The Source Of Power In Prayer

Prayer is powerful! Above all, having an effective prayer life is unimaginably an excellent thing every believer should desire and have. Looking at Apostle Paul’s teaching about prayer, you will be reminded of how good it is to pray unceasingly with and in the spirit.

Romans 8: 26-27.—Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

Here, we have the teaching of God regarding the help of the Holy Spirit in prayer. The first half of this chapter is of much importance in connection with the teaching of God's word regarding the Spirit. In Romans 6, we read about being dead to sin and alive to God, and in Romans 7, about being dead to the law and married to Christ, and also about the impotence of the unregenerated man to do God's will. This is only a preparation to show us how helpless we are; and then in the eighth chapter comes the blessed work of the Spirit, expressed chiefly in the following words: "For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death." Romans 8:2. The Spirit makes us free from the power of sin, teaches and leads us so that we walk after the Spirit.

In our inner disposition, we may become spiritually minded and enabled to mortify the deeds of the body. The Holy Spirit helps our infirmities. Prayer is the most necessary thing in the spiritual life. Yet we do not know how to pray nor what to pray for as we ought. The Spirit, Paul tells us, prays with groanings unutterable. And again he tells us that we ourselves often do not know what the Spirit is doing within us, but there is one, God, who searches the hearts. Words often reveal my thoughts and my wishes, but not what is deep in my heart, and God comes and searches my heart, and deep down, hidden, what I can not see and what was to me an unutterable longing, God finds.

Powerful prayer! The confession of ignorance! Ah, friends, I am often afraid for myself as a minister that I pray too easily. I have been praying for these forty or fifty years and it becomes, as far as man is concerned, an easy thing to pray. We all have been taught to pray, and when we are called upon, we can pray, but it gets far too easy, and I am afraid we think we are praying often when there is little real prayer. Now if we are to have the praying of the Holy Ghost in us, one thing is needed; we must begin by feeling, "I can not pray." When a man breaks down and can not pray, and there is a fire burning in his heart, and a burden resting upon him, there is something drawing him to God. "I do not know what to pray," We are not ignorant enough. Abraham went out not knowing whither he went; that was an element of ignorance and also an element of faith (See Hebrews 11:8).

Jesus said to His disciples when they came with their prayer for the throne, "You do not know what you are asking." Matthew 20:22. Paul says, "No one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God." 1 Corinthians 2:11. You say, "If I am not to pray the old prayers I learned from my mother or from my professor in college or from my experience yesterday and the day before, what am I to pray?" I answer, pray new prayers, and rise higher into the riches of God.

You know what we think of a student who goes to college fancying he knows everything. He will not learn much. Sir Isaac Newton said, "I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." And so with regard to the church: We want to take up our position as members of the church of Christ in this land; and as belonging to that great body, to say, "Lord God, is there nothing that can be done to bless the church of this land and to revive it and bring it out of its worldliness and out of its feebleness?"

We may confer together and conclude faithlessly, "No, we do not know what is to be done; we have no influence and power over all these ministers and their churches." But on the other hand, how blessed to come to God and say, "Lord, we do not know what to ask. You know what to grant." The Holy Spirit could pray a hundredfold more in us if we were only conscious of our ignorance because we would then feel our dependence upon Him.

There is the first thought: our ignorance. "For we do not know what to pray for as we ought;" but "the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words." Romans 8:26. We often hear about the work of God the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost in working out and completing the great redemption, and we know that when God worked in the creation of the world, He was not weary, and yet we read that wonderful expression in the book of Exodus about the Sabbath day, "He rested."Genesis 2:2. He was refreshed, the Sabbath day was a refreshment to Him. God had to work and Christ had to work, and now the Holy Spirit works, and His secret working place, the place where all work must begin, is in the heart where He comes to teach a man how to pray.

When a man begins to get an insight into that which is needed that which is promised and that which God waits to perform, he feels it to be beyond his conception; then is the time he will be ready to say, "I can not limit the holy one of Israel by my thoughts; I give myself up in the faith that the Holy Spirit can be praying for me with groanings, with longings, that can not be expressed." Apply that to your prayers.

There are different phases of prayer. There is worship when a man just bows down to adore the great God. We do not take time to worship. We need to worship in secret, just to get ourselves face to face with the everlasting God, that He may overshadow us and cover us and fill us with His love and His glory. It is the Holy Spirit that can work in us such a yearning that we will give up our pleasures and even part of our business, so that we may often meet our God.

The next phase of prayer is fellowship. In prayer, there is not only the worship of a king but fellowship as of a child with God. Christians take far too little time in fellowship. They think prayer is just coming with their petitions. If Christ is to make me what I am to be, I must tarry in fellowship with God. If God is to let his love enter in and shine and burn through my heart, I must take time to be with Him.

