Dear friends,
I have prepared several follow up messages regarding my recent Passover message that share things I doubt if you have ever seen before, but I shall have to share them later. I was showering when the Lord spoke to me and told me to wait. He told me to share something about prayer, because someone needs to hear it. We all need help in that area, but this is a special situation. Here goes
What is prayer?
Understandably there can be many answers that often depends on the individual’s background and training. As an Anglican, prayer life consisted mostly on what was written in the book of common prayer, usually at mass on Sundays. My personal, private prayer life was almost non existent and whenever I did pray, it was usually selfish.
I am not being unkind. That was me then, but many other people do not really know how to pray and that is scriptural. John the baptist had to teach his own disciples how to pray and the Lord’s disciples became aware of it. They asked the Lord to teach them. His reply is now known as “the Lord’s prayer”, but it is recited everywhere by all kinds of people, many of whom are not in a relationship with God. That is not prayer! It is a pattern only.
A quick and simple answer to my question can simply be, “Talking to God”, but there is more to it than that.
Why do we pray?
Some people “pray“ of course because it is part of their denominational traditions, such as at a special time during a service but prayer is talking to God about something.
The problem, if we can call it a problem is knowing two things:
(a) does God hear us? and (b) will He answer our prayer?
Let us see:
I have written this to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know you have eternal life. And we are confident that he hears us whenever we ask for anything that pleases him. And since we know he hears us when we make our requests, we also know that he will give us what we ask for. 1 John 5:13-15 emphasis mine
I must explain here that “silent prayer” is not really praying. Scriptures reveal the principle of speech. God spoke when He created everything. We bless or curse by the tongue and death and life is in the power of the tongue and as we shall see later, prayer that “really works” is vocal.
James talks about our speech as seen in James chapter three and immediately talks about drawing close to God as a prelude to his discourse on prayer.
...ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, James 4:1-3
That word amiss is intriguing. The origin is uncertain, but it equates sickness with sin and to a lesser extent to plagues and calamities. It also speaks about obstacles to sailors and merchants. Another meaning refers to false teachers and as I often refer to truth, we must ask in prayer for the revealing of truth if we have a real desire to avoid deception. Many of our prayers are for money; for an open door to “do something for God”; for our church meeting and the like.
We should do that of course, but if God does not want us to hold that meeting and we ask Him to bless it, we are asking amiss.
Before we moved to South Australia at the Lord’s bidding, I held fourth watch prayer meetings (starting at 4AM) on most days and we attended all night prayer meetings on one Friday each month and we thought we were “spiritual”, but all that happened was that we got tired. We prayed for our meetings, for God to send people to our churches, for finances to come in to pay for the church building, for money to pay for the things we were doing and that is “OK”, but...
God had not asked us all to do those things, so we were praying amiss. One day the Lord told us to stop it! When we did, we suddenly felt a massive release in our spirits and the Lord started to reveal what He really wanted.
I realized that we really knew little about prayer. My prayer now is more along the lines of asking God, “What do you want? What would you like me to do today?”
Rather than deciding to do something for God and then asking Him to bless it, our approach now is to determine the mind and will of God and then start praying about that.
An Exercise:
Our real problem is knowing what to say in prayer and when to pray. We know from 1 Thessalonians 5:17 that we can pray without ceasing, so that latter part is answered, but how? I shall talk of that later.
Paul immediately added that we should give thanks in everything (not for everything). God desires a thankful heart. He wants us to praise Him. Paul said that this is the will of God for us in Christ Jesus. He also gave us an insight into effective prayer that I shall elaborate on shortly.
He told us not quench the Spirit. This is capitalized, so he is referring to the Holy spirit. He also said not to despise prophesyings and to prove all things; holding fast that which is good (1 Thessalonians 5:19-21). Paul wound this up by saying: The one who calls you by name is trustworthy and will thoroughly complete his work in you. 1 Thessalonians 5:24
We can trust God! If we really trust God we can determine what He wants and agree with Him, praying in accord with that.
Picture yourself in a situation that requires prayer. Let us assume someone has asked you to visit their mother in hospital who is seriously ill. She loves the Lord. She is elderly. She has false teeth. She cannot see clearly. She is nearly deaf. She has had a full life and faithfully served the Lord for many years but is now in her twilight years. Do we pray for her healing, when she is 90 and her body is worn out? Do we ask God to restore her when she wants to go home to be with the Lord? What do you say?
Most of us of us would say.... well; ah; hmmm; oh, arrrgh; um and the like and that’s perfectly natural, so how do we pray?
Our natural capacities often just do not know what to do and what to say. The intellect has no idea of what is happening in the spirit realm and it usually gets in the way anyhow. When we do not have a clue about anything, that’s when we need real help and such help comes from the Holy Spirit. All we can do is come out with those words I mentioned before and just sigh and groan. This leads us to Romans chapter eight to a passage that seems familiar to many Christians, but it is not what they often think, because in the original language it does not mean that. Paul spoke of how all of creation is groaning and sighing. It is an expression of deep distress in the spirit. It is often a sign of penitence. Please remember those two points as we shall come back to them later.
