Spirit Prayer

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. (Romans 8:26-27)

When will we lay aside the childish doctrine that the believer in Christ is stranded here on earth while God is millions of miles away, sitting aloof upon His throne and granting crumbs in answer to prayers for loaves of bread? When will we take Jesus at His word that the Spirit of God is with us and in us? When will we believe His promise that we will do what He has been doing, and greater things, because He has gone to the Father’s side and has sent His Holy Spirit to dwell within us? Those who are conformed to the image of Christ must live in the revelation and realization that through His Spirit God dwells within us to accomplish His work in this earth, carrying on the very ministry that Jesus Christ performed as He walked the hills and valleys of Israel.

As we learn to rely on the power, insight, knowledge and instruction of the Holy Spirit of God within each of us we will find that it is a much wiser and better way to live. We will find that one word from God can change a life; one idea from God can change a nation. The key to successful Christian living is facing the fact that our physical eyes can only see one part of the complete picture, and allowing the eternal eyes of God to give us the information we need to make a good decision. It is absolutely true that God works on a “need-to-know” basis, and many things of the Kingdom we do not need to know right now, but He will give us all information that we do need to minister and pray successfully in our time. This information is given to us through the Spirit of God; the Spirit knows the heart and mind of God and He knows our hearts as well.

As we pray, we must learn to pray in concert with the Holy Spirit. We must allow Him to bring to mind those for whom we should pray. We must allow Him to show us how to pray and what petitions to bring to the Father in the name of Jesus. It is possible that we may not have the words to express these petitions, and so we must allow the Holy Spirit to give word and voice to our petitions. We may find ourselves praying in the Spirit with groans that words cannot express (Romans 8:26). This is entirely scriptural. Paul wrote in Ephesians 6:18 that we should “pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.” We must learn to rely on the Holy Spirit to enable our prayers. As we do, we will become confident that our prayers will be answered because we know that the Spirit prays in unity with the will of the Father. The exercise of praying in the Spirit stimulates our minds and spirits to also come into line with God’s will, which is when we begin to manifest His image in our lives. We find that we listen less and less to the wisdom of man, and much more to the wisdom of God, because we find that God’s wisdom is real. Man’s wisdom is at best superficial and certainly artificial in comparison to the wisdom of God. Paul states in 1 Corinthians 15-16:

The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord
so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

We indeed have been given the mind of Christ through the person of the Holy Spirit. Let us spend our time studying and training in the truth of God, and much less time in the doctrines of the world system. We will find ourselves rapidly conforming to the image of Christ as we soak in His will and His ways.