Day Three: What does prayer in the Spirit look like?
Scripture: Mark 7:24-30
Principle: God rewards persistence.
The prayers of saints who pray in the Spirit are unique but have similar attributes. Like a forest of evergreens, not a single one is identical to another but they all have roots, a trunk and needles. Prayers offered to God in the Spirit have similar attributes.
The first quality is truth. “To pray in truth, is this—it is not to use the empty expression of prayer, but to mean what we say;”9 Jesus gave us the Spirit and calls him the Spirit of truth. It is he who leads us to know the truth and unless we pray in truth we are not praying in the Spirit.
The next quality is fervency or intensity. “The Holy Spirit comes as a fire, to dwell in us; … If our religion does not set us on fire, it is because we have frozen hearts. God dwells in a flame; the Holy Ghost descends in fire. To be absorbed in God’s will, to be so greatly earnest about doing it that our whole being takes fire, is the qualifying condition of the man who would engage in effectual prayer.”10 Praying in the Spirit means there is an intense desire to see the will of God accomplished. So much so that you pray for nothing else and these prayers are surely the prayers that God answers.
Persistence is also an attribute of praying in the Spirit. Scripture is filled with examples of people persevering in prayer. Jacob wrestled with God all night. Moses prayed 40 days and 40 nights pleading with God not to destroy Israel. In Mark chapter 7, a mother whose daughter was possessed by a demon won her daughter’s freedom with her persistent request of Jesus. This type of persistence is humanly impossible.
“But when the Holy Ghost fills a man and leads him into prayer, he gathers force as he proceeds, and grows more fervent even when God delays to answer. The longer the gate is closed the more vehemently does he use the knocker, till he thunders in his prayer; and the longer the Angel lingers the more resolved is he that if he grasps him with a death-grip he will never let him go without the blessing.”11
Application: Evaluate your prayer life. Do your prayers have the qualities of someone who prays in the spirit?
9 C. H. Spurgeon, “Praying in the Holy Ghost,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, vol. 12 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1866), 620.
10 Edward M. Bounds, The Necessity of Prayer (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1999)
11 Spurgeon, 621.