temporary skirmish but the beginning of an unstoppable, eternal occupation. As the angel decreed, Christ’s Kingdom would know no end, unlike the fragile, fading dynasties of mere earthly kings (Luke 1:33). The joyous shouts of the people greeted the Messiah’s advent into Jerusalem – “Blessed is the coming Kingdom of our father David!” (Mark 11:10) They recognized in this humble rabbi the Conquering King who would reestablish David’s throne forever.
Jesus was the D-Day of the ages, the point-man of Heaven’s liberating army who had burst upon the world’s beaches to re-subjugate the planet to its rightful Ruler. His very presence revealed that the ancient prophecies had found their fulfillment – the Kingdom Moses foretold was no longer a vision but a tangible reality unfolding before their eyes (Luke 10:9). This was no political coup achieved through human strength, but an unstoppable invasion from the realm of untainted holiness and omnipotent authority (John 18:36).
As Christ’s feet hit the embattled shores, every ritual, tradition, and earthly pretension was exposed as a hollow symbol that must now submit before the unveiled reality. He was the true Temple, the sacrifice to end all sacrifices, the Feast of Heaven’s own deliverance. The old order lay obsolete before this invading Sovereign who had come to pitch His beachhead into the human heart and raise His flag of willing allegiance over all people and nations.
This spearheaded an advancing occupation – not to timidly coexist alongside the capitals of sin and death but to utterly displace them. What began as a small force would grow into an ever-increasing onslaught until the entirety of enemy territory was liberated and reclaimed for God’s eternal dominion (Mark 4:30-32). This mustard seed of a regiment would become an overwhelming surge, unfurling its banner of freedom outward until filling the whole Earth.
Satan’s blitzkrieg of deception and oppression had now met its match in the infinite reserves of the invading Kingdom. The beachhead had been secured. The Kingdom had landed on Earth’s bloodied shores. From its foothold in the Galilean hills, this invasion force would now relentlessly push its liberating march into every sphere of human existence until the entire global theater fell in resignation before the undisputed reign of God. The remaining resistance pockets of darkness could either concede and be emancipated into restoration or face the decisive overthrow the prophets foretold. This invading Kingdom would not cease its march until all enemies, foreign and domestic, were expelled and the Earth was filled with the glory of Christ the King.
Phase 2: The Battle Between Heaven and Hell
As Jesus landed upon the shores of this fallen world, being born of a virgin, He was not greeted with celebratory fanfare. In His earliest years, Satan tried to kill him through the mentally depraved puppet king named Herod, and this was just the beginning of the war efforts from hell that would be leveled on Christ. Satan and his demonic forces recognized the dire threat Jesus posed. They knew Jesus had not come to Earth to affirm their right to rule. He had come to dispel the spiritual squatters who had been living in God’s world, ruining His good Earth for far too long, which means His arrival signaled their demise. This is why Satan and the demons come out in a full-on military assault on Jesus all throughout the Gospels. This was their last stand before surrendering the world back into the hands of Christ (Matthew 28:18).
From the wilderness, where the serpent once slithered into the garden and brought deception to the line of men, Satan comes out to meet his Creator in the earliest part of Jesus’ ministry. After baptism and 40 days of fasting, Jesus was in a state of profound physical vulnerability when the enemy struck like the Luftwaffe over Poland. Wielding his age-old weapons of temptation and lies, Satan hurled his fiery darts upon our Lord, hoping to corrupt Him in the same way he had corrupted Adam. Yet, as we know, Christ deflected every assault and succeeded where Adam had failed.
With each repelled advance, the path was cleared for Jesus to launch an overwhelming counteroffensive on the powers of hell. Armed not with swords but with the word of God as His blade, the Lord engaged hellish minions all throughout Judea and Galilee.
