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 fourth part in this mini-series deals with spiritual travail, as below.
4. The inward groaning of spiritual travail
‘He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied.’ (Isa. 53:11 AV)
Spiritual travail is the deepest form of ‘praying in the Spirit.’ In several verses, the Scriptures liken it to groaning in one’s spirit, or to a woman going through labour pains leading up to the birth of her child:
‘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. 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.’ (Rom. 8:26-27)
‘My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.’ (Gal. 4:19)
Much deeper than simply praying with our mind in the normal way, and deeper even than praying in tongues, travail occurs when the Holy Spirit lays a burden of prayer on our heart for a particular objective in the kingdom of God. He lays the burden and purpose of his heart on our own heart, sharing it with us. This burden may be of greater or lesser intensity, and the believer may carry it for a shorter or longer period of time. It may be for someone’s salvation, or it may be for a healing; it may be for breakthrough for the gospel in a particular area, or for the raising up of a new ministry, and so on.
Living a truly surrendered life is a prerequisite for travail, because it is only then that the Holy Spirit is free enough within us to be able to travail through us. A believer has to be willing to carry the burden that God places in their heart, and to be obedient and responsible to see it through to its fulfilment, regardless of how long this takes or what it involves. And this, of course, demands true surrender. For the Holy Spirit to be free to work through someone in a consistent and ongoing way, that person’s life needs to be a living sacrifice to God (Rom. 12:1-2). Real travail is therefore a rarer form of prayer, simply because many believers do not live a truly surrendered life. God cannot work through an un-surrendered or carnal believer to give birth to new kingdom purposes. Growth into real maturity in the work of God involves the development of our capacity to bear spiritual burdens.
A believer who is travailing wrestles in prayer with this inward burden, simply groaning and sighing within (and even weeping), as this burden of God’s purpose is slowly brought to birth through them. S/he will spend many extended periods of time with God behind the scenes, expressing this burden to God in prayer. Often, praying with words does not seem to relieve this burden, and s/he may be led naturally into fasting while they are in travail, because they may simply lose their appetite. However, there eventually comes a point in the travail where breakthrough occurs, and this burden is lifted. The believer comes into inward peace once again, and God openly answers the prayer (Matt. 6:6).
Such travail in intercession is not simply the deepest form of prayer. By its very nature as an inward spiritual birth process, it breaks through the powers of darkness and brings about victory for the kingdom of God in whatever situation the travail was concerned with. Through travail, the Holy Spirit brings to birth new things in the kingdom of God on earth.
Jesus provided the greatest example of travail in prayer when he spent those lonely hours sweating drops of blood as he prayed intensely in Gethsemane (Luke 22:39-46). Paul travailed in prayer for the wayward Galatian believers (Gal. 4:19). Epaphras agonised in prayer for the Colossian believers that they would grow and mature in their faith (Col. 4:12-13).
As I have said elsewhere in this book, there are many outstanding examples of travailing prayer recorded in the biographies of well-known Christian figures. We can see David Brainerd travailing in prayer in the woods of Susquehanna prior to revival breaking out among the native Americans. We can observe John Hyde spending whole days and nights agonising in prayer for the Indian Church. Daniel Nash would hide himself away, travailing in prayer before and while Finney preached. Rees Howells travailed in prayer through the years of the Second World War, bringing about many spiritual breakthroughs which significantly affected the outcome of that war. Anyone who cares to study the biographies of these men, and those of many others, will soon see the powerful results and fruit of such travailing in prayer.
After Suela and I got married and returned to our field of endeavour in God’s work, and as I sought the face of God in my daily prayer times, I felt a deep desire and burden developing in my heart to see God’s healing power manifested in believers’ lives. As I continued to pray, I searched the Scriptures on the theme of healing, made copious notes, and also read through several books on the subject. My wife can bear witness that, as this inward burden grew in my heart, for many months I would think, talk and pray about healing all the time. This inward burden of the Holy Spirit was with me continually, and it consumed my life for a while.
So as we worked together to plant a new church, in addition to our regular gospel and Bible ministry, we resolved that we would preach and teach about the Holy Spirit and the healing power of God, that we would pray for people to be healed and set free, and that we would trust God to work. As we pressed forward in faith and went through this learning curve, praying for people to be healed of both physical and inner conditions, we saw God healing believers in a way that we had not previously experienced. It was a wonderful and very blessed period of ministry.
As our new fledgling church grew, we saw many cases of physical healing and release from spiritual oppression, which really encouraged everyone to believe in this area. God brought a measure of physical and inner healing to people which reflected the wholeness of the gospel message. In fact, one of the young believers later commented that this new church had been founded on healing.
Since that time, and as a result of that period of ministry, praying and believing for physical healing and for release from spiritual oppression have become a regular part of our ministry, and we see God working in such ways wherever we go. We have committed ourselves before God to preach and minister the full gospel of his kingdom.
Several years later, we took up a new position on staff in a Bible institute. Not long after we had moved to our new location and had settled into our new accommodation, I found myself being woken up regularly very early in the morning, around 4:00 a.m. As I sought God in prayer, I became aware of a growing inward burden within myself about the release of the power of God in this new ministry setting. This was not something that I was expecting, and it came as a real surprise to me. I was not expecting anything other than to simply settle into my new role as a faculty member, teaching Bible and theology. I usually had my regular quiet time later on in the morning, not that early.
This period of being woken up at this early hour and seeking the face of God for a release of his power, lasted for about three weeks. As I poured out my heart to God every morning while the rest of my family slept, I again searched the Scriptures and made many notes on the power of God. I also read through and meditated on some devotional literature which encouraged me with what I was praying about. And then, after about three weeks, this inward burden eased off, and my sleeping patterns returned to normal.
I was expecting (and secretly hoping!) that God would answer these prayers through me, because I really wanted to see and experience the power of God working through me. However, instead of this, God chose to work through my wife, Suela. From that time onwards, she began to experience distinct inward promptings from time to time as the Holy Spirit led her, to go and pray for particular individual students. As she obeyed these promptings, she experienced the power of God manifesting and working through her in different ways, deeply touching these individuals, and the Lord did a real and powerful work among the students for as long as we worked in that school.
This is what it means to travail in prayer, and these are simply two examples of the powerful results it can secure. Travailing prayer breaks through and brings victory over the power of the enemy. God works and releases his power in answer to it, and new things are established in the kingdom of God on earth as a result.
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