The smith puts his rod of iron into the fire. If he leaves it there for a short time it does not become red hot. He may take it out to do something with it and after a time put it back again for a few minutes, but this time it does not become red hot. In the course of the day, he may put the rod into the fire a great many times and leave it there two or three minutes each time, but it never becomes thoroughly heated. If he takes time and leaves the rod for ten or fifteen minutes in the fire, the whole iron will become red hot with the heat that is in the fire. So if we are to get the fire of God's holiness, love, and power, we must take more time with God in fellowship. That was what gave men like Abraham and Moses their strength. They were men who were separated to a fellowship with God, and the living God made them strong. Oh, if we did but realize what prayer can do!

Another, and most important phase of prayer is intercession. What a work God has set open for those who are His priests—intercessors! We find a wonderful expression in the prophecy of Isaiah; God says, "Let them lay hold of my protection" Isaiah 27:5 and again, "There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you." Isaiah 64:7. In other passages, God refers to the intercessors for Israel. Have you ever taken hold of God? Thank God, some of us have; but oh, friends, representatives of the church of Christ in the United States, if God were to show us how much there is of intense prayer for a revival through the church, how much of sincere confession of the sins of the church, how much of pleading with God and giving Him no rest till He make Jerusalem a glory in the earth, I think we should all be ashamed. We need to give up our hearts to the Holy Spirit, so that He may pray for us and in us with groanings that can not be uttered.

What am I to do if I am to have this Holy Spirit within me? The Spirit wants time and room in the heart; He wants the whole being. He wants all my interest and influence to go out for the honour and the glory of God; He wants me to give myself up. Beloved friend, you do not know what you could do if you would give yourself up to intercession. Intercession is a work that a sick one lying on a bed year by year may do in power. It is a work that a poor one who hardly has a penny to give to a missionary society can do day by day. It is a work that a young girl who is in her father's house and has to help in the housekeeping can do by the Holy Spirit. People often ask: What does the Church of our day do to reach the masses? They ask though they ask it tremblingly, for they feel so helpless: What can we do against the materialism and infidelity in places like London, Berlin, New York, and Paris? We have given it up as hopeless. Ah, if men and women could be called out to band themselves together to take hold of God! I am not speaking of any prayer union or any prayer time statedly set apart, but if the Spirit could find men and women who would give up their lives to cry to God, the Spirit would most surely come.

It is not selfishness and it is not mere happiness that we seek when we talk about the peace and the rest and the blessing Christ can give. God wants us, Christ wants us, because He has to do a work; the work of Calvary is to be done in our hearts, we are to sacrifice our lives to plead with God for men. Oh, let us yield ourselves day by day and ask God that it may please Him to let His Holy Spirit work in us.

Then comes the last thought, that God Himself comes to look with complacency upon the attitude of His child.

Perhaps that poor man does not know that he is praying; perhaps he is ashamed of his prayers. So much the better. Perhaps he feels burdened and restless, but God hears, God discovers what is the mind of the Spirit, and will answer. Oh, think of this wonderful mystery, God the Father on the throne ready to grant unto us His blessings according to the riches of His glory; Christ the almighty high priest pleading day and night. Let us open and enlarge our hearts and say to God, "Oh that I might be a priest, to be in God's presence continually and to take hold of God and to bring down a blessing to my perishing fellowmen!"

God longs to find the intercession of Jesus reflected in the hearts of His children, and where He finds it, it is a delight. And He that searches the hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because he prays for the saints, according to the will of God. God's word continually comes to us to pray for all not to be content with ourselves. Think upon the hundreds of church members in this land, multitudes unconverted, multitudes just converted, but yet worldly and careless. Think of the thousands of nominal Christians—Christians in name, but robbing God! And can we be happy? If we bear the burden of souls, can we have this peace and joy? God gives you peace and joy with no other object than that you should be strong to bear the burden of souls in the joy of Christ's salvation.

We do not wish to say, "I am trying to be as holy as I can; what have I to do with those worldly people about me?" If there is a terrible disease in my hand, my body can not say, "I have nothing to do with it." When the people had sinned, Ezra rented his garments, bowed in the dust and made a confession. He repented on the part of the people.

Nehemiah, when the nation sinned, made confession, and cast himself before God, deploring their disobedience to the God of their fathers. Daniel did the very same. And you think that we as believers have not a great work to do?

Suppose we were without a single sin; just suppose it; could we then make a confession? Look at Christ, without sin! He went down into the waters of baptism with sinners; He made Himself one with them. God has spoken to us to ask us if we realize what we are. He now asks us whether we belong to the church of this land and whether we have borne the burden of sin around us. Let us go to God, and may He by the Holy Spirit fill our hearts with an unutterable burden for the church, and may God give us the grace to mourn before Him. And when we begin to confess the sins of the church, we will begin to feel our own sins as never before. In five of the epistles to the seven churches in Asia, the keynote was "Repent" There was to be no idea of overcoming and getting a blessing unless they repented. Let us on behalf of the church of Christ repent, and God will give us courage to feel that He will revive His work.