Praying in the Spirit

2 Corinthians 10:3-5 (NKJV) 3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. 4 For the weapons of our warfare [are] not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, 5 casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ,

Everyday we walk in the flesh, from the moment we wake up and place our feet on the ground, (sometimes even before), we are walking the in the flesh. Our minds, our hearts, our bodies, and somewhat shockingly as this may sound, our prayers are made in the flesh and not in the Spirit. So how do we pray in the Spirit and pray in the flesh just as we walk in the flesh? It seems like a constant battle and one that we cannot possibly win. In saying that, we are correct, we can not win that battle, but there is One that can. We need God’s help, and we need God’s Spirit to help us as we struggle with the flesh.

We all want to pray prayers that will have an effect. Just as the disciples were so impressed with themselves because of the prayers and works of God they were able to experience and participate in, so we too desire to be like the disciples. But we must be careful because pride can so easily interfere with our ability to pray in the Spirit like Jesus. In fact, even the disciples experienced the Lords correction on this matter when in Luke 10:20 Jesus cautioned the disciples and said “Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.”

“We are called to humility, as all power and glory is the Lord’s”

Being in the Spirit is such a wonderful place to be, and for those of us who have experienced this before, it is indescribable. Retracing back what the Holy Spirit has brought to mind and taught us is sometimes hard to do. It is with this writing that I myself am attempting to document the understanding and mysteries the Holy Spirit has revealed to myself and those men with me during our morning prayer time. After all, what is the purpose of the Spirit in our lives? There is one main purpose of the Spirit working in our lives, and that is to bring honor, glory, and praise to God the Father. This is mankinds sole purpose in life. This is the purpose of life. My purpose here on earth is to share the gospel of peace with those around me. The way that I do that will be directly related to how much I understand the mystery of Christ. And the level at which I can be successful at this is entirely dependent on how much I trust the Holy Spirit to give me that understanding and not my own mind. After all, my mind was corrupted from the very beginning, simply because we are not God, we are man, and therefore we are subject to Him who created us.

                1 Corinthians 15:28 – “Now when all things are made subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.”

 

The perfect example of a person praying in the Spirit might be seen in several places throughout scriptures, however, I would like to draw to attention the period of time when Jesus was sad and yet ended up raising Lazarus from the dead. John chapter 11 verses 1-44 describe this period of time.

                We see that Jesus was given information about the sickness of his friend and brother of Mary, Lazarus. His answer to those who told him of the news was that purpose of his sickness was to glorify God, and that the Son of God (himself) might be glorified also. How true is this statement, and as we have already been taught, that is our whole purpose in life, to glorify God. Jesus knew this, however, because He was interacting with sinful human beings at the time, He also added in that He would be glorified through Lazarus’s sickness. This causes me to pause for just a moment and consider the deity of Christ. For without God the Son being sent into the world we might not have the perfect example of what we are to be doing, saying, and thinking every day. Jesus was God in human form and we as new testament believers living in this present time have been freely given all things

                1 Corinthians 2:12 – “Now we have received, not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.”

                John 13:3 – “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going to God…”

So Jesus already knew this and so the story continues.

Verse 5

Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.

That same love that Jesus has for Martha, her sister Mary, and Lazarus, He also has for you and me. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son.

I consider this short verse on love a challenge to us, let us consider others more than ourselves, and love them just as Jesus would love them. This is after all what Jesus displayed at this point. How can this be seen in the text aside from the words that are written saying “Jesus loved” them? It can be seen not because He let Lazarus die, but I believe it can be seen because of what Jesus did next.

Verse 6

He stayed two more days in the place where He was.

When we are faced with some emergency news, how do we react? Do we rush off and twitter to and fro in order that we ourselves might try to “control” or “handle” this new emergent situation at hand? Often times that is exactly what we do. However, at this point Jesus was with people, and He had been ministering to them and many people were believing in Him in this place.

                John 10:41-42 – Then many came to Him and said “John performed no sign, but all the things that John spoke about this Man were true”. And many believed in Him there.

Jesus was not done with the work that he was doing there. In fact, He had two more days still of ministering before He left. But what was He doing during that time? Do we think that He was just teaching and eating and drinking and sleeping?

                1 Corinthians 10:31 “therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

Once again, we see that the whole purpose of our lives and Jesus’s was to glorify God. So yes, He was eating and drinking and sleeping most likely. However, what we can understand from the text even though it is not explicitly written (but will be seen later) is that He was praying for Lazarus. I also find it interesting that what He spoke as soon as He found out the bad news about Lazarus what to be fulfilled later on, but was absolutely true and biblical in His speech. In other words, before He likely had a chance to fervently pray about Lazarus’s situation He prayed in the Spirit concerning him and purposed in His heart that God would get the glory. Or perhaps He didn’t know what to pray for as Romans 8 describes:

                Romans 8:26-27 – The Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.

Verse 7

Now Jesus feels He must be done with this place and transitions into heading to Judea.

For the sake of time, and because this exhortation is not a study on John chapter eleven, but is rather a discussion of praying and walking in the Spirit, I am going to skip all the way down to verse 33.

When Jesus finally arrived to the place where Lazarus was he was greeted with weeping by the people. And because Jesus is fully man and fully God, emotionally speaking He “groaned in the spirit”. The word spirit here is not capitalized, which to me implies that this was more on the side of his humanness, and not His holiness. Nevertheless, it says He was troubled. I would venture to bet at this point He might not have known what to pray, or how to pray. He may have been so troubled that Lazarus died, but He could have also been equally troubled in the lack of faith around Him. Everyone was sad humanly speaking, but spiritually speaking they were faithless.

