Wait, press, and persevere with all the calmness and with all the ardour of a faith which knows no fear, which allows no doubt, a faith which staggers not at the promise through unbelief, a faith which in its darkest and most depressed hours against hope believes in hope, which is brightened by hope and strengthened by hope, and which is saved by hope. Perhaps our greatest problem is to be so awestricken by these promises that we fail to heed the condition. Act in me, O Holy Spirit, that my work, too, may be holy. He welcomed our team to come down the next week and hold Breakfast Meetings throughout that entire area. [Thought questions for Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and Prayer May 12, 2015]. In previous teaching, we studied who is the Holy Spirit. Whatever! Which one wins? Little by little, gradually, we begin to understand who we are, and what we are, and why we are what we are, and why others are what they are, and what this world is and where it is going and what its end is going to be. . As long as men remain worldlings they are blinded to the ultimate nature of things. Here we have the initial lesson in prayer for the Holy Spirit which was to enlarge to its full fruitage in Pentecost. Ask, seek, knock, till He comes. Jesus and the Holy Spirit. That means, so many months or years ago I received Jesus Christ as my Lord and now I am a believer. What is the difference? One of the most well-known Roman Catholic prayers to the Holy Spirit, "Come Holy Spirit," is a good daily prayer to recite privately or with your family.If you are praying with others, the leader should recite the verse ("Send forth . He is not saying, he who holds the truth, but he who acts upon it, is the one who will do these works. Now, supposing a policeman goes into a cheap slum area of the city at three o'clock in the afternoon. 1. The truth is, that the presence and power of the Holy Spirit at any given meeting is conditioned on praying faith. He only can unfold to us the mysteries of the prayer-life, its duty and its service. Those who came, attracted by the things they saw, faded back into the shadows when persecution began to grow. This is the secret of a Christian: He is not living his own life, he is living another's life. Message transcript and recording © 1964 by Ray Stedman Ministries, owner of sole copyright by assignment from the author. That was the beginning. Our prayers and activities are so feeble and resultless, because He has not worked in us and cannot work in us His glorious work. I simply tried to call attention to the moral revolt that is widespread in the United States today and the fact that it is eating away at our national life and destroying the very foundation of our government, things that you read and are hearing today on every side. ". Intellect cannot execute it, neither can learning, nor eloquence, nor truth, not even the revealed truth can execute the gospel. That was all the Incarnate Christ had to show for the marvelous ministry in the power of the Spirit which he had manifested among men. The world will never be able to understand reality, never! Jesus said, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. No one dared move from Jerusalem to proclaim or utter the message along its streets to the dying multitudes till the Holy Spirit came in baptismal power. All good is comprehended in the Holy Spirit and He is the sum and climax of all good things. The Holy Spirit is not only our Teacher, our Inspirer and our Revealer, in prayer, but the power of our praying in measure and force is measured by the Spirit's power working in us, as the will and work of God, according to God's good pleasure. "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?" Keep us from this, that we may know the fulness of the glory of these promises fulfilled in our lives in this day and age. Praying in the Spirit is a gift to be received through faith in Christ Jesus. He is called there because of some murderous activity that is going on, and he comes up to the address that has been given him, and knocks at the door, and says, "Open in the name of the law." He began to read it and he discovered that this was the answer to his life-long search for what he called "a book that understands me." You are not laying hold of his indwelling life, and for all practical purposes he is not there, he is only with you. The Holy Spirit Will Help You With Your Prayer Life. We ask this in Jesus' name, Amen. So, before the meeting began, I simply asked. Your Heavenly Father will surely send Him if you ask for Him. They will never understand them because man is both the specimen to be examined and the examiner, and the problem is that the error that is in the examiner affects the examination! I remember Mr. Hendricks pausing and saying to us, with great significance, "Have you ever thanked God for unanswered prayer?". Man reasons continually in a vicious circle of unbelief that prevents him from discovering ultimate reality. There is a little sign, seen occasionally in offices, which says: Sometimes when we try to lay hold of a promise of God, and it seemingly does not work, the reason is we have never followed directions. John must wait till a fuller and richer endowment than all of these came on him. The world needs the Holy Spirit to convict it of sin and of righteousness and judgment to come and to make it feel its guiltiness in God's sight. But I do know that the Holy Spirit plays a critical