Christians who aggressively insult the Devil during prayers, with lines like ‘Satan urimbwa’, ‘Devil you are an id*ot’, ‘Devil you are a fool,” should consider going easy on him as God doesn’t entertain such orisons, a Zambian pastor has said.
Evans Manjimela, a resident pastor at Seventh Day Adventist Church University Branch in Lusaka, said while the insults may be directed at God’s nemesis the Devil, He still won’t hear the prayer.
In an interview, the cleric said Christians should not use the skills of Satan to fight him, but they should pray and have faith that the Lord will act on the measure of their faith to deal with him.
Said Pastor Manjimela:
“Insults are part of the devil’s strategies. You can’t use his strategies in order to dislodge him. By insulting, we are just telling the devil that we are some of his agents or cadres that he can readily use because children of God don’t insult. Insulting means you are taking the power in your hands.
To sit down and begin to say the devil is stupid and calling him all sorts of names may not help. If the devil has a mouth, he might be laughing at us right now saying ‘these people also, do they know what they are doing?’ This is because we are using his skills to fight him. Actually his just very excited that he has a good number of converts and some of them are pastors.”
Pastor Manjimela said Satan is a principality and power of darkness, and not a person who will stop what his doing simply because a group of pastors and intercessors have insulted him.
“The bible pictures Satan as the principality and power of darkness. I have heard things like ‘Devil, come out right now!’ As Christians, we must not reach a point where we ourselves begin to feel that we can chase the devil since that may not be a biblical approach to cast out demons.
But we pray and have faith that the Lord will act on the measure of our faith to deal with him. The devil is not a person who will stop what his doing because you have insulted him,” he advised.
The tendency of loudly insulting the Devil using strong words during prayers is quite ubiquitous in most contemporary evangelical churches.
A few years back, the intercessors could only go as far as shouting, “Devil, you are a liar”.
But with passaging time, some intercessors now feel justified to add lines such as ‘Satan you’re a dog’, ‘Devil you are an id*ot’, ‘Devil you are a fool’ to their prayers.
Such practice is, however, contrary to the New Testament as Jesus himself said,
“Do not pray like the heathen who think that the more words they use the more God will hear them”.
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