Copyright © 2021 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)
‘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 these two 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, as it flowed
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.
1. Praying
and singing in tongues
Notwithstanding what some modern-day
evangelical church movements and theologians believe about the gift of tongues,
speaking and praying in tongues played an important role in the spiritual life
of early believers. For Paul, it was an
essential and valued part of his own life.
He told the believers in Corinth that he spoke in tongues more than all
of them (1 Cor. 14:18). When a person
was filled with the Holy Spirit, it was a natural expectation that they would
speak in tongues:
‘When
Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in
tongues and prophesied.’
(Acts 19:6)
Furthermore, in addition to speaking in
tongues, Paul talks of ‘praying with our spirit,’ ‘singing with our spirit,’
and evidently of ‘praising with our spirit.’
Amongst early believers, praying in tongues was encouraged as a
natural and expected form of prayer after a person had been filled with the
Holy Spirit.
‘So
what shall I do? I will pray with my
spirit, but I will also pray with my mind; I will sing with my spirit, but I
will also sing with my mind. If you are
praising God with your spirit…’
(1 Cor. 14:15-16)
When we pray and/or sing in tongues, we
are releasing the presence and power of the Holy Spirit within our own
spirit. When we pray and sing in this
way, we are not praying words that we can understand with our mind, but our
spirit is praying/singing directly to God, bypassing our minds. Our spirit is empowered, edified and
strengthened by the Holy Spirit, and we are uttering mysteries with our spirit
which God himself understands:
‘For if
I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays…’
(1 Cor. 14:14)
‘For
anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God. Indeed, no one understands him; he utters
mysteries with his spirit…’
(1 Cor. 14:2)
Paul emphasised that one of the primary
purposes of glossolalia is to build up and strengthen our spiritual life by
using it as our personal prayer language:
‘He who
speaks in a tongue edifies himself…’
(1 Cor. 14:4)
Evangelicals who do not speak in tongues
themselves cannot understand in experience what this means, and neither can
they understand therefore what an important and powerful role it plays in the
life of a Spirit-filled Christian.
Whereas charismatic and Pentecostal believers who do speak in tongues,
do understand these things in their own experience. To underline just how important tongues were
in his own spiritual life, John G. Lake went so far as to say that tongues were
the making of his ministry.[1]
Many believers use tongues frequently in
their own personal prayer life. As well
as perhaps beginning their prayer times by speaking in tongues for a few
minutes (perhaps even for as much as half an hour), as they continue to seek
and worship God they often intersperse ‘praying with their mind’ (i.e. praying
in their own mother tongue) with ‘praying in the spirit’ (i.e. praying in
tongues). Praying and singing in tongues
edifies a believer, i.e. as s/he allows the Holy Spirit to work and flow freely
within them, this active working of his grace then strengthens their spirit
within and builds them up, and it allows them to express their spirit to God in
prayer, praise, adoration and worship, in a free and unhindered way, even
though they do not understand with their mind what they are communicating to
God. So when a believer prays and
sings in tongues, they become spiritually free within, they are edified, and
the Holy Spirit can flow freely through them as living water (cf. John
7:37-39).
I myself have tangibly felt the warmth of
the Holy Spirit’s presence begin to grow and spread within me on countless
occasions, as I have released myself into praying and singing in tongues. I have found that it frees my spirit, it
refreshes and warms my heart, and it strengthens my spiritual life; it brings
my mind and thinking under the influence of the Holy Spirit and therefore into
life and peace, and into alignment with the mind of Christ; and it often causes
the stresses of the day (which may perhaps be burdening my heart) to lose their
grip and to melt away, bringing me into a state of inward peace. It renews my experiencing of the
subjective presence of God and its effects within me.
Praying and singing in tongues is a
powerful charismatic gift, and it is one of the inner secrets of maintaining a
consistently fresh and free spiritual life. It is not a substitute for confession of sin
(or indeed for any other spiritual discipline), rather it is an addition to the
weaponry, as it were, of our spiritual life.
Similarly, praying and singing in tongues
can be used to great benefit in times of worship in corporate gatherings of
believers. If believers resolve not to
quench the Holy Spirit (by suppressing such expressions of his working in
corporate gatherings), but instead give him freedom, and encourage the wise and
sensitive use of tongues in worship, then this can and does bring their
corporate worship into a deeper experience of the immanence of God’s presence
amongst them. Not only does it free,
refresh, edify and strengthen believers corporately as they worship together,
by bringing about a tangible and uplifting sense of the presence of God among
them, it also very often allows the Holy Spirit to then operate through
believers via other charismatic gifts such as words of knowledge, prophetic
words, discernment of spirits, and healing.
