Can Satan hear your prayers? Can he block or manipulate what you ask God to do? In this episode, we answer one of the most searched questions about spiritual warfare and prayer: Is Satan omniscient—and does he have power over your prayer life? If you’ve ever felt anxiety about praying out loud or wondered whether the enemy can sidetrack your prayers, this biblical teaching will bring clarity and confidence.
Scripture makes clear that only God is all-knowing (1 John 3: 20; Proverbs 15: 3; Isaiah 40: 13–14). Satan is powerful—but limited—and his defeat is certain (Revelation 20: 10; Matthew 25: 41). We explore Ephesians 6 and 2 Corinthians 10 to understand why prayer is spiritual warfare—and how spoken prayer partners you with Christ rather than empowering the enemy.
In this episode:
– Can Satan hear my prayers?
– Can the enemy block or delay God’s answers?
– How does spiritual warfare actually work?
– Should Christians fear praying out loud?
If you want to pray with confidence instead of fear, this episode will help you rest in God’s sovereignty.
Watch Now
Transcription
We don’t pray in fear of what Satan is doing to us. We pray in confidence of what Christ has already done to Satan. That’s how we pray. That’s boldness. That’s victory. That’s confidence. That’s biblical prayer. Hello friends, welcome back to Verity Podcast.
I’m Phylicia Masonheimer, the founder of Verity and the founder of Every Woman a Theologian, the ministry that is attached to this podcast. Thank you so much for listening or watching. We’ve been so grateful for your emails and your responses to this series on prayer. All of the topics in this series were submitted by our listeners, by my readers, and we have had the privilege of sharing with you what we’re finding in scripture in answer to your questions. I hope that today’s episode relieves a lot of anxiety and fear for those of you who have questioned whether or not Satan can hear your prayers, or if he can, what he can do with them. This is something that comes up pretty frequently in our email inbox, and it also comes up from kids. Kids ask a lot of questions related to this as well. So please share this episode or what you learned from it with those in your life who need the encouragement that the Lord loves to hear the prayers of his people, and nothing that Satan can do is going to affect that.
Speaking of the email inbox, if you have questions for me or for the Every Woman a Theologian team, you can email us at Phylicia@phyliciamasonheimer.com. We monitor that inbox every single week. Your emails are coming to actual people, and so we will get back to you as soon as we can. All right, we’re going to jump into this particular episode, and I have 3 main points for you that I want to cover in regard to the question, can Satan sidetrack my prayers, or can Satan hear and impact my prayer life? This is something that we will ask, you know, sometimes out of a place of fear, sometimes out of a place of just wanting to know, is there a way to pray that’s more protective or a way to pray that’s more in line with God’s will? Is Satan kind of battling with me when I’m praying? Is he like taking advantage of what I’m praying and then tempting me in specific ways? A lot of this has to do with our demonology, so our understanding of the spiritual realm. And I’m not going to be able to dive super deep into that in this episode, so I want to be sure that I give you some really great resources on that. And one resource that I think would be so helpful for you in understanding the spiritual realm is Dr. Joel Mutamale. He has a brand new book out on this topic.
We’ll link it in the show notes, and I highly recommend reading that to understand more of who Satan is, what he does, how he behaves in the world, and why we can trust that Christ has overcome him. So in this particular episode, I want to look simply at the nature of Satan in regard to prayer and his interactions with it. So, 3 main points. We’re going to start with the first one. Number 1: Satan is not omniscient. Satan is not omniscient. What does omniscient mean? It means all-knowing. It means knowing all the thoughts of our hearts.
We know that Satan was an angel, one of God’s angels. According to scholarly understanding of the text, Satan was one of the lead or high angels in God’s heavenly realm, and he at some point rebelled against God and took one-third of the created angels with him who have now become fallen angels, or what we call demons. So because Satan was a creation of God, not equal with God, in fact, his great sin was that he believed himself equal to God. He raised himself up in pride. We know that he does not possess all of the attributes of God. Now, he’s a very powerful spiritual being, and his name, it’s interesting, the word Satan, actually, the way we use it as a title, is not how it functions in the Hebrew language. The word means accuser, the accuser. It’s usually in the text as the Satan, so the accuser.
So it’s not as if Satan is his actual name. It’s more of a descriptor of what he does and how he acts, and that’s important for this whole conversation around prayer. To remember that his very identity, the way he’s named in the Old Testament, is the accuser. So Satan is a great spiritual being, but we tend to inflate Satan’s power in relation to God’s power. We tend to see God and Satan almost as these equal beings that are like a yin and a yang kind of reality, and that’s not how we see this in scripture. God is the all-powerful one. He is omniscient. He is the one who is omnipotent, all-powerful, all-knowing.
