How To Pray In The Spirit

And oh, I like that term, “Abba, Father.” I wish I had time just to talk about that. It’s an Aramaic term—it’s not a Greek term—it’s a dominionative term. It literally means daddy, father—daddy, father. Have you ever thought of the great God who scooped out the oceans, and heaped up the mountains, and flung out the sun, the moon and the stars as being your daddy? Oh, we thought of Him as the great eternal God, the everlasting Father. But God has sent forth His Spirit into our hearts crying, Abba, Father. Oh, the tender devotion and emotion of the Holy Spirit of God. He is the one who does the praying—if we’ll let Him—if we’ll turn Him loose in our hearts. And, may I tell you that the problem of indifference to prayer may never be settled until you begin pray in the Spirit. It is the Spirit in you that will give you that to desire to pray that your old carnal nature does not have. So, enemy number one is handled by the Holy Spirit. That enemy I call indifference.

b. Ignorance

Now, there’s another enemy and that’s the enemy that we call ignorance, ignorance. Look again please, if you will, in Romans chapter 8 and notice verse 26: “Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought…” (Romans 8:26). We don’t know. Have you ever gone to the place of prayer and gotten discouraged because you didn’t know what to pray for? I do. Sometimes when I go to pray there are so many of you to pray for, and there are so many things to pray for, and so many opportunities to pray that sometimes it gets discouraging. I know I can’t get it all done. I know I can’t pray for everything, and sometimes if I would let that type of thinking get me down I’d say, “If I can’t pray for everything, why pray for anything?” Who knows what to pray for? There is so much to pray for, now isn’t there? We don’t know what to pray for.

All right, you see, if I tried to pray for every possibility of prayer, my prayer would cease to be the kind of a force that it ought to be. And, no longer would my prayer be a river that is channeled, my prayer would become just like a dismal swamp. If my prayer is to be effective, it just be selective.

Now, how am I going to know for whom to pray? How, on Wednesday night when you get that hospital list there—and of course, theoretically, you could pray for all of those persons—but is there someone that the Holy Spirit especially wants you to intercede for? And, in this church family, and in the leadership, and in our city, and in our nation, and in our world—what about all of the missionaries, what about all of the countries of the world, what about all of the opportunities? No one human being can pray about all of those things at one time, but the Holy Spirit of God knows what you ought to pray for. “…we know not what we should pray for as we ought…” (Romans 8:26)—and the best Christian, in my estimation who ever lived, the Apostle Paul said that, so that makes me feel in pretty good company when I don’t know what I ought to pray for. He didn’t know what he ought to pray for. And, not only do we know not what we ought to pray for, but we don’t know how to pray for what we ought to pray for when we find out what we ought to pray for.