In regard to our personal discipline of private prayer, most of us could perhaps find ourselves in one of three categories: (1) those of us who pray because we are convinced of its importance but who approach it purely as a discipline to be endured; (2) those of us who have endured daily prayer times until it became such a burden that we no longer maintained it as a discipline; and (3) those of us who find daily prayer not only essential but also delightful.
Praying regularly can be a spiritual struggle for any of us, not only for negligent Christians, but even for the conscientious. A delightful thing about our Lord, however, is that He bore our burden of sin (1 Pet. 2:24) and allows us to carry His burden, which is light (Matt. 11:28-30).
Humanly speaking, the Lord’s work is suffering as a result of his people’s prayerlessness, and he is no doubt grieved. There are a number of reasons why we attempt to carry on spiritual ministry without prayer, but I will speak to only one of these possible reasons: the absence of delight in the discipline of prayer.
What starts as a meaningful and spontaneous work of the Spirit may after a time degenerate to the level of a merely human activity. If this happens, one cannot expect to sustain a meaningful personal and intercessory prayer life. We may go through prayer lists mechanically, without really praying.
When is there a happy marriage between the discipline and delight of prayer?
When Prayer is an Overflow of Our Walk with the Lord
Genuine prayer demands that our life be submitted to God’s authority (Jas. 4:7). We are not to pray for something so we can “consume it upon [our] lusts” (vs. 3). This does not, however, prohibit us from praying for things we really want. As we submit to God’s authority in prayer, we can ask what we will and it will be done (John 15:7).
When prayer is an overflow of a believer’s walk with the Lord, that person is delivered from mere external prayer—from only going through the motions with no expectancy. If the ingredient of expectancy is missing, one may not actually be praying.
Petitions that have no aim may not be prayer. When we are praying as an overflow of our walk with the Lord, we are able to confront our hypocritical praying, which goes through the formality of prayer but refuses to deal with personal sin True prayer comes from a heart that knows God longs to cleanse and restore us to fellowship with Himself.
When We Pray in the Spirit
I stated earlier that when prayer becomes a merely human activity, the one who wants to pray will find it impossible to maintain a regular personal and intercessory prayer life.
To pray in the Spirit is to depend on and be responsive to the work of God’s Spirit in one’s life. This truth helped revive my prayer life. God’s Spirit enables us to have a sense of spontaneity in the midst of the discipline of prayer.
Praying in the Spirit is inviting God’s omniscient and wise Spirit to bring to our minds the various concerns and needs that the Lord desires us to talk to him about. It is allowing the Lord to set the agenda of our prayer time.
Since God is a God of order, we can expect His guidance in organizing our prayer lives. Even though He may have initiated the organization, our ultimate dependence should not be on it but rather on the leading of the ever-present Spirit. As long as there is this balance, we can have organization and still be cautious of the danger of organizing the “life” out of our prayer life.
Praying in the Spirit is being alert in our prayers. One Saturday morning I remember not wanting to get up from my knees. I had been spending some meaningful time with the Lord. I wanted to take care of some errands, but I sensed that the Lord had some unfinished business with me. Remaining silent before the Lord, I trusted Him to bring to mind what He wanted to get through to me.
A number of things came to mind to pray about. Then I sensed a special need to pray for safety for that day. After that, I felt a complete liberty in my spirit to proceed into the day.
About two hours later, a car switched lanes and forced me into the lane of oncoming traffic. Somehow the Lord enabled me to escape contact with any other car. My most joyous memory of that day was a fresh realization that God wanted to prepare me through prayer for the various activities of a day and of a lifetime. I regret the many times my hurried spirit has quenched this work of god in my life.
Praying in the Spirit is also a dependence on the Spirit not only to direct our prayers but also to energize them. The Spirit of adoption will always energize our prayers in the direction that liberates us into further experience of a sonship relationship with God (Rom. 8:15-16).
It may mean welcoming appropriate times of silence to calm our human spirits and allow our minds to become uncluttered. Our part is to ask God for His enablement and guidance with regard to what He wants us to talk to Him about that day.