He is the ultimate, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. Now Satan definitely has power, and he definitely has demonic fallen angels working for him. We see this, we’ll look at a couple verses about this, um, in a little bit. But we need to start right out with acknowledging that Satan’s not omniscient and he’s not omnipotent. He’s not all-knowing and he’s not all-powerful. He is not equal to God. And this is important because when we’re praying to the all-knowing, all-powerful God, Satan is not, you know, trying, possessing the power to derail what God is working in the world. God has said throughout Scripture what his plan is, what he’s going to do.
He predicted it in the Old Testament when he was looking towards Christ, and now here in the church age, he has predicted that he’s going to bring all things to reconciliation and to justice, and that Satan will be bound, and that there will be a judgment on him, and that is coming. So Satan still has an impact on this world, is still at work in this world, but he’s not equal to God. He’s not omniscient or omnipotent. Let’s look at a couple of passages that talk about God’s power. 1 John 3:20 says, “For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.” So here we see that God is greater than our own feelings, our own emotions. So this verse tells us that when our heart condemns us, when Satan accuses us, that God is greater than that condemnation, greater than that accusation. He knows everything. And this is a comfort because this means that God knows all of the things Satan wants to accuse us of, all of the things Satan wants to condemn us for.
He knows everything. And so no amount of condemnation or accusation should be able to derail our prayers because God is greater than that. He’s more powerful than that. He knows all of it. Proverbs 15:3 says, “The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good.” So he’s fully aware of everything that’s happening, evil and good. And evil is existing and happening because of the free will of man. Man’s will was freed by God to choose righteousness or to choose sin, and he’s going to hold everyone to that account. But those who are in Christ, those covered by Christ, They are under the righteousness of Christ, and so we don’t have to fear that.
But we also know that God can see everything that is happening and going on. Isaiah 40:13-14 says, “Who has measured the Spirit of the Lord, or what man shows him his counsel? Whom did he consult, and who made him understand? Who taught him the path of justice and taught him knowledge and showed him the way of understanding?” These are rhetorical questions. Nobody taught God justice and knowledge in the way of understanding. He is the ultimate wisdom, the ultimate knowledge. He is the Word. He is the Logos. He is the one who is before, above all things. So here we’re seeing Isaiah say God knows everything.
He is the one who knows everything. Now, according to scripture, if we were to look up all the verses about Satan. I’m not going to read through them all in this episode, but if you were to go scriptures about Satan and pull it up on openbible.com or something, it would say Satan is a liar, he’s a murderer, he disguises himself, he’s a deceiver, he’s scheming, he has authorities and powers, but he is not omniscient. He does not know everything. He is not equal to God. He is a creation of God who rebelled. And this is just so important when it comes to your prayer life, because if you come to your prayer life thinking that Satan is equal to God, he has as much power as God, he is omniscient and omnipotent like God, then what we have there is, is, yeah, a recipe for a lot of fear in your prayers, because there’s this underlying sense in prayer that God is not good for that battle, that you can’t trust God to overcome Satan. And that is exactly what Jesus did on the cross.
He dealt Satan his death knell. Now, there’s still a battle being fought, but it’s been predicted and promised. Like, his time is coming. It’s ticking for Satan, and he knows that. So number one, Satan is not omniscient. Number 2, Satan is powerful, but that power is limited. Satan is powerful, but that power is limited. Revelation 20:10 says— this is talking about the end of all things for the world and for Satan— that the devil who had deceived them, so the, the world, was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
So this is what’s coming for Satan, for all who follow, who are partnered with him, follow him. Now, there are different views on the theology of hell, and that’s not the focus of this episode. Some people believe that this particular lake of fire is going to just completely burn up Satan and the false prophet and annihilate them completely, and that is what hell is. Others believe that it’s an eternal conscious torment for forever. There’s different views on that, but what we do know is he is consumed by fire. He will have no more power. So his power that he has right now is limited. Matthew 25:41, Jesus speaking, says that in the end he will say to those on his left, those who have rebelled and partnered with Satan, depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
So the entire biblical concept of hell, again, that’s not the focus of this episode, but it’s important to know that it was created for the devil and his angels, or it exists for the devil and his angels. That is who it is for. It was never intended to be for God’s, God’s image bearers, God’s children. Only those who choose to reject Christ and by rejecting Christ are choosing self-worship, which is satanic worship, they are choosing to be separated from God eternally. It was made for Satan. So Satan is powerful, but that power is limited. It’s for a temporary period of time, and that time is running out. And we can know that the power that he’s exercising is one, it’s always based on deceit, manipulation, scheming.
