Prayer Series: Part 2
The results of prayer can be scary. Prayer involves a spiritual realm we struggle to understand. In the west we don’t hear too many stories of miraculous healings, people rising from the dead or people freed from demon possession. If we do, we first speculate on their authenticity and quickly discredit them. However, for many of our brothers and sisters across the globe, these are present-day implications of prayer and life in the Spirit.
The act of prayer is a conscious decision to interact with the Holy. The Holy Spirit, a ghost, who indwells us. Pardon my play on words, but often we look at prayer as if we are dabbling in a spooky business. I’d like to propose that in fact we are and rather than living in fear of praying in the Holy Spirit, we embrace this almighty gift we’ve been given and start praying with power.
God is triune; three in one. Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Though we often don’t invite the Holy Spirit to our prayer parties. He’s like the electric drill in our toolbox– it’s powerful and can get the job done efficiently, precisely, but we refuse to use it because it’s never charged and we don’t quite know how to control it. We’d rather stick with our screwdriver; manual power. Therefore, we end up putting a great deal of effort into our prayer and see little result in our lives until we give up praying at all.
Prayer works best in the Spirit because the Spirit is God himself. The Spirit appeared on the scene at creation. He’s the motion moving the work of God since the beginning of time. The Spirit dwelled among us in the person of Christ. Through Christ the Spirit taught creation how to pray, live, teach, love and share. Christ revealed the power of the Spirit by healing, removing demons, revealing sin, teaching wisdom, sacrificing, forgiving and rising from the dead. When Christ left the earth scene, the Holy Spirit remained to live in us as he lived in Christ. The same power manifested in Christ while he roamed the planet is presently within our reach. One way to see the activity of the Spirit is through prayer.
Our prayers are meager in comparison to how Christ prayed and how he taught the disciples to pray. We ask for so little and with prayers reflecting our self-serving motives. Praying in the Spirit means praying with God’s desires in mind and praying from the heart while allowing a ‘ghost’ to guide us. The Spirit is active, living, a powerful force. He leads us toward a transformation of mind, body and spirit through our prayer life. Christ spent a great deal of time in prayer. He knew the source of his power came when he connected with God through the Spirit in prayer. This is how he knew the Father’s will, the heart’s of humankind, the way to heal and had the courage to endure the cross. If this doesn’t convict us to pray, I’m not sure what will.
The agent of change in our lives, communities and world can only be powered by the Spirit who dwells in us and enriches us through prayer. It seems impossible to be life-giving to those around us if we ourselves are not filled with life. Prayer is the well in which we dip our ladle for refreshment and satisfaction that will overflow into all aspects of life. We become so easily bored or burned out on giving because our well is far too dry and our Spirit is diminished from lack of being in the stillness of prayer–the waiting in God allowing him to wash over us with His desires, His power and His will. There is more Kingdom work unfolding in the “Being” in the Spirit than in the “Doing” out of self.
The activeness of the Spirit implies that He’s a living being. A being who animates that which was dead. If the Spirit is life-giving, then so should our prayers. Jesus’ healings enlivened the five senses so that the message of salvation could be heard, seen, touched, eaten, lived and expressed. Do my prayers aim to bring to life an expression of salvation or are they about inanimate matters?
Prayers led by the Spirit are spooky because they animate that for which we pray. They hasten the coming Kingdom of God which as we know from the Bible in its present state, is a battle against spiritual forces that bring forth death and destruction in the lives of God’s creation. These forces can only be combated by life-giving, Spirit-led prayer.
When we pray in the Spirit we take arms with the unseen, living power of God. This thread of power hovered over the waters at creation, filled the Temple with smoke, visited Mary and filled her womb with life, spoke to Jesus from the heavens at his baptism, fell from heaven like flaming tongues and gave understanding, animated a dead savior to enliven a world dead in sin and was gifted to every soul open to Christ’s salvation. The magnitude of power that we wield in prayer through the Spirit living in us is frightening but can be inspiring when we consider how much influence we’ve been given.
There is only one main question. Why then are our prayers so weak?
I believe the answer may be different for each one of us. Even I must wrestle with this. We mustn’t fear the Spirit, but invite Him to come in and take over. If our prayers are weak, what may be implied of our general spiritual state?
