Ask the Holy Spirit to Help

Jesus promised; "I will ask the Father and he will give you another advocate to help you …" (John 14:16).

And he encourages us to ask for the Holy Spirit’s help. He said to the Samaritan woman: "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is asking you for a drink you would have asked him and he would have given you living water" (John 4:10, 7:37-39).

So when we approach our Heavenly Father in prayer we should ask the Holy Spirit to help us, because "we do not know what we ought to pray for but the Spirit intercedes for us …" (Romans 8:23).

In Revelation 21:7 Jesus again promises; "To the thirsty I will water without cost from the spring of the water of life."

Paul instructs us to "pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests" (Ephesians 6:18), and Jude makes the same point when teaching and explaining how we can overcome sexual temptation (Jude 20).

I remember a prayer time in the church where we were struggling away. It was awkward, and there wasn’t much sense of getting anywhere. And then a lovely Godly woman from Scandinavia, who had much experience in prevailing before the Throne of God prayed very simply; "Lord please come by Your Spirit and help us to pray". And then the prayers flowed one after another after another and before we knew what had happened it was time for our prayer time to end. "For through (Christ) we have access to the Father by one Spirit" (Ephesians 2:18).

Just as Christ is Himself Fully Divine and Fully Human, so our life with Christ is also divine and human. "The advocate, the Holy Spirit, is given ‘to help us’, and ‘to teach us’, and ‘to lead us into all truth"’ (John 14:16, 26, & 16:13). He leads us through the different fields of prayer and teaches and trains us how to pray effectively. Much of the time we spend with our Father will be in what we might call straightforward prayer, petition, and intercession.

But there are also times when the Spirit will lead every disciple, (those who have only recently come to believe in Jesus very definitely included), who is genuinely seeking first the Kingdom into times of profound engagement in the Spirit:

-where we find ourselves going well beyond these initial fields of prayer into deeper places of intercession for others;

-where we strive before the Throne for those we love, both those who already love Jesus and those who do not yet know and love Him;

-where the Spirit tutors us how to lay hold of the great Promises of God on behalf of others and we find ourselves compelled by the Spirit to fast and stand in the breach for many;

-where, like the High Priest Aaron who carried over his heart on his garment the names of the tribes of Israel, we carry these weights (these spiritual burdens) in our hearts before the Lord. These burdens are spiritual burdens, given by the Spirit, and worked out on our knees before our Father’s throne;

-where we knock on "our friend’s door very late in the night" because he is our friend, because he is the only one in the village who has bread, and because we need that bread. There are many, many in the village who need that bread (Luke 11:5-8).

I must emphasize again just how important speaking in tongues is in such prayer. At the very point of our limitation and unknowing the Spirit nudges us and prompts us. The spiritual prayer language of tongues takes over. What we do not know because of the limitation of our natural minds is expressed by the Spirit through this prayer language and the matter is presented before the Father by the Spirit.

This is extremely powerful and effective in the Spirit. The Peace of Christ rules in those moments. But even more than that the one "who speaks in a tongue edifies himself" (1 Corinthians 14:3), and the (entirely natural) Life of the Spirit is catalyzed into action.

My dear friend, this is your inheritance in Christ. It is the Kingdom Life of the Spirit. Don’t settle for anything less. "Seek first his kingdom."