Let me begin with a few questions -
· How many believe that prayer is important?
· But - Have you ever struggled to pray (but have struggled with guilt, busyness or weariness)?
· Have you ever struggled to stay focused while praying?
· Have you ever been confused about what to pray for … or how to pray about it?
Last question:
Is God really waiting on us to word the prayer right before He’ll consider it?
Listen carefully -
· There is an answer for our prayer problems!
· There is a way for us to defeat the struggles we so often have in prayer … and experience a break through that will revolutionize our prayer life and prayer effectiveness.
Here’s the answer to all of your prayer problems.
· It is the person of the Holy Spirit … the Holy Spirit wants to become our personal prayer partner! He, the Holy Spirit, wants to give you your PRAYER LANGUAGE.
· The Holy Spirit not only has the solutions to our prayer struggles … He is literally the spirit of prayer … a prayer partner who makes connecting with God possible and powerful!
The prayer partnering relationship we are meant to have with the Holy Spirit is made clear in three powerful passages of scripture:
Jude 20 - "But you, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit."
Ephesians 6:18 -"And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints."
Romans 8:26,27 - "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 with groans that words cannot express. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will."
In these three passages of scripture we can see that there are specific ways in which the Holy Spirit wants to partner with us in prayer!
I want us to focus on 3 very practical ways the Holy Spirit partners with us in prayer-
1. The Holy Spirit stirs us to pray!
This might surprise some of you, but prayer doesn’t start with us knocking on God’s door … prayer starts with God knocking on our door!
Revelation 3:20 — "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me."
Key — Revelation 3:20 isn’t about evangelism … it’s about fellowship with God … it was Christ’s call to a group of Christians (in Laodecia) who had grown luke warm and had lost their relationship with Jesus Christ!
A. The Holy Spirit stirs us to a prayer of fellowship.
Where does Christ desire to live?
Where is Christ’s home?
The answer — my heart
A “Fellowshipping Prayer” has to do with spending time in the presence of Christ.
B. The Holy Spirit stirs us to a fighting prayer!
How many know that our greatest battles aren’t the more obvious needs such as physical, financial or friends and family relationships?
Our greatest battles area all spiritual!
Ephesians 6:12 — "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."
Prayer is an offensive weapon in the armory of God … that’s why Paul wrote in
2 Corinthians 10:4 — "The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds." (NIV)
There are times when the Holy Spirit wants to stirs us to stand in the gap for someone or something … to battle in prayer … to fight or wrestle for God’s will to be done!
Not only does the Holy Spirit stir us to pray, but —
2. The Holy Spirit strengthens us to pray!
The Holy Spirit doesn’t just stir us to fellowship with God and to fight for the will of God … and then leave us on our own to make things happen … because we can’t!
That’s why Romans 8:26 says —"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 with groans that words cannot express."
There are 3 vital ways in which the Holy Spirit strengthens us to pray:
A. The Holy Spirit Strengthens us by — energizing Us!
Romans 8:11 — "And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you."
This isn’t simply a promise of life after we die … it’s the promise of overcoming life while we live!
Let me ask you a question —
How is it that Jesus could pray through the night … while his disciples couldn’t pray for an hour?
Think about that before you answer.
Here is a hint. It is exactly the same reason we have a hard time making any commitment to prayer.
Jesus gives us the answer when he said —
"The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak."
On their own … the disciples didn’t have the energy, physically or mentally to — stay in the battle — neither do we!
There is an energizing that comes from the Holy Spirit … an energizing that gives us the strength we need to stand and to pray. Each of us must have and use our PRAYER LANGUAGE.
Paul writes in 2 Corinthians. 4:16: "…Outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day!"
B. The Holy Spirit Strengthens us by — enlightening Us!
Not only do we struggle physically and emotionally … we often struggle mentally to know —
· What to pray for … and …
· How to pray about it!
Paul writes in Romans 8:26 —"We do not know what we ought to pray for…"
If we’ll pray about what to pray for … the Holy Spirit will burden us with what God has for us!
A pastor once told his congregation —
· "Many of our prayer requests are for the sick rather than for the lost. We more interested in keeping the saints out of heaven than we are the sinners out of hell."
Here is the Key — The Holy Spirit wants to shape our prayers … and give us the strategy for our prayers! We must be enlightened to know how to pray.
C. The Holy Spirit strengthens us by — engaging us!
Don’t miss the first part of Romans 8:26 —"…the Spirit helps us in our weaknesses…"
The Greek word translated ’helps’ is a really interesting word:
"The Greek word ’help’ is preceded by a double prefix. The first part of the prefix means together with. The other part means instead of. That’s very interesting. The Holy Spirit helps together with us and the Holy Spirit does it instead of us. The Holy Spirit offers a — together with and an instead of kind of help.
The Holy Spirit of God does the work, but He will not do it apart from us. The Holy Spirit wants to speak, but He wants to speak through our lips.
There’s a third partnering principle we need to understand —
3. The Holy Spirit — Stands With us in Prayer!
He, the Holy Spirit expresses our prayers. Groaning’s which cannot be uttered means sighs that are, too deep for words. A form of wordless praying. Who is doing the groaning? Is it the Holy Spirit or is it you? It is both. He is groaning instead of us.
He is groaning together with us. It is that partnership when God the Holy Spirit in the human spirit enables you to pray in your PRAYER LANGUAGE.
This word groaning is the word that is used of the pains at childbirth. Look if you will at verse twenty-two of this same chapter. And we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain and together until now.
Just as with the woman who travails in pain giving a birth to a child, the groans, the sighs, the pain, that’s the idea of the Holy Spirit of God in us making that deep intercession. Those things that you feel so deeply about.
Those hurts, those wounds, those sorrows, those pleas, those sighs, and you say, "God, I don’t know how to say it. Spirit of the Living God, help me to pray." It is then that the Holy Spirit will begin to move in your heart, and will takes those expressible, unutterable, non-articulate desires and carry them to the throne of God.
He, the Holy Spirit, prays for us, instead of us, together with us, just as a woman in travail has pain. She’s looking past that pain to that childbirth. It is pain that is transfigured by hope. It is pain that is transfigured by expectation. It is the prayer of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, the prayer of agony, transfixed, transposed, by hope.
“Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” (Acts 19:2)
“How long have known Christ as your Lord and Savior?”
“How long does it take for a person to become righteous in the sight of God?”
“Wouldn’t you want to experience the Power of the Holy Spirit like so many other people have experienced?”
“Is there any reason why you should wait any longer to be filled with the Holy Spirit, with evidence of a prayer language?”
“The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the LORD our God will call.”—Acts 2:39
There is no record of believers tarrying or seeking for the gift of the Holy Spirit after the initial outpouring at Pentecost (when the original waiting took place). People who are under the impression that waiting is still a part of seeking need to be instructed on how to release their faith to simply accept what God offers. The Comforter has come.
Two-part prayer:
(1) Thank God for covering sin with the blood, making every believer a part of God’s family. (2) Command every bit of doubt and fear be removed and in its place faith be granted to every person around the altar.
“I now receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. I am going to launch out now in a new tongue. I don’t know what I am going to say; but as I begin to speak, I trust God enough to give me the utterance.”
