Principles of Prayer

But that’s us. Of course, you’re included in that. But it’s a bigger picture. We need to understand that part of the body of Christ, function, is praying for each other. And this, of course, is the epistle in which there is so much important instruction about the life of the body of Christ in chapter 4. When your physical body is hurt, when your physical body is ill, all the other parts of the body come together, don’t they? To compensate for that, to defend you, to fight for you, to heal, to restore you.

This is how it is in the body of Christ. When one member has a need, when one member has a struggle, or when other members have a struggle, we come alongside and we minister healing and mercy and grace and restoration to each other. That’s a whole subject that we could and probably should address together. But the idea here is to be consumed with praying for others, for others. Not just our own concerns, not being selfish about ourselves. It’s so hard to get beyond us. Praying always for all saints. Now, in the midst of all of this, there is one other statement that we need to consider.

All of this occurs in the Spirit. All of this occurs in the Spirit. All the variety of prayer, all the times of prayer, all of the things that cause us to pray and persevere and pray in prayer, and all the saints for whom we pray, all our praying needs to be in the Spirit, in the Spirit. And by the way, this is a very, very common New Testament principle. Jude 20, but you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit. If you want to grow and be strong and be triumphant, you need to pray in the Holy Spirit.

All prayer must be in the Spirit. What does that mean? Well, for years, Charismatics and Pentecostals have told us, it means speaking in tongues, doesn’t mention that at all. That is never a biblical description of praying in the Spirit. What it means is to pray in harmony with the Holy Spirit. Pray consistently with the mind and will of the Spirit. And a clear understanding of that is granted to us in the eighth chapter of Romans, if you’ll look at it for a moment. Romans chapter 8 and verse 26, the Spirit helps our weakness.

We don’t know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. That is just one of the most encouraging verses in all the Bible. Here we are, we’re believers, he’s talking about us. He’s saying we need help because we don’t even know what to pray for. We don’t know how to pray. There are things that we can’t anticipate. There are things that are too complicated for us to know which direction to direct our prayers. We don’t always know what to pray for or how to pray.

So the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. Some people think that means speaking in tongues. No, it’s not us speaking gibberish, it’s the Holy Spirit praying for us with a kind of groaning that can’t be audibleised. And verse 27 says, he who searches the hearts, that’s God, knows what the mind of the Spirit is. Would you believe this, that the Spirit knows how to pray for you? Yes, omniscient. That the Father knows what you need, that the Spirit prays in perfect accord with the will of the Father.

Verse 27, he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. So when you’re praying in the Spirit, it is simply praying consistently with the mind of the Spirit and the will of God. We don’t always know what that is, but we know a lot about what that is, because God has disclosed his will in Scripture. Praying in the Spirit simply means praying in perfect harmony and perfect accord with the mind of the Spirit of God and the will of God. It’s a magnificent concept. It has nothing to do with speaking in tongues.

It has nothing to do with some ecstatic language. It has nothing to do with some kind of gibberish that can’t be discerned. It is the Holy Spirit who prays for us in perfect harmony with the will of the Father, and we need to make sure we line up with our prayers consistent with the Spirit. And I think it would be a stretch to demand from God that he heal us or make us rich. That might not be the will of God, and therefore wouldn’t be the will of the Holy Spirit either. So we need to pray for things we know God wills, our virtue, our holiness, our strength, our spiritual maturity, our usefulness, our service, a deepening of our love for Christ.

Those are the things the Spirit prays for, that God agrees with, and our prayers need to be consistent with that. Zechariah 1210 calls the Holy Spirit, I love this, the Spirit of Supplication. One of the overlooked ministries of the Holy Spirit is that He is the One who prays for us. You say, I thought Christ did that in His High Priestly work. Yes, He’s at the right hand of the Father praying for us as our great High Priest. The Holy Spirit is inside of us, praying for us from here. And the One who searches the hearts, who is God, knows what is the mind of the Spirit because He always prays according to the will of God, and therefore, whatever it is that the Spirit prays for, God gives.

So learn to line up your prayers, get past the trivial, past the mundane, past the superficial, and learn to line up your prayers with what you know to be the will of God and the desire of the Holy Spirit. So you’re praying, for example, for the things that are manifestly evident when you walk in the Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control. Instead of praying for some material thing, pray that God would grant you love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control. Pray that you would walk in the Spirit and not fulfill the lusts of the flesh rather than walking in the flesh and doing the deeds of the flesh.

It is even true that Galatians 4 gives us a further insight into this ministry of the Holy Spirit. This is so wonderful. Because you are sons, verse 6, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts. And what’s he saying? Crying Abba, Father. That’s an amazing statement. Because you are a son, God has placed His Holy Spirit in you, and from within you the Spirit on your behalf is crying Abba, Father. In other words, the Spirit is interpreting what it means to be an intimate child of God for you. He’s pleading for those things that belong to you because God is your Papa.

This is Spirit-driven, Spirit-directed prayer. Paul closes this letter with a practical opportunity to put these principles to work, and I’m going to borrow it. Verse 19, here’s his application. Pray on my behalf. As long as we’re talking about prayer, how about me? What did he want? Prosperity? No. Earthly success? No. Results? No. All he wanted was pray on my behalf that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth to make known with boldness the mystery of the Gospel. That’s as far as he could go. He couldn’t determine the results.

He couldn’t determine the effect. Just pray. Just pray that when I open my mouth, the truth of God and the glory of the Gospel will come out boldly. That’s as far as any preacher-teacher can go, because this, he says, is why I live. It is for the mystery of the Gospel that I am an ambassador in chains, that in proclaiming it, I may speak boldly as I ought to speak. Pray for my utterance. Pray for my boldness, because the price of me doing this is very high. It’s why I’m in prison.

Bottom line, pray for the preacher-teacher, so when you start applying Ephesians this week, you can start with me. Pray for the preacher-teacher that the Lord would give him utterance and boldness and courage to speak the glorious Gospel for which we all are ambassadors, and he was an ambassador in chains. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of Principles of Prayer. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com.

Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way. [tr:trw].