There is a reference to the sighing of the children of Israel under Egyptian bondage. Paul declares that all creation sighs together as it awaits regeneration, longing for the day when the glory of the children of God will be fully manifested. It is this groaning that some people associate with prayer, believing that the Holy Spirit groans—but that is incorrect. He does not groan. He has no need to groan. He has no deep distress in the spirit and there certainly is no need for penitence on His part. It has to mean something else.
And in the same way the Spirit does help in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray... Romans 8:26
The KJV uses the word Likewise. The Scriptures version and other versions says in the same way. The complete Jewish Bible says Similarly. Paul had just said that we are groaning, not the Holy Spirit in verse 23. We are saved, but are waiting for everything to come together, to be fulfilled, to finally be out of here and home with the Lord and we are pregnant with this hope and expectation. Our birth pangs are causing us to groan and we just don’t know what to do about many things, especially with regard to praying. In the original language this is described as our infirmity in the singular, but translators put it into the plural. The Greek word is Asthenia and is it used to describe an ailment; a deficiency; a lack or an infirmity. It is a specific infirmity that we all have!
If you look closely at the text, there is a colon immediately after the word infirmity. A colon introduces an explanatory clause. A colon explains what was just stated and links two passages together. In this instance, it means that it is going to explain what that deficiency is—we do not know how we should pray.
Paul then said that we do not know how to pray as we ought and the Greek word for ought is complex. It refers to weakness, but it can also be translated to mean as is necessary. The text could then read that we know not what we should pray for as is necessary. Again, there is another colon and it is after the word ought so there is an explanation and that explanation means that when we do not know how to pray as is necessary, someone else does and that person is the Holy Spirit.
You may be praying about your future but you do not know what your future holds. You do not know what God’s perfect will is for your life and do not know where to begin. Should you take this job or that Job? Do you buy this house or that house? Do you move to this city or to that city? Do you marry this person? Do you...?
Perhaps our prayer life is like that. We really do not know what we should pray for or how to pray, even if we did know it. Herein is a problem. We do not always know God’s will, so how can we pray according to His will because of our Asthenia?
The Holy Spirit knows that and comes to our assistance.
Another question:
Do you believe that God knows everything? We talk about His attributes of omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence and if we really believe, it is feasible to accept the fact that He knows everything about you. Jesus said that the Father knows you so much and cares so much for you that he numbers the hairs on your head and that is a powerful statement. It means that if one fell out, God knows which hair it is.
Isaiah revealed that God is never taken by surprise when we suddenly need His help and start praying.
Before they pray, I will answer; While they are still speaking, I will respond. Isaiah 65:24
If that is the case, why do we fret, get anxious, struggle and start groaning in prayer? Perhaps we do not really believe that God hears us and answers us so we feel that the more effort we put into it, the louder we pray, the more we pace the floor, beg and plead and make our many “faith confessions” that we somehow get His attention and force His hand?
When we think of the sighing of Christians in prayer, this refers to the times when we are unable to pray, when because of our infirmity we do not know what we ought to pray for. I’ve heard people say that they groan and travail in prayer, but on reflection this indicates to me that they are not allowing the Holy Spirit to do His work and that they are trying to carry the load and the burden ourselves—but we are not the burden bearers. To be sure, there are times when we feel the pressure, but that is not what it means. Jesus said that His yoke is easy and the burden is light in Matthew 11:28-30.
I am convinced that when we ascertain the mind and will of God and pray “that”, the answer has already been prepared in advance. There may be times of course when we have to wait for its arrival, because of God’s timetable, but He did say that He is already working on it before we utter a word. That’s mind boggling.
The only person who knows the mind and will of God perfectly is the Holy Spirit! And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will. Romans 8:27
The doctrine of the trinity reveals that the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are in total unity and function as one! The Holy Spirit never gets out of line. He never usurps the Father’s will, so when He “does the praying for us” (and this is the key to prayer), it is always in line with the mind and will of God. I’m emphasizing truths here, because many Christians do not understand that, or do not believe it.
When the Holy Spirit acts in our place and intercedes for us, He is performing the function of a Paraclete as we see in John 14:16, 26. A Paraclete is someone who represents us and pleads our case as in a court of law. He is our counselor and our lawyer who presents the evidence on our behalf before the righteous judge. We don’t know how to go about it, but He does. We have done the groaning and the sighing and do not know what to do next, so the best thing to do is to stand aside and let Him do His job. That’s His specialty.
How?
How does all this work? To provide the answer we need to turn to 1 Corinthians chapters twelve to fourteen and, yes, I am going to refer to speaking in tongues. This is something that the devil has fought tooth and nail against it because he knows that these Gifts of the Spirit equip believers to be really effective in the Kingdom. I shall not go into detail here, but he absolutely hates speaking in tongues and has caused much harm in the church as a result where believers do not properly and accurately divide the word of truth. They don’t know their bibles! We have been subjected to excess and error, abuse and misuse and total disregard in many ways as a result.
