Praying in the Spirit, Part 2

Praying in the Spirit, Part 2

Today, we come to the end of our series of studies on the Armour of God. We’ve covered a lot of ground over the past 12 weeks – even if we’ve spent 12 weeks on 10 verses. We’ve seen that every single Christian, from the moment of conversion to the last earthly breath - - is involved in a monumental struggle for joy … under constant attack from the enemy of God’s glory – who becomes our enemy, the moment we change allegiance … the second God picks calls you to Himself, picks you up and transfers you from the kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of His beloved Son – you are placed, smack dab onto the middle of a battlefield. You are under attack, Christian. Every. Single. Christian. It’s a battle for your joy.

This is our battle.

We’ve looked at some of Satan’s subtle attacks … we’ve seen that to stand firm in God-glorifying, Christ-exalting joy, we need to put on the armor that God provides for us because He loves us. He is most glorified in us, when we are most delighted in Him. So put on the armour for delight.

Over the course of the past several weeks, we’ve looked at the armour in detail. We looked at the belt of truth – That was first – the first thing you need for joy is to build your life on the truth of the Good News of Jesus Christ as revealed in the Word of God.

Then, we looked at the BREASTPLATE of RIGHTEOUSNESS – that protection for your heart and mind. We saw that, if you want to hold on confidently to your joy – you need to be protected – armoured in the awareness that, as a Christian, when you do struggle – as you will – when you fall into sin – as you will, without doubt –

You need to know that Jesus Christ in His work has taken your sin on Himself and nailed it to the cross, where he died. He cancelled the record of debt. Your sin is gone – it’s paid for. Now you are not seen as a sinner any longer - - - no God, now IMPUTES – CREDITS Jesus’ righteousness to your account. In Christ you are radiant.

We looked at the shoes of readiness – the balance and sure-footedness that comes from ……

…. the helmet of salvation, the shield of faith and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God – the weapon to push back.

And last week, we saw that we are not finished dealing with the armor of God, until we deal with prayer. As we sang in the words of the hymn earlier: “Put on the Gospel armor, each piece put on with prayer”. True words: Prayer is not just an add-on, an appendix at the end of the list, after everything else is done … prayer is HOW YOU PUT THE ARMOUR ON.

Everyone who steps onto the battlefield to engage in spiritual warfare, no matter how well you wear truth and righteousness and faith and salvation, no matter how well you are grounded in peace, no matter how well you wield the Word, you’ve got to make prayer the first thing. The Christian soldier fights on his knees! As Edward Payson said: “Prayer is the first thing, the second thing, the third thing necessary to minister. Pray, therefore, my dear brother, pray, pray, pray.” Seven is the Biblical number that symbolizes completion and perfection. It’s no coincidence that, after Paul lists off SIX pieces of spiritual armour – he names PRAYER as the seventh thing we need. Prayer completes. Prayer perfects.

In Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian takes out a weapon called ‘All-Prayer’. Prayer isn’t an add-on, at the end of the list of pieces of armour – it’s the supreme weapon to use “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (v. 12).

Verse 18 tells us to pray in a distinct way. I want us to finish our series with this – I want to wrap everything up by looking at one aspect of how Paul describes the prayer that is fitting for spiritual warfare, wearing the armour of God. Look at v. 18: “Praying at all times IN THE SPIRIT”. Praying in the Spirit. You’ve likely heard the term before, but what does it mean?

1. WHAT IS IT?

Some people would say that this ‘praying in the Spirit’ is another piece of armor – that you ‘put on’ after you have put on everything else. You put on your breastplate, grab your shield and sword – Then you put on another piece of armour – then you put on your ‘praying in the Spirit’.

That doesn’t work. Paul is carefully describing the armour of God by going piece by piece through the kind of battle-gear that Christians in his day could read and then imagine – because they could picture what Paul’s talking about from the Roman soldiers they saw with their own eyes, day after day. And Roman soldiers didn’t carry anything called a ‘prayer in the Spirit’.

Some people notice ‘praying in the Spirit,’ comes right after the Sword of the Sprit and they say –“praying in the Spirit’ is HOW you use the Sword of the Spirit. “You pull the sword of the Spirit out of your belt and wield it by “praying in the Spirit” – as if this is a special type of praying – a super-spiritual type of prayer – ‘praying in tongues’. That doesn’t work either. This passage isn’t talking about that.

Verse 18 says, “praying at all times” in the Spirit. Don’t miss that. Praying at all times in the Spirit. Paul is saying that ALL of our prayer MUST be ‘praying in the Spirit’. When you get out of bed in the morning – Pray in the Spirit

When you pray with your kids, leading them to the throne of God. Pray in the Spirit.