It’s always a knockoff of God’s goodness. It’s never original. Satan can’t create. He can’t create anything new, so he has to copy, he has to dilute, he has to deceive. And this power, yes, it does have influence in this world, but for those of us who are in Christ, it does not have the influence that it would. Because Christ’s death on the cross, his blood covering us, protects us against the schemes of the enemy. So when you’re praying, it’s not like, oh, I’m just shooting up these prayers to God and then the devil can just kind of like intercept them and just like take them out, and now it’s not going to work. He shot that one down.
I’ve got to go and try again because that last prayer didn’t make it to the Lord. No, that’s not how this works. We know that the Lord is hearing our prayers, that prayer is a spiritual thing, is a spiritual reality, and it impacts the real world. And yes, it’s spiritual warfare. So there are elements of this that are difficult and are hard, but the idea that Satan’s power is greater than God’s or equal to God’s and that he can somehow manipulate us if he hears our prayers or sees our written prayers, which we’ll talk about in a second, that’s not something to fear. His power is limited. Number 3, prayer is spiritual war. It is the best way to fight the enemy.
Ephesians 6 tells us, “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil.” in the heavenly places. This is such a full verse. We’re not wrestling against people with different political opinions. We’re not wrestling against the entities of, of nations, like these physical nations. We’re not wrestling against always our own bad habits. A lot of times this is a spiritual thing. We’re not wrestling against flesh and blood. We’re wrestling against rulers, authorities, cosmic powers of this present darkness, spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
This is happening. These things exist. And a lot of times when you read this verse, I think people get freaked out. They’re like, oh my goodness, like there’s all of this darkness that’s happening. Yes, there’s this darkness, but there is a greater light. Look more at Christ than you look at the darkness, and you’ll begin to see that the light is so great it’s been driving out the darkness all along. When we are praying, our focus is on the victory of Christ. We pray from the victory of Christ on the cross.
We don’t pray in fear of what Satan is doing to us. We pray in confidence of what Christ has already done to Satan. That’s how we pray. That’s boldness. That’s victory. That’s confidence. That’s biblical prayer. Again, this goes back to giving Satan more power than we’re giving Christ and spending more time focused on Satan and in fear of him than we are focused on Christ.
And I think there are some church traditions that try to scare people into salvation, that talk about Satan as if he has way more power than he does. That freak people out by overemphasizing him. Now, there are other church traditions that underemphasize spiritual warfare, and that is equally bad, but I want to focus on this because I think those of you who are choosing to listen to this episode, watching this episode, you’re the ones who are coming from that very fearful background, and I just want to encourage you that when we read Ephesians 6, the emphasis is not on, ‘Oh wow, there’s 4 different kinds of cosmic powers against me.’ No, it’s on the victory of Christ over those powers. That’s the emphasis in this passage. 2 Corinthians 10 says, ‘For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ. The phrase here, “take every thought captive,” we use that as like thoughts inside our heads, and it can be used that way.
I don’t think that’s necessarily wrong, but in context, it’s more like we take every philosophy, every idea captive to obey Christ, because that’s what he’s talking about here. He’s saying arguments, opinions, and thoughts, ideas. Cultural zeitgeists. That’s what is being talked about in this passage. So what this means is that when we are praying, we are actually participating spiritually with God in destroying the arguments and opinions and philosophies that have raised themselves against him. And sometimes that means we’re believing those philosophies. Maybe the thing that some of you need to pray about after this episode is for God to destroy the philosophy that you’ve accepted that Satan is greater than him. That’s raised itself against the knowledge of God.
Satan is not greater than him. Satan is not able to destroy your prayers. He can distract, he can deceive, he can scheme, but he cannot stand between you and God. That is what Christ came to remedy. There is no one standing in the throne room able to accuse you and condemn you. There is now no condemnation in Christ Jesus. Prayer is partnership with Christ, and when we speak our prayers out loud, we’re inviting God’s movements, and we’re aligning ourselves with God’s heart. Go back to the episode about praying God’s will, and it will show you that when we pray, we’re actively participating with God spiritually and aligning ourselves with what he wants for us and for the world.
And so there’s this idea that’s going around that if you pray out loud, the enemy can take what you’re praying and then use it against you. Like, you prayed that out loud and you said those words. I think it’s oftentimes in more charismatic Pentecostal spaces where there’s like this idea that what you speak has this power to control you, or the enemy can take it and control you. I want to put the kibosh on this. Biblically speaking, yes, words have power. But do you know who has more power because he is the Word? Jesus Christ. When you are praying to Christ, you are partnering with the Spirit of God that is coming from the Spirit of God in you. And nothing that the enemy tries to do with that can circumvent what you have invested with the Lord.