This is both a liberating and a biblical approach to prayer. It is recognition that God is the source of all things, including the enablement and guidance to pray as we ought. In our flesh we cannot conjure up Christlike fervency and compassion. It is the spirit, rather, who is the Author of such qualities.
When We Employ the Help of the Scriptures
The Scriptures offer abundant help in regard to prayer. First of all, God’s Word encourages and motivates us to pray (cf. 2 Sam. 7:27). I have found it helpful to read the Bible and give the Lord an opportunity to direct my attention to a certain truth and then let that be the spring board for beginning to speak with Him.
The Scriptures not only encourage and motivate us to pray but also show us how to pray. God gave the Scriptures so that our lives can be brought into agreement with his teachings.
A Scripture passage can be turned into a prayer whether it is a command, a promise, a statement, or a warning. As we meditate on the Bible, the inspired words discipline us while God keeps His promise to bless us (Josh. 1:8-9; Ezra 7:9-11; Ps. 1:2-3).
As we seek guidance, we will do well to pay close attention to the book of Psalms and other inscripturated prayers. For example, what better way to ask for encouragement than Psalm 86:4-5 or for protection than Psalm 17:8?
There are many other inscripturated prayers (Eph. 1:15-23; 3:14-21; Phil. 1:9-11; Col. 1:9-12) that are helpful for many daily requests we bring before the Lord. In preparing to teach a course on prayer, I found my greatest help was to study and pray the prayers of the Bible.
When We Utilize the Help of Our Need
One April a Christian leader shared with me how the principle of firstfruits became a special blessing to him as he applied it to managing his time. He had found it possible to harvest amazing fruit when he gave God the first few minutes of the day, the first day of the week, and the first part of the new year.
I had thought about the first two applications and had sought to practice them, but I had never considered giving the first few days of a year to the Lord. In January 1983 I sought to do this for the first time. I cleared my schedule and began to seek the Lord and make plans for the year.
As I reviewed some old journals, three things began to surface. I concluded that I would go into the year consciously trusting God with these three specific things I desired Him to do in my life.
As a result, 1983 was one of the most fruitful years of my life. I have sought to set aside some time at the beginning of every year that has followed.
One year I trusted God to use me to raise up prayer among His people. As I laid this before God, I was given one idea all year: tell his people how to make use of their needy moments. Perhaps God would give another person not one but many ideas.
What is prayer? O. Hallesby described prayer as helplessness plus faith (Prayer, Augsburg). Faith is simply coming to Jesus with our weakness. When you seek the help of the Spirit and the Scriptures to enable you to pray, you are truly praying on an effective level.
In practical terms, to pray is to talk to God about your fears (Ps. 34:4) and anxieties (Phil. 4:6-7). These are what move us to pray. We can actually turn our temptations into conversations with God.
One godly man on the west Coast gave a helpful insight to some new believers who had been saved out of various sinful lifestyles. He told them that every time they were tempted to go back to their previous sinful choices, they should let their temptations motivate them to pray.
He encouraged them to prepare ahead of time to have a strategic prayer request to pray—one that would damage Satan’s kingdom as it was answered. This is not a complicated principle but one that can be applied to persistent temptations in order to cause much true prayer to be raised up to God.
God’s command for us to devote ourselves to prayer (Col. 4:2) is not inconsistent with His command to delight ourselves in the Lord (Ps. 37:4). Of course, we all know and agree with this, but those who are conscientious enough to maintain private daily prayer should be cautious that their discipline enhances their communion with the Lord rather than detracts from it.
The strategy of Satan is to get us to despise prayer if possible. The plan of God is to get us to delight in Him and to know that He Himself delights in our prayers (Prov. 15:8).
We are commanded to pray, and prayerlessness is a sin (1 Sam. 12:23). We need to remember always that God’s commands are not burdensome (1 John 5:3).
There is a kind of prayer that is burdensome, but Christ came to liberate us from that. Mechanical, meaningless prayer can adversely affect our spiritual life. It devalues our relationship with God, ignores the aid of the Spirit and of the Scriptures, and hampers the awareness of our true needs.
Since God says there can be a marriage between delight and discipline, let no man separate what God has joined together.