The Spirit of Prayer

And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God. ROMANS 8:27

Prevailing prayer, Finney knew, cannot be manufactured. A Christian can resolve to pray definitely and perseveringly, but the deep burden that carries such prayer comes from God. His sixth lecture on revivals, which Ochorus also carries as a separate sermon, is about that gift: the Holy Spirit helping our infirmities and making intercession in us. It is one of the most personal things he wrote, because he had known it himself from the first weeks of his Christian life.

The burden that would not lift

In his Memoirs Finney tells how, not long after his conversion, the husband of a woman he had once boarded with came into the law office and said that his wife could not live through the night. She was not a Christian. The words, Finney wrote, planted an arrow in his heart. A burden came on him that he could not understand, with an intense desire to pray for her. He went to the meeting-house and tried, but could only groan. He walked back to the office and could not sit still. Three times he went back to pray, and the third time, he said, the Lord gave him power to prevail; he was enabled to roll the burden on God, and received an assurance that she would not die, and would never die in her sins. She recovered, and soon after found hope in Christ. When he described the experience to an older Christian, the man told him that it was the travail of his soul, and showed him the Scriptures that speak of it.

My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you. GALATIANS 4:19

He had the opposite experience too. He was praying for a man in the town, a legislator under deep conviction, when he found his mouth shut. It was as if the Lord said, Speak no more to me of that matter. The next day the man told him he had promised his political friends to put religion off until the session was over. He never returned to it. Finney concluded that the Spirit leads prayer, and sometimes withholds it.

What the Spirit does

In the lecture Finney was careful and, in the main, sober. The Spirit intercedes for the saints, he said, “Not by superseding the use of our faculties.” He does not put words in our mouths or pray instead of us. “He prays for us, by exciting our own faculties.” He enlightens the mind, sets truth before it, and keeps it there until the heart is moved. He makes the Christian feel the value of souls and the danger of sinners. He opens the promises of Scripture and shows how they apply. He gives discernment in reading the providence of God. And sometimes He leads a believer to desire and pray for a particular blessing about which Scripture says nothing specific — a particular person’s salvation, for example.

Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints. EPHESIANS 6:18

The groanings which cannot be uttered, Finney thought, are desires too great for words — the soul too full to speak, able only to groan before God, who understands.

Testing the spirits

He knew how dangerous this could be. People are sometimes led away, he admitted, by strange fantasies and crazy impulses. His answer was plain: “Try the spirits by the Bible.” Compare the desires you feel with the spirit and temper of religion as Scripture describes it. The Spirit does not contradict His own Word. And we are not to expect to feel some physical contact with God; the Spirit works through our minds, not around them.

Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God. 1 JOHN 4:1

This is wise. A burden in prayer that leads to humility, love and faithfulness to Scripture bears the marks of the Spirit. An impulse that leads to pride, novelty or contempt for others does not.

How it is obtained

How, then, does a Christian come to have the spirit of prayer? Finney’s answer was the same as for everything else: by the means God has appointed. Ask for the Spirit, since the Father has promised to give Him to those who ask. Fix the mind on the things that should move it — the state of the church, the condition of the lost — rather than asking and then turning to worldly things. Watch to see whether God answers. Confess and forsake sin, and do not grieve the Spirit. Aim to obey the whole revealed will of God.

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him? LUKE 11:13

He added, with his usual sharpness, that the spirit of prayer is a test of character: the Spirit intercedes for the saints, and those who have never known His help in prayer should ask why.

The hidden intercessors

Finney never believed that the power of his revivals lay in his own preaching. Again and again in his Memoirs he traced it to people praying out of sight. He wrote of Father Nash, who gave himself to prayer for the places where Finney preached, and of Abel Clary, a minister who, during the Rochester revival, never came to the meetings at all but stayed in a house outside the city, praying day and night in such agony that his host did not know what to make of him. At Adams, soon after his conversion, he proposed that the young converts pray in their closets at sunrise, noon and sunset for a week; he wrote that the spirit of prayer was poured out on them so strongly that some could not stand, and the meetings were soon thronged. Whatever we make of the details, his conviction is plain: revival is carried on the knees of people whose names nobody knows.

Where care is needed

Two of Finney’s claims in this lecture go too far.

He argued that Paul, when he asked three times for the thorn in the flesh to be removed, did not pray in faith, because he had no promise or leading to warrant it. That is special pleading to protect a theory. Paul was not rebuked. He was answered: My grace is sufficient for thee. Faithful prayer is sometimes answered with something better than we asked.

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. 2 CORINTHIANS 12:9

He also dismissed forms of prayer as absurd and destructive of the spirit of prayer. But the Lord Jesus gave His disciples a form, and the church has prayed the Psalms for three thousand years. Written prayers can be dead; so can extempore ones. The Spirit can breathe through both.

Finally, beware of making the felt burden the only sign of true prayer. Finney himself wrote in his Memoirs that after a deep experience of rest in God in 1843 he no longer had the long, agonising struggles in prayer he had once known, but came to God with more calmness because with more perfect confidence. The spirit of prayer has more than one voice.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Ask the Father, today, for the Holy Spirit to help you pray. Christ has promised He will give Him.

2. When a person or need weighs on you unexpectedly, do not brush it aside. Stop and pray about it then.

3. Test any strong leading in prayer against Scripture and against the fruit of the Spirit before you act on it.

4. Pray the Lord’s Prayer slowly once a day this week, letting its form carry your own desires.

5. Think of a ministry you value. Commit to pray for it in secret, as Nash and Clary prayed.

A PRAYER

Holy Spirit, I do not know what I should pray for as I ought. Help my infirmity, and pray in me according to the will of God.

Lay on my heart the burdens You want me to carry, and give me grace not to shake them off.

Keep me from mistaking my own impulses for Your leading. Bring every desire to the test of Your Word.

And when You answer, whether with what I asked or with Your sufficient grace, let me rest in Your will. Amen.