This is not a place for fear. And I believe that what whoever’s teaching this, this idea that if I write down my prayers, the enemy can read them and manipulate them, or if I speak them out loud, the enemy can take them and manipulate them— do you know what? That whole idea, that is a demonic idea. That is a demonic idea. Because why? It keeps you afraid to pray. And that’s what the enemy wants. He doesn’t want you to pray. So the best way for you to fight back against the enemy is to pray out loud, is to write your prayers, is to pray as you’re going about your day, as you’re driving in the car, as you’re making your meals. It is to bring your requests to the Lord.
This is modeled by every single faithful believer in the Old Testament and the New Testament, and it’s modeled by Jesus himself, and he was God incarnate. So if it’s good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for us. And Jesus was in the greatest battle against Satan that has ever been seen since the beginning of the world. So if Jesus battled Satan through prayer, we battle Satan through prayer. He has given us that access and that power. You do not have to fear what Satan can do. If you want a nice summary of these ideas about Satan and his ability to read minds, I always love the website GotQuestions. I think it’s gotquestions.org, and it has a list of great theology answers and verses that can help you out.
But GotQuestions says this about Satan: Can Satan and his demons read our minds? No. 1 Kings 8:39 says that God alone knows every human heart. There is no one else who has that ability. God knows what we will say before we can say it while the thought is still formulating. Psalm 139:4. Jesus being incarnate, God incarnate, exhibited the divine quality of knowing men’s thoughts, and he knew what was in each person. John 2:25, also Matthew 9:4 and John 6:64. Repeatedly in the Gospels, Jesus is able to read people’s thoughts and read people’s minds.
That is what God can do. Satan cannot do that. He’s not reading your thoughts. He can watch behavior patterns. He can tempt. He can suggest. He also knows human nature. So if he knows that it’s easy to distract you with your phone, to keep you from praying, or to just throw in these random thoughts to try to tempt you in a certain way, certainly he will try that.
But the more, more power you give him, the more, the more you think about what Satan can do to you, And the less you think about what Christ has empowered you to do, the less effective you are and the less you pray. So my encouragement to you is to remember that no matter what Satan’s power looks like, his power is secondary and subservient to the power of Christ. And when it comes to your prayer life, Never let someone scare you out of praying. That is a demonic tactic. If there is a person who is telling you, don’t pray this way because Satan could use it, plug your ears and say la la la, because that is not going to lead you towards a thriving, free, fearless walk with God. Your prayer life with the Lord is spiritual war. And the truth is, as we pray, we’re formed in prayer. When we are— when we don’t pray because we’re trying to just get it right, we actually don’t grow in prayer.
So my encouragement is to just pray. Bring it to the Lord. And we have a mini-series of this podcast if you go back. I don’t remember exactly what episodes because I I can’t keep track of them, but if you go back, there’s a mini-series, 5 episodes on adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication, the ACTS model of prayer, and it walks through those types of prayer. I’m going to also be sharing about these in our prayer course, which is launching March 12th. It’s one of our mini courses that we offer through Every Woman a Theologian in our whole Every Woman a Theologian spring shop. Again, all launching March 12th. We, I’m going to talk about that.
I’m going to talk about these types of prayer. And as you cultivate these different ways to pray, you’re going to be shocked at how it forms you as a Christian, forms you in prayer. You don’t have to get to this point where you’re like, okay, I’m spiritual enough to pray. I know the right words. I have it all together. I know the right things to do. You simply pray. Don’t let the enemy or other people deceive you into thinking that you need to say the right things to keep Satan away from your prayers., or that he’s reading your mind and intercepting or somehow affecting your prayer life.
You pray with confidence that you can approach the throne of grace and receive mercy and help in your time of need. That is the beauty of walking with Jesus Christ. Thank you as always for listening to Verity Podcast and for following this series. If you have a question that you would like us to talk about in this series, please email phylicia@phyliciamasontheimer.com. Be sure to mark your calendars for March 12th, the launch of the Every Woman a Theologian Spring Shop. We have some amazing new items coming, new non-toxic candles. Our candles now have specific QR-coded playlists, worship playlists that come with them. We have a gorgeous tea towel in our hospitality section.
We have a whole bunch of brand new resources, including a guide to the Psalms, a guide to praying scripture, a sermon notes workbook for kids, and so much more. I hope you’ll check it out when that launches on March 12th, and I’ll see you next time on Verity Podcast.