50 Praying in the Spirit - Part 3

 

Copyright © 2023 Michael A. Brown

‘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.  Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains.  Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.’ (Eph. 6:18-20)

‘Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.  And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains.  Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.’ (Col. 4:2-4)

      The apostle Paul was a man of prayer, just as the other apostles certainly were too, and they all understood and knew from experience the central and vital role that prayer plays in the life of any believer.  This is clear from the many references that Paul makes to prayer in his epistles.  He encouraged, exhorted and insisted that young believers everywhere should get hold of two basic but powerful truths: that building a life of intimacy with God in prayer is our primary call as believers, and that this lies at the heart of all success in church life and ministry.  Men and women down through the centuries who have been significantly used by God in ministry have always been people of prayer.

      For the early church, prayer was not a matter of the repetition of rote phrases in a mechanical, formal or liturgical manner.  For them, prayer was always to be rooted in a Spirit-filled and Spirit-empowered life, a life in which the Holy Spirit has free and consistent flow within and through a believer.  So it is a life in which prayer in all its forms flows freely out of regular intimacy and closeness to God, and is empowered by the active working of the Holy Spirit in our life.  It presupposes that we know what it is to be filled and empowered by the Holy Spirit, and to be walking consistently with him.

      This was the expected standard for prayer which the apostles themselves practised, and which they enjoined upon young believers as an essential part of their ongoing spiritual growth and discipleship.  Prayer was never meant to be formal, religious, or spiritually flat and dead.  It was expected to be living, vital, empowered, heart-felt, free, inspiring and encouraging to others, flowing naturally and unhindered out of a Spirit-filled life.  This is how God would have prayer be.

      This is what Paul meant when he referred to ‘praying in the Spirit’ in Ephesians 6:18-20 (see above).  Paul’s recognition of the potential of Spirit-empowered prayer to bring about breakthrough and victory in situations, is clear from his five-fold emphasis on prayer in this passage, and from his repetition of the words ‘all’ or ‘always.’  He makes a similar repeated emphasis on prayer in the parallel passage in Colossians 4:2-4 (also above), and Jude too encourages us to ‘pray in the Holy Spirit’ (Jude v.20).

      Whether it is a group of believers wrestling in prayer together well into the night for the release of Peter from prison (Acts 12:5-17); or whether it is two persecuted apostles praying and praising their way to breakthrough in the middle of the night in a jail cell in Philippi (Acts 16:25-26), or whether it is simply the private praying of an individual believer (Col. 4:12), empowered ‘prayer in the Spirit’ is a major key to spiritual victory.

      There are at least four ways in which ‘praying in the Spirit’ can manifest in a believer’s life: praying in tongues, Spirit-inspired praise, the prayer of faith, and the inward groaning of spiritual travail.  This third part in this mini-series deals with the prayer of faith, as below.

3.     The prayer of faith

‘And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up.’ (Jas. 5:15 AV)

      The phrase ‘the prayer of faith’ is used uniquely by James in this verse in connection with the potential power of prayer to bring healing to sick believers.  The simple underlying Greek phrase η ευχη της πιστεως is translated as ‘the prayer of faith’ (AV) or ‘the prayer offered in faith’ (NIV).

      Faith is inspired and strengthened in our heart by the Holy Spirit through reading and meditating on the word of God.  As we spend quality time meditating quietly on the word of God, the Holy Spirit impresses its truth deep within our heart, and this creates, inspires and strengthens faith within us:

‘Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.’ (Rom. 10:17)

      This inspiring and strengthening of faith in our heart is therefore a dynamic process within us involving the Holy Spirit, the word of God, and personal meditation.  We can then express our living faith in the word and promise of God back to him in believing prayer.  The purpose of inspiring our faith through this dynamic process, is so that we can overcome our inherent unbelief and doubt, and then attain the fulfilment of the promise(s) of God in our particular situation.  This process is often called ‘praying through the word.’

      Very often in this process, the Holy Spirit will strongly impress on our heart a specific verse, promise or passage from the word of God, a so-called rhema word, which creates living faith within us for the particular situation about which we are praying.  This is ‘the word of the Lord’ for our situation.  In receiving such a rhema word, our inward unbelief and doubts are overcome, and we enter into a place of inward peace and deep assurance that God will indeed answer our prayer.  We have ‘prayed through.’  We know that God has heard our prayer and that he has spoken to us, and we are then inwardly free to boldly proclaim and declare the victory of God in the situation.  We know that we will receive what we asked of him (1 John 5:14-15).

      So the prayer of faith, praying through the word of God in this way, is a form of petitionary prayer in which we are praying about a specific thing or situation according to the promises or principles of the word of God, and it expresses to God the living faith which is in our heart.  It is a form of prayer which is empowered and inspired by the Holy Spirit within us, and so, in this sense, it is a form of ‘praying in the Spirit.’  It brings breakthrough and victory in whatever situation that we are praying about.

      When I was a student at the Bible College of Wales, Swansea, in my mid-twenties, I was obliged throughout my course to trust God for my financial needs (including for the payment of my tuition fees).  When I was in my third year, a person who lived locally gave me a second-hand car.  This was the first car I had ever owned, and I was over the moon about it, of course!  However, as the practical reality of this sank in over the next few days, I realised that I would need to tax and insure it, and to put some petrol in it, if I was going to be able to drive it.  So my new-found joy quickly gave way to concern about how I was going to do this!  On top of all my other needs at that time, this seemed to me to be too much to carry, and I became quite stressed about it.

      After a few days of living with this stress, I knew that I needed to meet with God about this issue.  So, after lunch one day, I went to my room, locked the door, and got down on my knees with my Bible, determined that that afternoon I would meet with God.  So I began to pour out my heart to God about it, along with all my stress, doubts and anxiety, asking him to speak to me.

      As I waited on him, quietly reading through various passages in the word of God, I soon found myself reading psalm 34.  And if God has ever spoken to me through his word, he spoke to me that day through that psalm!  As I read it, its words burned powerfully and deeply into my heart, as if each verse was lit up, as if each verse was written just for me and for the situation that I was in.  It was as if the words literally came alive!  These verses spoke so deeply to me that afternoon, that I have never forgotten the time that I spent with God that day.  I could not stop reading and meditating on this psalm for about three hours.  Even today, I cannot read psalm 34 without remembering and casting my mind back to that powerful afternoon!  It is imprinted indelibly on my heart.

      As the words of psalm 34 were deeply impressed on my heart that day, the living faith that they produced within me brought me into an inward freedom and spiritual glory which lasted for quite a while.  Praises to God literally poured out of me, and I felt like I was walking on clouds for the rest of that week!

      Spending time with the Lord in this way, I reached a place where all the inward doubts, anxiety, stress and unbelief within me were completely washed away.  I was filled with deep peace and with overflowing living faith in my heart that God could and would meet my need.  I had prayed through, I had touched the hem of his garment, and I knew that God would answer!  So my prayer that day became a prayer of real, raw, living and powerful faith.  When I finally unlocked the door and emerged from my room, I was in a completely different inward spiritual state than I had been when I entered it about three hours before.

      Shortly afterwards, a few days later, I received a financial gift from someone who knew nothing about my situation which was large enough to cover my immediate need to tax the car, and I soon had it insured as well.  Indeed, from that time onwards, and for as long as I owned the car, I never lacked the finance to run and maintain it.