(Rom 8:26-27; Eph 6:18; Jude 20)

“Then I will pour out the ​​​Spirit of grace and of prayer…” – Zechariah 12:10 NLT​

While teaching a series on intercession recently, I put together this short article, to bless you as much as it has blessed me. We know that whenever the Holy Spirit is spoken of in the bible, there is always a depiction of FULLNESS given. Acts chapter 2, most famously says they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. Therefore it is true to say that God’s Spirit brings a fullness to our lives that we must yield to. And when Andrew Murray speaks of intercession in his book: “The Ministry of Intercession: A Plea for More Prayer,” he too speaks of the Spirit in this light. And as I didn’t want to remove any of the original richness, I have included the following excerpts verbatim, as follows:

“The Holy Spirit has been given to every child of God to be his life. He dwells in him, not as a separate being in one part of his nature, but as his very life. He is the divine power or energy by which his life is maintained and strengthened. All that a believer is called to be or to do, the Holy Spirit can and will work in him to accomplish. ​If he does not know or yield to the ‘holy guest,’ then the blessed Spirit cannot work, and his life is a sickly one, full of failure and sin. As he yields, and waits, and obeys the leading of the Spirit, God works in him all that is pleasing in His sight.”

Everything Depends on being FULL of the Spirit

“This Holy Spirit is, in the first place, a Spirit of prayer. He was promised as a Spirit of grace and of prayer, the grace for supplication. He was sent forth into our hearts as the Spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. He enables us to say, in true faith and growing understanding of its meaning, Our Father which art in the heavens.

Therefore he is able also to save to the uttermost those that come unto God by him, seeing he ever lives to make intercession for them. And as we pray in the Spirit, our worship is as God seeks it to be, in spirit and in truth. Prayer is just the breathing of the Spirit in us; power in prayer comes from the power of the Spirit in us, waited on and trusted in. Failure in prayer comes from feebleness of the Spirits work in us. Our prayer is the index of the measure of the Spirits work in us. To pray aright, the life of the Spirit must be right in us. For praying the effectual, much-availing prayer of the righteous man, everything depends on being FULL of the Spirit.”

Three Simple Lessons to Praying by the Spirit

1. Firstly we must believe that the Spirit dwells in us (Eph. 1:13). Hidden and unfelt inside every child of God is the mighty Spirit of grace. We receive the promise of the Spirit by faith. All the time we measure our ability to pray by our feelings and thoughts of success, we only ever face discouragement. Beautifully however, this burden lifts (along with the fear of discouragement), when we finally see that the Holy Spirit Himself is praying for us, with us and in us. And it He who does all the heavy lifting!

2. Secondly be on guard not to grieve (sadden) the Holy Spirit (Eph. 4:30). On this point Murray adds, “If you do, how can He work in you the quiet, trustful, and blessed sense of that union with Christ which makes your prayers well-pleasing to the Father? Beware of grieving Him by sin, by unbelief, by selfishness, by unfaithfulness to His voice in conscience. Do not think grieving Him is a necessity; that cuts away the very sinews of your strength. Do not consider it impossible to obey the command, Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. He Himself is the very power of God to make you obedient.” It is the Holy Spirit who reveals “Christ unseen within you, as actually your life and strength. Grieve not the Holy Spirit by distrusting Him, because you do not feel His presence in you.”

3. Thirdly, we must be FILLED with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18). And on this final point Murray claims: “It is only the healthy spiritual life that can pray aright. The command comes to each of us: Be FILLED with the Spirit.”

It is God’s will that we should be FILLED (crammed) with His Spirit. “Our whole being ought to be entirely yielded up to the Holy Spirit, to be possessed and controlled by Him alone… we may count upon and expect the Holy Spirit to take possession and fill us. Has not our failure in prayer evidently been owing to our not having accepted the Spirit of prayer to be our life; to our not having yielded wholly to Him, Whom the Father gave as the Spirit of His Son, to work the life of the Son in us? Let us, to say the very least, be willing to receive Him, to yield ourselves to God and trust Him for it. Let us not again willfully grieve the Holy Spirit by declining, by neglecting, by hesitating to seek to have Him as fully as He is willing to give Himself to us.”

The Fully Yielded Life knows the Power of the Trinity

The Holy Spirit is the source of all power and blessing – He is the Spirit of prayer — and His FULLNESS is waiting for us to yield ourselves to it.

In closing Murray said: “We all admit the place the Father and the Son have in our prayers. It is to the Father we pray, and from Whom we expect the answer. It is in the merit, and name, and life of the Son, abiding in Him and He in us, that we trust to be heard. But have we understood that in the Holy Trinity, all the three persons have an equal place in prayer, and that faith in the Holy Spirit of intercession praying in us is as indispensable as faith in the Father and the Son? How clearly we have this in the words, For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. As much as prayer must be to the Father, and through the Son, it must be by the Spirit. And the Spirit can pray in no other way in us, than as He lives in us. It is only as we give ourselves to the Spirit living and praying in us, that the glory of the prayer-hearing God, and the ever-blessed and most effectual mediation of the Son, can be known by us in their power.”

Excerpts taken from: “The Ministry of Intercession – A Plea for More Prayer” By Andrew Murray.
Copyright 2023 John Chiafos. Burden Classics 9 BurtenClassics.com ISBN 9798850162733

Dr Jennifer Pateman
Vice President of Alan Pateman Ministries

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