When you come here to join with the congregation and worship God in prayer. Pray in the Spirit.

When you crumple to the floor – because your world is falling down around you – and everything you thought you could count on – health, finances, relationship … it’s all falling to pieces and you don’t know what to do except groan in prayer: PRAY IN THE SPIRIT

. . . It all needs to be “praying in the Spirit.” It is not a TYPE of Prayer - - IT IS HOW YOU REALLY PRAY.

And if this is the type of prayer that we need to always use – then don’t we need to understand what it is? That is exactly what we want to do today. The 2 questions we want to answer are:

1) What is it? 2) How do we do it?

To find out what ‘praying in the Spirit’ means in , we need to look at how it is used in other places of Scripture. I’ll say it again: Let Scripture interpret Scripture. So, let’s look at other places in the NT where the prayer and the Holy Spirit are brought together.

1. ,: “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery, to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, BY WHOM we cry ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our Spirit that we are children of God.”

Praying in the Spirit means FIRST – that the Spirit of God motivates us to pray by causing us to lift up a cry/ a prayer from the heart.

It says in that NOBODY can say “Jesus is Lord’ apart from the Holy Spirit. “Wait a minute. How can you say that? … I can take my brother, put him in a headlock – tell him that I’m not going to let him breathe until he says, ‘Jesus is Lord’. If I’m strong enough … eventually he’ll say ‘Jesus is Lord’ – whether he’s a Christian or not. So how can Paul say that?”

That’s not what Paul means in - - What he means is that nobody can authentically, from the heart, surrender themselves to Jesus Christ as Lord of their life, without the Holy Spirit. Sure, anybody can SAY the words, “Jesus is Lord”, meaning He is, in fact, Ruler over the earth – without any impact on themselves. But … to AUTHENTICALLY give yourself to Jesus Christ – to say, ‘Prone to wander, Lord I feel it – prone to leave the God I love - - But Jesus is my LORD and my DESIRE - - - and when I don’t desire Him – I WANT TO … My affections are so, so small … but I WANT TO TREASURE JESUS CHRIST … you CANNOT DO THAT UNLESS the HOLY SPIRIT WORKS IT IN YOU.

So here, when tells us that NOBODY can recognize God as not only real, but also, because you have put your trust in Jesus Christ as the Savior you need more than anything else!!!! Because you have offered yourself to His service, made Him the LORD – master over your life … Because of that – now, the God who once was just your Creator … Who once, you would meet, only as your Judge - -- now He has joined Himself to you in the closest relationship possible - - He is your FATHER. You know that you depend on Him for every breath … and still you are confident enough to call Him, ‘ABBA’. NOBODY can do that, except by the Holy Spirit working inside.

“Abba” – that’s the Aramaic word that occurs 3 times in the New Testament – without being translated into English. Just brought straight across into our English Bibles – “Abba” – it’s word for the most intimate term for a father, in Jesus’ original language. It was like ‘daddy’ – except different, because it was a word that an adult could use just as properly as a child.

Just an aside – I’ve been in some circles where people understand that ‘Abba’ is a term for Father than shows close intimacy – they’ve heard that it’s kind of like a little child calling out ‘Daddy’ to an earthly father - - that complete trust … so they apply that in their prayer life – and I hear them, in public prayer, calling out ‘Daddy God’.

Can I ask you a favor? You can do what you want in private – but if you’re praying with me around – First of all, don’t be self-conscious - - let’s just go to God’s throne of grace together … don’t start worrying about what you’re going to say.

… But secondly – can I just ask you a favor – if you’re praying with me around … Please don’t pray ‘Daddy God’. Don’t say that! It’s not a sin … but it will very likely make me throw up … and that would wreck the whole prayer time.

“Abba” is a word that expresses intimacy like a little child calling out ‘daddy’ – but it’s different because a grown man could just as appropriately use it. I have yet to see a grown man run to his earthly father and say, ‘Daddy Jim’.

Nobody can recognize that kind of intimacy and verbalize it – toward the Sovereign God of the universe … except by the Holy Spirit – giving you the assurance that it really is true!

Now, as soon as I get onto this subject of God as Father – I recognize that some of you never had an earthly Father you could depend on … approach … be vulnerable with. For some of you – dad was a fantasy figure – you wished you had a ‘dad’ … yours was always absent – gone. Or for some of you, you wished he was gone … because his presence was anything but safe and secure. You know what it is to tiptoe around in fear of your earthly father, because one wrong step, one wrong move – and you would be berated and belittled – crushed.