part in our prayer life; He empowers our prayers! There is another passage, Verses 13 and 14, which sets forth the fact that the basis of a Christian's prayer is borrowed authority. Those that you win to Christ, those that are brought by the ministry that you will be ministering will abide, and this cause will nourish in the earth and spread unto the uttermost parts till every nation shall hear the word, and out of every tribe and nation of earth shall come, at last, fruit that shall remain. This is the first time we have ever heard anything that seems to suggest an answer. The other man said, "He ought to be, he did it!" We wonder if there is not a catch somewhere. There were gathered at the breakfast some two hundred men from that area, many of them non-Christians, and with us were the three mayors of the cities of Laguna Beach, Newport Beach and Costa Mesa. We urge the seeking of the Holy Spirit. Now, please don't nail me to the mast for heresy. Here was a wealthy, affluent area. He is there right from the start. But when the Spirit of Truth is come, he takes away the veils, he dissolves the mists. And You shall renew the face of the earth. The prayer inwrought in the heart by the almighty energy of the Holy Spirit works mightily in its results just as Elijah's prayer did. Website © 2021 by Ray Stedman Ministries. There is nothing quite as pagan, or silly, as this meaningless phrase, "this we ask in Jesus' name," added to our prayers without any understanding or regard as whether or not the prayer is actually being asked in Jesus' name. For the higher and graduating lessons in prayer we must have the Holy Spirit. But when you come to the end, where are the crowds? This is exclusively Christian. 13And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. Now that does not mean "He who is a Christian." That is not the sense in which he is using it here. Prayer is the primary way for the believer in Jesus Christ to communicate his emotions and desires with God and to fellowship with God. 16And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— 17the Spirit of truth. Is it to please yourself that your activities are done and your desires aimed?" It is time now in our study of prayer to relate the subject to the total spectrum of Christian living. Ask for the Holy Spirit -- seek for the Holy Spirit -- knock for the Holy Spirit. Our human spirit is the element through which the Spirit of God dwells in us after being regenerated by Him (Romans 8:15-16; 1 John 2:20). What you do in the power of the Spirit will not fade away. We read the tremendous words that came from his lips,The Sermon on the Mount, the parables beside the seashore, these mysterious, marvelous, compelling things that he said. And so he closes his appeal for them with the words, that God was able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. Perhaps in this place, more fully than anywhere else, our Lord unfolds to us the unique secret of Christianity, that aspect of life that has been called "the exchanged life." I read a wonderful testimony by Dr. Emile Caillet concerning his discovery of the Bible as an agnostic young man. One was authorized activity, the other was unauthorized. That the Holy Spirit is in the world as God is in the world, is true. To know the ministry of the Holy Spirit and how to have a relationship with Him, we must know His functions. The Enliven School of Intimacy and Prayer is an online video course that can be completed at your own pace, and you can find out more here . When we speak of the relationship between prayer and the Lord’s word, it includes these two aspects: the words of the Spirit and the words of the Scripture; or the Lord’s word in the Scripture and the Lord’s word in the Spirit… "Filled unto the goodness of God" Ephesians 3:19), is Paul's prayer for us, that in the possession of the Holy Spirit we may understand and realize that the One who comes is God himself indwelling us. We can see problems arising. But how do you square an excuse like that with a verse like this? Invest your life into the salvation of souls. When our friend, Mr. Hendricks, was a single young man in college he met a young lady whose mother immediately had designs on him. God moved in a visible way at that meeting, and when we had finished, I overheard two men discussing it. I don't rebel against him." In the time of his need they left him. Should it comfort us to study the close relationship between Jesus and the Holy Spirit? "Whatever you need," he says, "ask for it and it shall be done." It is rather startling to realize that the work of the Incarnate Christ, that is, Jesus Christ of Nazareth working and walking among men, was, at its end, apparently a total and complete failure. And note, this privilege is exclusively Christian. His work in us to make us the children of God and His Person abiding with us and in us, as children of God, are entirely different stages of the same Spirit in His relation to us. (John 14:12 RSV). God's children need Him more and more, need His life, His more abundant life, His super-abundant life. Because Jesus says "... he dwells with you, and he will be in you," and there is a vital distinction there. The truth is we seek after the Holy Spirit just as we seek after God, just as we seek after Christ, with strong cryings and tears, and we are to seek always for more and more of His gifts, and power, and grace. A total failure! Ask with urgency, ask without fainting. Would