When you are under spiritual attack, you need to pray. The Bible tells us in the book of James to pray whenever we are in trouble.
Praying when under spiritual attack is challenging especially because the attack may be targeting your prayer life.
When the enemy attacks, he begins by destroying your prayer life. That way, he knows that you will have a difficult time dealing with the attack.
For this reason, the first thing you need to do when you are under spiritual attack is to ask the people you fellowship with to help you pray.
It is only through the prayers of others that you will have a fighting chance.
When you are stable enough to pray, you can use the following guidelines to overcome the spiritual attack.
How to pray when under spiritual attack
Repent of any sins
Sin separates you from God and gives the devil the opportunity to attack you. When you get spiritual attacks, it always means there is sin within you.
As I mentioned before, the first thing you need to do is ask fellow believers to pray for you. Their prayers should give you enough cover for you to search yourself and repent of your sins.
Usually, the devil entices us to sin and when we sin, we are separated from God. In that moment, the devil attacks knowing that God will not come to rescue us because we have been separated from Him because of our sin.
In Biblical terms, it is said ‘strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter’. An attack targets your most crucial connection; your connection with God. Once that connection is broken, you have little defense.
When it comes to repenting your sins to avert a spiritual attack, there are obvious sins and concealed sins.
Obvious sins are those you are aware of. These are easy to repent for. Most of these sins are habitual sins; you know them when you commit them.
The challenging ones are concealed sins. These sins are often unnoticed. It takes a high level of spiritual understanding to know this type of sins.
The enemy loves using them because they are hard to detect.
These sins involve breaking God’s law at a high level but physically they don’t look wrong at all. Take the example of King Saul in the Bible; he offered a sacrifice to God instead of waiting for Samuel. To an average person, that is not a big deal and in the worst-case scenario, the punishment should be trivial.
But in the eyes of God, it was a grave error that warranted taking away kingship from the household of King Saul.
Such sins are the ones that open us up to spiritual attacks.
Therefore, immediately go into repentance when you start getting spiritual attacks. If you don’t know what wrong you have done, ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you the cause of the attack.
Renounce Evil Covenants
When the devil wants to attack you, he entices you into sin and deceives you to make a covenant with him. When you repent of your sin, you will be forgiven and your relationship with God will be restored.
However, the covenants you made with the devil will remain intact. It is those covenants that the devil will use to continue attacking you even after you have repented.
Most of these covenants are verbal. When the devil deceives you, he entices you to speak these evil covenants into life. Remember that our words are law to us just as God’s word is law to Him.
The evil words we utter under the deception of the evil one become covenants that open a door for the devil to attack us.
For this reason, you need to renounce such covenants after you have repented of your sins to make sure the devil has no right to attack you.
To renounce the covenants, simply ask God to break the power of every covenant you have made by the power in the blood of Jesus.
The blood of Jesus has power to break every covenant. The covenant that Jesus made on the cross is stronger than any covenant that can ever be made.
Once you ask God to break the evil covenants, you will be set free, and the devil will have no right to attack you.
Draw close to God
There is no secure place for you than at the feet of Jesus. Despite not having any sin or evil covenant, the devil can still attack you when you are not in the presence of God.
To ensure you are safe from any attack of the devil, draw close to God and dwell there. To draw close to God, all you need to do is soak yourself in prayer and worship.
When your lifestyle is built on prayer and worship, you will always dwell close to God and no attack will ever come your way.
Some believers find themselves in a cycle of praying endlessly against spiritual attacks. These believers make the mistake of not drawing close to God.
Provided you are away from God, the devil will attack. You may pray and overcome that attack but soon another will come.
In the end, you waste a lot of time praying against spiritual attacks instead of spending time worshipping and praying to God.
Therefore, once you have recovered from the attack, close the loophole of the enemy once and for all by drawing close to God and staying there.
Sample Prayer against Spiritual Attack
Heavenly Father, you are my Lord and my God. Forgive me for the sin I have committed before you. My sin is before me and it has separated me from you. I ask you Lord to wash me in the precious blood of your son Jesus. I renounce every evil covenant I have made with my lips and every spiritual attack resulting from it, I ask you Lord to end it.
Help me Lord to dwell close to you all my days that the evil one may not touch me. I desire your peaceful presence. Keep the evil one away from me. I trust you Lord.
Thank you for the love you have for me and thank you for saving me from the jaws of death.
Amen!