Oh, but that’s the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ - …

Some of you come out of backgrounds where you are taught that it’s presumptuous to think of yourself a child of God. “How dare you call God your heavenly ‘Father’ unless you can PROVE it FIRST, by a long life of consistent obedience to Him?”

That’s not what the Bible says. The Bible says right here, ‘When you throw yourself down before the throne of God, in dependence on Jesus Christ, and you cry out ‘Abba’ - -- That’s the Holy Spirit.”

So, praying in the Spirit means that the Holy Spirit motivates us to pray. That’s critical.

2. The second parallel passage is just a few verses further on in – v. 26. “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” This is praying in the Spirit.

And … this is precious. Paul is making it clear that when you as a Christian are weak in prayer - - the Holy Spirit steps in to help. You know the experience:

You are down – you look around and all you can see is chaos. Circumstances in your life are not working out the way you thought they would. You are tired, beaten down, discouraged - - just overwhelmed. Though you know that the best thing you could be doing is praying – you have no idea what to say.

TERRY STAUFFER – Friend of mine from Bible College posted on Facebook a couple of weeks ago:

On Saturday morning, July 13th, we talked to our son Josh as we were driving from Edmonton to Calgary for a wedding. He was at a Farmer's Market with Marie-Michelle and was having a great birthday. That night, he went to sleep and never woke up. We don't know the details of the medical incident that took his life, but we should know more by the end of the week. It seemingly came from nowhere, and everything happened very quickly. He was 27.

Turns out Josh suffered an aortic aneurism. This 27 year old son, leaves behind a wife and baby that will be born next month. How do you pray in that situation? If you are Terry or Juanita Stauffer, what do you pray? What do you say to God?

Adds punch to the pain is that I’ve told you about Terry before. 10 years ago – while he was pastoring a church in Edson, Alberta – his 14 year old daughter, was out for a walk, on a Saturday afternoon – when she was grabbed by a stranger and murdered in broad daylight. Safe small Canadian town, daylight … gone. Moms … Dads? How do you lose one child … and then another? How do you keep your sanity? How do you pray?!!!

When you think you can’t pray anything that makes any sense, because you can’t make sense of things. All you seem able to do is look up to your heavenly Father and from the depths of despair … manage a GROAN.

Terry wrote about the news on his blog:

I used this old blog to announce the death of our precious daughter Emily about ten and a half years ago. I never expected to report the death of her older brother in this same place. It is a hard providence, but we are leaning into God's goodness. Where else can we go?

When all you can manage is a groan - tells us that a groan from a Christian is music to the ears of God.

Some of you come from backgrounds where you are given specific prayers to pray - - “Hail Mary” or some set prayer - - just say these words – say them enough times and you will be okay. There’s a danger there. You can so easily fall into the trap of ritualism … you follow the pattern – you say the words – and you never pray in the Spirit - - - because there is no groaning there. Your mouth forms the words, but your mind isn’t really engaged = = = and your heart is 1,000 miles away.

Others say - - not me! I wasn’t raised in one of those lifeless liturgical churches. I’m safe. Oh, but we aren’t out of danger ourselves. If you sit down around the dinner table for a meal – and someone asks you to pray for the food – how do you pray? “God is great, God is good, let us thank Him for our food - - Amen”

Oh, Be careful of ritualism. Press ‘play’ in your mind and out of your mouth comes a lifetime of rote prayers.

“We don’t know how to pray as we ought - - - - But the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans too deep for words.” We can cry out - - -

At that very point – the Spirit takes that guttural groan and makes it a symphony in the ears of the Father. He enables our prayers.

So praying in the Spirit means that the Spirit motivates our prayers . . . Her leads us to pray . . . makes our prayers effective - - - and, the last thing that praying in the Spirit means, is that He guides our prayers.

Of course He guides our prayers - - If the Holy Spirit is the One motivating you to pray … if the Spirit is the One making your groans effective prayer … then He’s also going to guide your prayers – your true prayers.

give a negative example of what I mean, "You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions."

There’s an example of prayer that is NOT in the Spirit. James is writing to his readers who are praying and not getting anything … says the reason you’re not getting what you’re praying for is because you’re just so SELFISH. The lost around me - - they can go to hell, for all I care. The believers suffering for their faith in Iran – I can’t be bothered with them. They’re on their own. I’ve got my own concerns:

“Dear God, please give me a good day – help my investments turn out well. Please prevent any traffic jams on the highway this morning, so I get to work on time.”

