Pray In The Spirit

Scripture

Pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere.

~Ephesians 6:18, NLT

Quote

“To pray in the Spirit is to pray in harmony with the will of God, under the influence of the Holy Spirit.”

~A.W. Tozer

Jack Taylor once said, “Prayer is the business of the church.” We don’t pray so we can get on with the business, prayer is the business. Paul said in Romans 8, The Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words, and the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will. I think of prayer as a baseball diamond: you have two foul lines: one is God’s will and the other is faith. Jesus said, “And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” In other words, we do not ask for anything that does not have Jesus approval. He must be able to endorse our prayers. Jesus said in Mark 11:24, I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours. If we stay inside these two foul lines, we will get results. Of course, we have to pray IN THE SPIRIT because prayer is a spiritual exercise. We can witness in the flesh, preach in the flesh, and pray in the flesh, but the flesh cannot please God and our efforts will be counter productive.

I must confess that my time alone in the office has suffered and is still suffering but one of my projects is to go through my old notes and throw away what I don’t want to keep. So far, I have gotten rid of very little. Here is a prayer I found. I think it came from a little prayer book called VALLEY OF VISION. I did change some things, but without finding the book, I couldn’t tell you what. I think it is a good prayer…

Holy Spirit, You are indeed welcome in this place; You who proceed from the Father and bear witness to the Son have mercy on this wretched soul. Hover over the chaos as You did in the beginning, bring light to my darkness, hope to my despair and order to my troubled heart. Please remove unruly desires, doubts, fears, disbelief and any thought of rebellion against You. Brighten my ignorant mind with Your truth divine. Make my soul a fragrant garden of goodness and grace. Fulfill in me Your every desire. Be my comforter, guide, teacher and judge; and convict me when I err. Take the things of Christ and make them real to me. May I tenaciously pursue a deeper love for Christ and may I forsake all affection for this present world that is in rebellion against Your Anointed. Keep me ever mindful of the cross. Let me see my wretched sin as the very nails that pierced my Savior’s hands and feet. I do live in constant repentance of my part in His death. Help me to love as HE loved, live as He lived and die as He died—in humble obedience. Blessed Ruach Ha Kodesh {Spirit of holiness} prosecute my sin and magnify my Savior. Please suffer no devilish device to deceive me. In Jesus name. Amen!

Extra

June did not stay in Rehab, she came home late yesterday evening. She did rest good last night. Holly will try to line up some in home PT today. She does well on the couch or bed but movement is difficult. Mylee stayed with us last night but thankfully, we had no problems. I have one prayer request: I can rent the mini-track hoe for the weekend, but I do not work on Sunday, which means I will have only one day which would be tomorrow. This would mean very little preparation time for Sunday. If I postpone the work and it rains again, we are talking a week or two delay. I am in a quarndry, I don’t really know what to do but I have to make a decision before noon. Pray that I will do the right thing. I have preached the sermon in John 6 at least a dozen times but I am not at peace with that: I want a fresh word. My mind has been very dull lately.

With all that is going on, I did not check on Keith Dotson yesterday. I think there has been some improvement, at least in stabalizing him but he is in critical condition. Pray for Joyce. She is having a difficult time.

Seems like I am forgetting something but that is normal. I hope you have a great weekend and thanks for reading the blog. I wrote it this morning so there are going to be lots of errors. My same day proof reading is not very good.