Like surgical drone strikes levied against strategic targets, Christ precisely aimed His ministry at the forces of hell to liberate those held captive by unclean spirits. In the Capernaum synagogue, a man possessed by a demon cried out at the sight of Jesus, sensing his doom had arrived. With a single authoritative command from the Lord’s lips, the evil Spirit was silenced and expelled, powerless to disobey. Later in the Gerasene region, Jesus encountered a man invaded by a horde of demonic spirits who called themselves “Legion.” These foul entities pleaded not to be cast into the abyss. Yet with a single word from Christ, they were driven howling from their human host into a herd of pigs that then drowned themselves in the sea.
So thorough was this rout of demonic forces that the war-torn people of Galilee flooded to Jesus, bringing “all who were oppressed by the devil” to be liberated by Him. Like napalm torching an enemy-infested forest, the Lord’s commands incinerated the stranglehold the enemy had on the region, restoring those in captivity to freedom. Even the disciples were trained by Jesus to make war with the devils, exercising them and bringing deliverance to the captives, which became a hallmark sign that Jesus had shared His authority with them.
The final conquest, however, was reserved for Jesus alone. He dealt the crippling blow to Satan’s operations by binding “the strong man” through His sacrificial death. Rising triumphant over sin and death’s tyranny, Christ forever stripped the dark powers of their weapons, parading them as spoils of war in His wake as the conquering King.
The aftermath of this Heaven-sent D-Day left liberated multitudes in its wake, stunned casualties of divine grace, who encountered a love much more potent than any of their chains of oppression. In those days, Jesus launched much more than a few pop shots and guerilla skirmishes, but a full-on invasion. He came to the capital of Satanic oppression, where the enemy had centralized His power, and He threw down their strongholds and stranglehold over the people of God once and for all. That work began in Judah and Galilee; hell’s gates are still falling down as we faithful advance His Kingdom today.
Phase 3: Judgment Poured Out on Wicked Judah
While Jesus was engaged in warfare against the spiritual forces of wickedness, it became increasingly clear that the first-century Jewish people were not allies of God’s Kingdom. At every turn, they opposed Jesus, leading the Savior to expose them bluntly, declaring that they were not true descendants of Abraham but rather children of Satan who loved darkness and whose deeds were evil (John 8:44, John 3:19). This opposition is why Jesus also trained His sights on them in the spiritual battle.
In the incarnation, the long-awaited invasion force of God’s Kingdom was sighted on the horizon, and the powers of hell were not its only target. As the Lord Himself marched through the dusty paths of Palestine, entering town after town like Joshua conquering Canaan, He sounded the trumpet blast that the long-prophesied Kingdom of God had finally arrived, proclaiming, “The Kingdom of God is at hand!” (Mark 1:15). For those willing to repent and turn to Jesus, this was glorious news of liberation. But for those who remained stubbornly opposed to Him and His Kingdom, they would be overwhelmed by the fury of its triumphant advance.
This was not merely a peaceful Kingdom endeavor but the outbreak of a spiritual war. For centuries, Israel had been God’s strategic outpost on Earth, the staging ground where His Kingdom forces could grow strong to eventually push outward in all directions. However, due to repeated disobedience, they allowed foreign oppression and influence to overrun the holy land. By the New Testament era, malign spiritual forces had been welcomed in through disobedience, revealing the destructive spiritual landscape the Jewish leaders had created. Their calling was to be a conduit of God’s blessing to all peoples, yet they had summoned His curses by breaking the covenant with Him.
In their blindness, the Jewish people obstructed and rejected their only hope of rescue, continually working to subvert Jesus’ mission at every turn. As His Kingdom invasion advanced, Jesus encountered the fiercest resistance from His own covenant people. The religious leaders arose as hostile insurgents – a militia in the service of hell itself – implacably opposing the Messiah. Like the Nazis seeking to exterminate God’s purposes in the 20th century, these hardened Jewish sects became entrenched pockets of opposition dedicated to destroying the Deliverer they should have embraced.
Despite witnessing Christ’s miraculous credentials and supernatural wisdom, they stubbornly rejected His rightful authority to rule. Their rejection metastasized into treacherous plots to murder the Prince of Peace Himself.
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