Praying in the Spirit
When I was on the verge of being a teenager, roughly around 12 years old or so. My best friend and I were in-separable. We would meet everyday we could during the summers and play basketball from sunrise to sunset. We would do the normal things young kids did back in the early 90’s… which was to be expected to pay outside. And yes, for the most part we were usually unsupervised and probably our curiosity got the best of us sometimes.
We also would ride our bicycles all over our small town of Jane Lew. We had another friend named Adam who lived in a couple towns away from us. Some days in the summer we would grab our mountain bikes, fill up our water bottles and we would begin a 12+ mile ride to our friends house. The only problem with that trip is was this… somewhere between our home and his home was this huge hill we had to climb.
And so, like any other person you would try to pick up as much speed as you could to hit the hill as fast as you could, Because you were hoping that your momentum would do most of the work for you. Until what? Until finally you got to a point where you had to switch gears and begin the grueling work of pedaling up the hill. For me, most times, it was about halfway up and I would lose strength and I would slow our progress by needing to get off of my bike and pushing it the rest of the way up the hill.
Over the years I did get better when I faced with the challenge of climbing in over that hill. I would say roughly around when I was 16 i was finally able to conquer that hill without having to stopping. Although it was in my 91 Ford pony hatchback… but I did it. This week, as I was praying, that’s the story that the Spirit put on my heart when it comes to walking and praying in the Spirit.
Paul remind us of that in Galatians chapter 5 16 So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
Doesn’t that sound amazing? To be led? And doesn’t it sound amazing to be led without much physical effort? As if we’re being drawn into something with ease. Something is pulling us, attracting us forward and we no longer resist but become responsive, aware, open and obedient to that leading. And then, we freely walk into whatever it is God is calling us to walk into. Even if it seems impossible.
That’s but a crumb of what walking in the Spirit is like. But our Scripture in Ephesians 6:18 isn’t talking about walking in the Spirit as much as it’s talking about praying in the Spirit. There is a difference. One is about action, the other is about relationship but both is about living a life Surrendered to God. So if we are going to understand the difference, lets begin where prayer leads us, into the relationship.
Let’s define what Paul is saying in Ephesians 6:18, What is praying in the Spirit? Oswald Chambers probably defines it best, he says: “Praying in the Holy Spirit means using the power given to us by God to maintain the relationship to Jesus Christ.” What he is saying is that we maintain and cultivate a constant need for presence. Let’s ask a very important question…What happens when we do not maintain a life of constant prayer?
Well, We starve out the presence of God in our lives and in doing so we hinder the power of God in our lives. That’s because prayer is the very foundation of our communication and relationship to God. Why do we starve our the presence of God, because most times we are self sufficient, our carnal nature, our fleshly nature will rely more on self than God. We starve the relationship between us and God by not praying.
“As long as we are self-sufficient and complacent, we don’t need to ask God for anything. We don’t want Him. It is only when we know we are powerless that we are prepared to listen to Jesus Christ and to do what He says.” So prayer is what reveals the presence of Gods. There has been times even in my life where I struggled with a constant prayer life, I struggled knowing God direction for my life.
But I also discovered that the struggle came mostly because I had a poor involvement with prayer. We can either starve the life of God in us, or we can nourish it. So praying in the Spirit is about maintaining this Holy relationship with God through Daily intentional moments of prayer. I use that word maintaining because it means to keep up, or to keep alive. keep in repair, to service & to conserve, To take good care of, look after.
Prayer life is a constant duty in the life of the Christian. IN a weird analogy its like, changing your oil after 3-5,000 miles. Putting on new tires, and new windshield wipers. Changing out the belts and batteries at certain points of being used. Washing the snow and salt off of the body of the car. We do those things for longevity. We know that if that vehicle is going to last, we maintain it.
That’s an analogy we all understand. Now put it into a spiritual understanding… When we pray, that active prayer life moves our ambition from ourselves to God. Prayer replaces our pride with humility. Prayer checks our hearts condition and then through the power of the Holy Spirit when we give our hearts to God he does his work in us. He does the work under the hood per say. So, Maintaining means to keep that going.
To not give up prayer because it leads to longevity. Just like last week, when we do not hear God, or feel God or know where he is in deep moments of our lives. When His presence seem far from us and our prayers are like smoke in the wind… Our relationship doesn’t stop, because in those moments it should get deeper and wider. God has trusted us in the most intimate way he can…
in his silence, God trusts us to make Holy decisions based on His word. Sadly, we fail at this so much… I have failed at this. And I know I am not the only one who has failed at making wrong choices when it seems God was silent in my life. I’m thankful when Jesus went into the wilderness he passed his temptation test. There are times in my life when I feel like my maintenance isn’t as well as others.
There’s times I don’t want to pray. There are times I neglect my spiritual life. There’s times when all I want to do is sleep and skip out on studying. There are times when I’ve been beaten down and I don’t want to love like Christ. And most times, it’s because my flesh is stronger and my Spirit is weak. But what pushes me forward into the maintenance? Well it’s realizing that if I tried to work on me as I did my own car in my own garage.
I’d mess a bunch of stuff up, because for the most part I'm not a mechanic and I have no clue what I am doing. And Jesus knows me more than I know myself. He’s my creator, he’s my designer. We in our life realize that Prayer is not a means of self-development; we do not find that idea in the Bible. And prayer is other than meditation. Prayer is what develops the life of God in us.