This can then lead to the release of the
power of God in a gathering of believers, as we follow the inner promptings of
the Holy Spirit and allow him to work freely.
In particular, when we lay hands on people, and pray in tongues freely
but sensitively over them, the Holy Spirit can work and flow powerfully through
us. He can come upon people and fill
them; he can free them from oppression, and he can also bring them into inner
healing and physical healing, according to their need.
2. Spirit-inspired
praise
The welling-up and free flow of inspired
praise to God from deep within the human heart is one of the basic signs and
concomitants of being filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a Spirit of praise, and
so, when we are filled with him, our heart becomes a headstream out of which
praises to God flow freely:
‘…the Holy Spirit came on all heard the message… For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God.’ (Acts 10:44,46; cf. 2:47)
The apostle Paul exhorted the Ephesian
believers to keep themselves consistently in a state of being filled with the
Holy Spirit. His words below literally
mean ‘be being filled with the Spirit.’
Consequently, he says, their daily life and their corporate gatherings
would be characterised by freely flowing, Spirit-inspired praise, much as king
David also experienced:
‘…be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything…’ (Eph. 5:18-20)
‘I will
extol the Lord at all times; his praise will always be on my lips…’ (Ps. 34:1)
As a form of prayer, free and open praise
plays an important part in many Christian gatherings in our own day,
particularly those which are of a charismatic or Pentecostal variety. Giving ourselves the freedom to openly and
freely express our praises to God (whether this is on an individual or on a
corporate level) gives freedom to the Holy Spirit to operate and work within
and amongst us. The presence of God
which thus accompanies free and open corporate praise and worship is therefore
often strong, tangible, inspiring and edifying.
And as with praying and singing in tongues – or, better still, combined
with them – it brings us into a place where the Holy Spirit can work freely
amongst us to minister to people in a variety of ways (as I described above).
Therefore powerful, Spirit-inspired praise
can bring breakthrough. Not just in
terms of freely experiencing the presence of God amongst us, but also in terms
of breaking chains of spiritual oppression and bondage. Our spiritual enemy cannot endure freely
expressed praises to God, especially in corporate gatherings of believers, so
his grip and oppression of people’s lives weakens and can be broken.
Paul and Silas experienced this in a
remarkable and wonderful way when they were held overnight in the jail in
Philippi, consequent to having cast a spirit out of a slave-girl earlier in the
day. They did not allow the flogging
they received and their chains to depress them into self-pity, rather they
resolved together to freely and openly pray and sing praises to God well into
the night, while they were in their jail cell.
These praises broke through the spiritual darkness which was attempting
to oppress and overcome them, and it moved the hand of God powerfully in an
earthquake which flung all the prison doors open and set everyone free from
their chains, resulting in the conversion of the jailer and his entire
household:
‘About
midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other
prisoners were listening go them.
Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the
prison were shaken. At once all the
doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose.’ (Acts 16:25-26)
Another example of this kind of thing
happened on the occasion when king Jehoshaphat sent out his army to fight the
enemies who had invaded the land. He specifically
placed singers at the front of the army, whose role was to sing praises to God
as they all went forward:
‘After
consulting with the people, Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord and
to praise him for the splendour of his holiness as they went out at the head of
the army, saying: “Give thanks to the Lord, for his love endures forever.” As they began to sing and praise, the Lord
set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir who were invading
Judah, and they were defeated.’
(2 Chr. 20:21-22)
It is significant that the narrative
states that it was when the men began to sing and praise that God began to
fight on their behalf, bringing about a resounding victory. This underlines the important role that
praise plays among God’s people. It
releases the power of God to work, bringing breakthrough and victory over our
spiritual enemy.
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 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 hearts 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 worrying 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, and 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.
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. And 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.
[1] Liardon, R. (comp.), John G. Lake: The Complete Collection of His Life Teachings, “The Baptism with the Holy Ghost – Feb. 23, 1921”, Roberts Liardon Ministries: Laguna Hills, 1999, p.373.
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