In the Greek, the word for tongue is glossa from which we get the word glossolalia. The latter part lalia refers to actual intelligent speech, so it is not gibberish and unintelligent babbling as opponents say. Paul clearly stated that these words can be any human language that the speaker did not learn, or words that angels speak. People who deny this valid and necessary experience often say that this glossa is for the purpose of preaching. For example a person preaching to a Hindu, needs a supernatural ability to preach in Hindu, or preaching to a Russian, God enables the speaker to preach in Russian. Whilst this can and has happened before, this is not the purpose.
It is also said that the people in the upper room on the day of Pentecost learned to speak in the various languages that they heard, but by their own admission in Acts 2, they said that they were Galileans. They were ordinary people. Peter was a fisherman. They spoke in the recognized common language of the day, such as Greek or Aramaic. The educated people lived in Jerusalem. They and the scoffers admitted that the disciples were generally unlearned and poorly educated people, so they could not have preached that way.
The Holy Spirit enabled each person to speak in a language with which they were totally unfamiliar. Peter did not preach until after those scoffers came, so they heard him and the other 119, doing something else—speaking in tongues and speaking to those people in their own languages. They had come to Jerusalem as pilgrims from other countries for the Jewish feast day. When Paul was explaining such things, he said: someone speaking in a tongue is not speaking to people but to God, because no one can understand, since he is uttering mysteries in the power of the Spirit. 1 Corinthians 14:2
When we pray, we are talking to God—and we don’t understand what we are saying!
When we pray in the Spirit, in tongues, we are praying to God—and we don’t understand what we are saying! Perhaps this is one reason why the devil hates it and twists it, causing people to believe that such things have passed away or uses those other foolish arguments against it and the errors and misuse we have seen. He knows that we are speaking directly to God and cannot do a thing about it!
When we reach that point when our own faculties do not suffice and our Asthenia is at work, we need help. Paul stated that we can pray with our own natural understanding AND we can pray in the Spirit. For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful. What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also 1 Corinthians 14:14-15 emphasis mine
Notice that we do the speaking. I believe that this is the primary purpose or perhaps the most important reason for speaking in tongues. There is a corporate setting of course, but if Jesus told us to go into our prayer closet to pray, that is where it really takes place.
At this point, I must talk about the Armour of God, as this is something of vital important and is something often misunderstood.
God’s Armour:
Finally, grow powerful in union with the Lord, in union with his mighty strength! Use all the armor and weaponry that God provides, so that you will be able to stand against the deceptive tactics of the Adversary. For we are not struggling against human beings, but against the rulers, authorities and cosmic powers governing this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realm.
So take up every piece of war equipment God provides; so that when the evil day comes, you will be able to resist; and when the battle is won, you will still be standing.
Therefore, stand! Have the belt of truth buckled around your waist, put on righteousness for a breastplate, and wear on your feet the readiness that comes from the Good News of shalom. Always carry the shield of trust, with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the Evil One. And take the helmet of deliverance; along with the sword given by the Spirit, that is, the Word of God; as you pray at all times, with all kinds of prayers and requests, in the Spirit, vigilantly and persistently, for all God’s people. Ephesians 6:10-18
This armour is never to be taken off. We are told to use it, so it is not an option! We are told to use it all, not part thereof. We are told that after a battle, we shall be the last one standing! We are not told to hide behind it, but to advance and extinguish any flaming arrows shot at us. We are told to wield the sword that the Spirit provides and that this sword is the word of God. We are told to pray at all times—in the Spirit. Note the capitalization each time when the Spirit is mentioned. That’s the Holy Spirit.
We can now relate this to the passage in Romans. When we do not know how we should pray as is necessary, the Holy Spirit comes to our rescue and because He knows what God the Father wants, He prays accordingly and it is always in line with the mind and will of the Father. Whilst we use our own vocal chords, He then meets the criteria James spoke of as I mentioned before. ...he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. Romans 8:27-28
Some people say all things work together for good, even if they are suffering, in distress, being persecuted and so on, but that is not really true. In the context of prayer, when the Holy Spirit intercedes on our behalf, what He has said works for that good.
My dear friend, the Lord asked me to write this in lieu of my follow up messages on Easter and Passover. He told me that someone needed this, but did not reveal who. If you have reached a dead end and are experiencing that infirmity of which I spoke, you have the full resources of heaven behind you and may need to release them—by prayer; not struggling with natural human deficiency, intellect and working hard getting nowhere. Ask the Lord to reveal the truth of what I have said. If you do not speak in God’s language, ask Him about it. Paul said to covet earnestly the best gifts, so this is perfectly scriptural and see what happens. If you speak in tongues already, then do that!
Speak it out and keep speaking until the flow ceases. There is a “flow”, so let it flow and when it ceases you stop! The holy Spirit has finished praying. If needs be, ask the Lord to give you the “interpretation” of that prayer and this is what Paul spoke of.
My prayer for you has already gone up!
Robert