So I surrender the keys of my life over to the one who holds the keys of life. And Let him design me, grow me, use me. Kinda wish he would have designed me to be a muscle car, but all I got was the herbie the love bug. J/k But I am thankful. Not one person in this room or listening online can walk forward in the Spirit if we have not maintained the relationship with the Spirits presence where we are.
And that begins with being honest with God. And being honest with what we haven’t maintained in our relationship with God. So let’s ask, why is maintaining this relationship important? Why do we pursue it? We pursue it Because in Christ, we have found through experience that our reliance on Jesus to be far better than our reliance on ourselves. When it comes to praying in the Spirit, the first thing we learn is that we truly rely on ourselves more than we do God.
We lack reliance for one part in our life because we lack honest commitment and loyalty. Right… do we always commit to pray over every meal? Do we live what we believe? It was a couple messages ago and I asked, how many times have we gone into a restaurant with our churchy clothes, or we pray over the meal but when the waitress doesn't give us the service we think we deserved, we don’t always show a Christ like attitude of being generous and grateful towards their service.
Do we wake up committed to thanking the Lord for another day and do we go to bed committed thanking the Lord for providing that day? Do we commit to pray for others? Especially when we say, I’ll pray for you? Sometimes our lifestyle doesn’t reflect our commitment. But oftentimes our commitment does reflect on who we put our trust in more. For the most part what we find in the life of a half hearted Christ follower is that they will put more trust in performance than they do in purity.
They make it about performance, more than grace. We’re all called to live a holy life. But we fail to live a holy life because it’s easier to be in love with Christ than it is to be filled with the love of Christ. Did you heart that? It’s easier to be in love with Christ than it is to be filled with the Love of Christ. There is a difference.
The best way I can explain it is like this, being in love with Christ is like praying in the flesh and having the love of Christ in us is praying in the Spirit. We lack a consistent surrendered prayerful life for the most part not just because of our misguided commitments, but mainly because we try in our own power to pray in the flesh over the Spirit. What do I mean praying in the flesh vs the SPirit?
What I mean is this, praying in the flesh calls upon human ability and effort to push past the difficulty. And often times, life’s difficulties overcome our prayer life because we are fleshly minded than Spiritual. When Jesus was in the Garden and his commitment and loyalty was being tested. HE got up and found his disciples doing what? Sleeping. They were supposed to be praying, and of course I can imagine not just praying, but praying in the Spirit.
And he found them sleeping. And even in the midst of a great spiritual war going on while JEsus was preparing to go to the cross, he comes out to his disciples, looks at them and says this to peter in Matthew 26:41: Keep alert and pray that you’ll be spared from this time of testing. You’re spirit is eager enough, but your humanity is weak. Meaning, you’re spirit is willing but your body is weak.
Peter was willing but his flesh was stronger. praying in the flesh calls upon human ability and effort to push past the difficulty. Like the beginning of my story. Praying in the flesh would represent me trying to gain as much momentum as I could in my own power, and then trying to climb the hill and struggling to do so but I try to power through. Praying in the flesh feels like an upward climb in which we are having to power up the hill in our own capabilities and abilities.
And most times, praying in the flesh comes through the neglecting of the Holy Spirit, from neglecting prayer in our life. But Praying in the Spirit reflects the reality of the downward slope in my story. It’s like, when you begin to go down hill you can’t see the force that’s pulling you, but you feel this inward leading. This energy that kind of pulls you with very little effort towards the direction you’re heading.
Obviously we know this as gravity when we are riding our bikes. But you get what I am saying. In prayer, while we are praying in the Spirit. We surrender to the force, the power and we end up actually doing less but gaining more spiritual ground because we surrender to Him. So how to begin praying in the Spirit and being in His presence? Number one: Admitting our inability to pray.
If we want a deeper prayer life, it begins by admitting that it could pray more often than we do. Honesty will always bring with it humility. The only people who grow in truth are those who are humble and honest. When we think of Growth in the spiritual life, it takes place not by acquiring something new. Spiritual growth is taking hold of something that has always been there but you couldn’t pick it up because we’re holding onto things we shouldn’t be holding onto.
Number two: Begin to enjoy living communion with God. We’re not going to pray if we do not enjoy it. A relationship with God happens most by the Spirit through the word. Don't try to run away from the Bible to find a relationship with God in the woods or in some kind of attractive encounter with nature or with a great piece of art. Yes, the heavens are telling the glory of God (Psalm 19:1), I get that.
God does use great art and great poetry to awaken us, he uses the beauty of nature to show us his awesomeness. But if we don't center on the Bible where he is speaking authoritatively and infallibly, then our relationship will become distorted by error and sin. So let the Bible be the place where God meets you and speaks to you, and let the Bible be the place where you speak back to him.
The relationship is in this communion: him to us, and us to him. Remember eternity is right now. It doesn't start tomorrow, or next week or when we die. Eternity is being lived out right now and I fear there is a a lot of people that are waiting till they are before the throne of judgment to seek to see if they have the love Jesus’s within them. Friends, that’s going to be too late.
If you do not have the love of Christ in you now, then you’re just an admirer of Christ from afar. And the Bible tells us that those people will be told to depart for I do not know you. Regardless of your service, regardless of your years a as a Christian. His love must be within you. And finally, NUmber three: Still be at wonder of God. *