we be perfect in all graces? Paul makes the principle of universal application. In this word, Jesus is saying that he who comes will be the One who has within him the fullness of power, all the strength that we could possibly need, that is the first thing. This is the law, a condition brightened by a promise and sweetened by a relationship. The key words are: “Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. I have found it in my own life. We marvel as we read the story or the beginning of his ministry. There was only a tiny band of one man and three or four women that gathered around the foot of the cross. He only has the regal authority to do this royal work. He is out in a residential area and for some reason on his own, in his drunken stupor, he stumbles up the steps of a house, and knocks on the door, and says, "Open inna name of the law." Is it God-centered, or is it self-centered? Why is this? I felt inadequate, I felt the tremendous challenge and my own inability. He who is appropriating by faith that which I am will do these things. What a staggering promise this is! O, God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit … The feeble operation of God in us brings feeble praying. Whatever, anything, I will do it. Then you are in rebellion against the Spirit of God, and to have him dwelling in you means the total collapse of all that revolt until you are saying, "Lord Jesus, whatever you say, your word is my command. Paul's praying was God's proof to Ananias that Paul was in a state which conditioned him to receive the Holy Spirit. This law of prayer for the Holy Spirit presses on the Master and on the disciples as well. It is the same action, and exactly the same man. He is the Father's greatest gift for the child's greatest need. "Many went back and walked no more with him" John 6:66 KJV), the writers of the gospel tell us. Second, that it might be challenging, that I might say something that would awaken these men; and third, that it might be powerful, that its effect would not diminish, that it would not be lightly swept aside but come home with power to the heart. Now, we will say, at ten o'clock that night, that same policeman is drunk. For Jesus is not saying here that a sincere, dedicated Christian of 1964 will actually be able, in his sincerity and his dedicated religious effort, to do what Jesus did in the 1st century, let alone do greater works than he did. They look amazed that you intend to take these words seriously, and act on them. In these three words, "ask," "seek" and "knock," given us by Christ, we have the repetition of the advancing steps of insistency and effort. His gifts are the dispensations of His presence. He sabotages the work of the Holy Spirit. How is it that Christians can know so much and experience so little?" There is so little reflection of the truth our ears are hearing. Let me ask you: "What kind of life are you living? "), and the others should reply with the response ("And You shall renew . Is that what he is saying? A few days after Pentecost the disciples were in an agony of prayer, "and when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit." We say to ourselves, "Can this be true of me? That is the condition. Scripture about Praying in the Spirit “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. As the pilot takes his stand at the wheel to guide the vessel, so the Holy Ghost takes up His abode in the heart to guide and empower all its efforts. It is too wide to take unreservedly. The secret of feeble praying everywhere is the lack of God's Spirit in His mightiness. Praying in the Spirit is prayer with divine help. No one opens the door, so after he knocks again and requests that it be opened in the name of the law and there still is no answer, he breaks it down and goes in and makes his arrest. Holy Spirit, we ask thee to search our own hearts on this day, and save us from this damnable perfidy of talking truth and not living it, of echoing orthodoxy but refusing to submit in practical ways, or shepherding our resources and protecting our lives and refusing to fling them into thy cause and abandon ourselves to thy purposes. Now, in Verse 12, the promise is tremendously plain. (A traditional Catholic prayer) Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. There is a condition to this, however. Jesus said, "... even the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him." Norman Nelson was there and sang beautifully. When you pray, it’s His role to intercede on your behalf in accordance with God’s will. It did not remain; it had no enduring effects. He dwelt with them before but he was to be in them on the Day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit helps to guide us and leads us towards living a more Christ-filled life. Since the Holy Spirit has the same Spirit of the Father, and since He resides in us, He will convey to us that Spirit, which will help us in prayer. . In Verses 12 through 17, three revelations are given of the life of Jesus Christ at work within us: In Verse 12 we learn that the character of a Christian's work is "borrowed activity"; in Verses 13-14 we shall find that the basis of a Christian's prayer is "borrowed authority"; and in Verses 15-17 it is revealed that the secret of a Christian's living is "borrowed deity.". If it is a need within this limit, you can ask for it and it shall be done, without failure. 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