Piper gives this warning about prayer: He calls it a ‘wartime walky talky’ – which is a great analogy. But, he says, “Far too often, we take this wartime walky-talky and turn it into a domestic intercom to call the butler to bring up another pillow. Oh that feels good. Praise God, I’m a spiritual person - - - and I thank God for these pillows.”

That is not praying in the Spirit. says, “Keep alert, with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints.”

“Look at the world through God’s eyes - - praying for His people …”

Oswald Sanders, a former director of Overseas Missionary Fellowship said in this regard:

The very fact that God lays a burden of prayer on our hearts and keeps us praying is prima facie evidence that He purposes to grant the answer. When asked if he really believed that two men for whose salvation he had prayed for over fifty years would be converted, George Müller of Bristol replied, “Do you think God would have kept me praying all these years if He did not intend to save them?” Both men were converted, one shortly before, the other after Müller’s death.

So, WHAT is praying in the Spirit? It is prayer that is motivated by the Spirit, enabled by the Spirit and in line with the character and priorities of God.

2 How to Pray in the Spirit

Okay, now we know WHAT it is to pray in the Spirit. The second question we need to answer then is: HOW do we do it? How do we pray in the Spirit? TWO WAYS -

1. TRUST In order to pray ‘in the Spirit’, the first thing you need, is to find your confidence in the cross of Jesus Christ. There is where he bought every answer to your prayer. Every blessing that comes to you, comes because Jesus died for you. No blessings come to you – except what Jesus bought for you there. Period. So take to your knees on that solid foundation.

Look away from yourself, your inadequacies, your failures, your ignorance - - look away and look up to the throne of God who is merciful to you because of Jesus’ sacrifice. His mercy flows to you through the Holy Spirit who brings the mercies to you– and trust in Him. He has chosen to give Himself to you as FATHER, FRIEND! God SO LOVED THE WORLD THAT HE GAVE HIS ONLY SON. Don’t miss what that means for you!

I’ve been using football for some illustrations lately. Some of you engage with that … others of you – not so much. I’m going to use another one now – but don’t worry, this is the last time for this series.

I remember when my boys played football. Remember the year that Josh’s team – dominated all year long … there wasn’t even a close game – steamrolled every opponent

They were in the provincial semi-finals – one more roadblock on the sure path to the provincial championships … they just had to get past a team from Victoria. Winner goes to BC PLACE.

We thought the game was just a formality – one last speedbump on the road to the Dome. But things didn’t turn out the way anyone expected. It was a team unlike any the boys had ever played – They had a running back who just seemed like a man among boys … in the CFL right now. And Victoria won - - - Months of practices and preparation and dreams - - over. The season crashed to an end in one night.

--- You see those boys after the game – big, tough, football players, walked with a swagger all season long – laying big hits on players on team after team … now with their helmets off, and their chins quivering – some of them sobbing … showing themselves to be the 13 year olds they really are. As a dad, that breaks your heart - - - Makes you wish you were Superman and could fly around the world fast enough to reverse the earth’s rotation and turn back the clock and say to the boys – “Here you go, try again.”

That would be disastrous – I don’t see the big picture – I don’t see how this fits into the puzzle God is constructing to make all things work together for good - - But the God who in Christ, says “Call me Father” IS WORKING GOOD.

Do you have cancer to deal with? DO you have heartbreak to deal with? You don’t know what to pray - - and the Devil is shouting in your ear - - - “HE can’t HEAR YOU!” - --- - - Praying in the Spirit means, LOOK AWAY FROM YOURSELF and call out to Him - - GROAN if that’s all you can do - - - and TRUST HIM.

That’s the First HOW of praying in the SPIRIT.

2. BE IN THE WORD – If praying in the Spirit is the Spirit leading you to pray, enabling your prayer to make sense to the Father, and if He guides you to pray according to His Will and character – then where will you find the direction for that kind of prayer? Here’s what you do: You immerse yourself in the Bible so that your mind is filled with truth – so that when the Holy Spirit comes to help you in prayer – He takes that raw material and shapes prayers out of it.

Saturate your mind with this Word:

Terry Stauffer’s blog is titled, “New Lumps” and the reason for that strange name is given in the subtitle of the blog – it’s a quote from , “Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.” You can’t lean into God in times of tragedy – if you haven’t saturated your mind with His Word, beforehand.

` Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose trust is the Lord. For he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream and will not fear when the heat comes; but its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought nor cease to yield fruit.