In the flesh, we can all get this way, and we can do so very quickly. Faithlessness is probably the biggest sin affecting Christians today in my opinion. We don’t have faith enough to get through the tough times that God has put us in for a reason. In the flesh we are always going to have that war against the faith and when we let our flesh rule in our hearts and minds then this faithlessness becomes the prevalent driving force in our life instead of the Gospel of peace and the power of the Holy Spirit. This to me is a great travesty in the church today, and I am guilty of it just as the rest of us are. But we don’t need to be confused about this and continue to walk in the darkness. God is not the author of confusion in our life.

Ephesians 3:3-4 says – “how that by revelation He made known to me the mystery…by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ”

I am so glad that God has revealed the mystery of Christ in my life by the power of His Holy Spirit! He will do the same to you. What must you do to understand this mystery in your own life? I believe that the key is written down for us just as the text said above “when you read”. God will speak to you when you read the Bible. He will bring to life His words because the Word is living and powerful! We need to read His word, and share with others what God has been speaking to us about. It will bring about good discussions and edification and clarification that is absolutely necessary in our Christian life. How great a God we serve that He has given us the gifts that He has, the Holy Spirit, and for us as “new testament Christians” the Holy Bible in it’s entirety!

Now I could go on about the flesh, and since we all can relate pretty easily to the way the flesh leads us in our life there is little need to continue on speaking of what we already know. The most important part of this exhortation and study of mine is to speak about the work of the Holy Spirit, especially through prayer. And as was very evident among the brethren that I prayed with yesterday, the Holy Spirit was working in an amazing way and bringing scriptures to life in front of our very eyes. There was no confusion and as was stated. There is that simplicity in Christ that we followed along in the scriptures which taught us in a pure manner.

2 Corinthians 11: 3 – Let us not be deceived as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so our minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

Notice that the part of our “flesh” that get’s corrupted so easily is our minds. Our mind needs to align itself with the Holy Spirit otherwise we are outside of the will of God. There is a mind of the Spirit, and there is our own mind. How we choose to follow the thoughts in our mind will determine how well we walk in the Spirit, and stay in the Spirit. So I believe there are a few things we need to be doing continually in order to stay in the Spirit. Confession, repentance, forgiveness, and a cleansing by the Holy Spirit.

2 Corinthians 10:3-6 – speaks of “How we walk in the flesh but we war in the Spirit and fight against everything that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and we bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.”

This is the war that we will be in when we attempt to walk in the Spirit. Not only will this war be ongoing in our minds, but likely it will be ongoing with the world around us, even between fellow brothers and sisters. But what we must always fall back into in order to stay in the Spirit, is a confession of our sins (to each other), and repentance (and prayer to God), a forgiveness for those who have hurt us and an asking for forgiveness by those we have hurt. If we can practice these things we can stay in the Spirit. I am not boasting in myself in saying that I can do these things, because in my flesh I am incapable of doing these things, however, I can do all things through Christ. If I fail, and believe me I have failed time and time again, I still need to practice confession, repentance, and forgiveness. If I give up any of those three things then the cleansing of myself and my sin may not happen by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Remember how God cleared out the confusion and separated the light from the darkness in the beginning?

Genesis 1:2-4 – The earth was without form and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said “Let there be light”, and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.

God spoke, that is how He did it. How do we hear God speak today? We can read the Bible. We can pray. We can fellowship and speak the Bible with other believers. That is how. Also, when we are in fellowship with each other I honestly believe that we must be open, honest, and transparent with each other.

1 John 1:5-10 – God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

If we don’t forgive others of their sins then we will not be cleansed from all unrighteousness. If He forgave us for our sins, and set the perfect example of how to pray in the Spirit then we to must forgive others in order to pray and walk in the Spirit.

Back in John 11, Jesus said down in verse 41. “Father I thank You that You have heard Me.” That implies that He had been praying to the Father all along. And then what happened? He told Lazarus to “come forth” and he was raised from the dead. Amazing power of God and the evidence of walking in the Spirit! I wish we could have that same power, don’t you? Well, we do, and if we can walk in the Spirit we can so too see the same things happen.

Lastly, in order to walk and stay in the Spirit we must not be a part of the world. This should go without saying, however, we have seen Christians lose their testimony far to often with the world because we are acting like the world. There is too little time for us to be worried about the world and acting like the world. Pray fellow Christian, pray! And come out of the world.

2 Corinthians 6:14-18 – Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. What communion has light with darkness? You are the temple of the living God. “I will dwell in them”

We have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, so let us not have communion with the darkness of the world!

James 4:1-6 – Where do fights and wars come from among you? They come from your desires that war in your flesh/members. You do not have because you do not ask, and you ask amiss. Does the scripture say in vain “the Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously” (Genesis 6:5). But He gives more grace.

Show grace to our fellow brothers and sisters. Don’t judge them and don’t follow them when they act and follow the ways of the world. If we do, we will have fights and wars which we do not want. Ask God for help and He will help you. But ask with a pure heart and a pure mind and He will give you the grace to accomplish His will.

1 John 2:15-17 – Do not love the world or the things of the world. For all that is in the world – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life – is not of the Father but is of the world.

One last time. Don’t love the world or the things of the world!

Stay in the Spirit and we will see great things happen! Amen.