This one has to do with praying in the Spirit.
Steven Gibney writes,
"Brother Tim, I have a question about prayer.
How long should I pray?
Should I come first in worship or does it matter?
Sometimes I sense my own need and frailty
that I just begin to weep and cry out
for mercy and grace.
What is praying in the Spirit?
How do I know that I am?"
Does anybody know where he's getting that from?
Praying in the Spirit?
It comes to us from Ephesians 6.
Listen,
"Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit,
which is the Word of God;
praying at all times in the Spirit,
with all prayer and supplication."
So very quickly,
"how long should I pray?"
My answer I put here:
Your whole life.
I mean, think about it,
praying at all times in the Spirit.
1 Thessalonians 5:17
Pray without ceasing.
Luke 18:1
You ought always to pray and not lose heart.
Romans 12:12
Be constant in prayer.
Our whole life needs to be a life of prayer.
It's like someone said,
prayer to the Christian is like breathing to the natural man.
You come forth into the world
and you begin to breathe.
You come forth into the Kingdom of God,
and you begin to pray.
And the Spirit of God is the Spirit of adoption.
It's the Spirit by which we cry, "Abba, Father."
What are all those "Abba, Father's?"
They're prayer.
They're crying out to God.
Jesus identifies in Matthew 6
that there are times we go into our closet.
There are times we get away
from the commotion,
we get away from the crowd.
I was just reading Count Zinzendorf's life
that he would make it a point
to send people away,
and he would travel certain parts of his journey
all by himself.
He liked to speak out loud
and personally to Christ.
And he would just walk as with a friend
for miles and miles and miles.
Just openly conversing with Christ.
We need that.
We need times alone.
How long?
Jesus says this,
"When you pray, go into your room, shut the door
and pray to your Father, who is in secret,
and your Father who sees in secret, will reward you."
He doesn't say how long that should take,
but brethren, if you're really
trying to bear the burdens
of your brothers and sisters
in the church,
let alone your own burdens,
and you're really trying to hold up the spread of the Gospel,
that's one of the things that was prayed for;
Paul wanted prayer.
Pray for me.
Spread of the Gospel.
If you're praying for our missionaries,
you're praying for the spread of the Gospel,
you're praying for the evangelistic efforts in this city;
you're praying, and you're really giving yourself to pray;
can you do that in 30 seconds?
Can you do that in a minute and a half?
It says you pray like that in secret,
your Father who's there in secret,
hears in secret,
will reward you openly.
Does it mean so little to you
of the rewards of God
that you would just go into your
closet and pray five minutes a week?
Now then he asks the question
about should we start in worship.
All I can say about that is,
look, there are all sorts of ways to pray.
I just thought of the early church praying
Acts 4, "They lifted up their voices together to God..."
Listen to how they prayed:
"Sovereign Lord."
Now see, they're glorifying the Lord there.
There's worship in that.
They're identifying Him: Sovereign.
And He's Lord.
Who made the heaven and the earth.
They're identifying Him as the Creator.
"And the sea and everything in them.
Who through the mouth of our father David
your servant said by the Holy Spirit."
He's the one that speaks to us.
"Why do the Gentiles rage and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves, rulers were
gathered together against the Lord, against His anointed;
for truly in this city there were gathered together
against your holy servant, Jesus, whom you anointed."
So He's the God who anoints.
He's the God who predestinates.
"Both Herod and Pontius Pilate along with the Gentiles
and people of Israel to do
whatever Your hand and Your plan
had predestinated to take place.
Now, Lord, look upon their threats,
and grant to Your servants to continue to speak
Your Word with all boldness."
You know what, when you begin to pray,
and you begin to identify God the way He is,
in terms that are glorifying and praiseworthy to Him,
it will excite you to pray better.
Not only is it glorifying to Him,
it encourages you to think on who this God is.
So, I encourage it.
It's definitely biblical.
It's definitely in that biblical prayer.
And just to tell you,
when they prayed like this,
"the place in which they had gathered together was shaken,
and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit,
and continued to speak the Word of God with boldness."
Then he asked this question:
"What is praying in the Spirit?"
Well, let me tell you this,
I'll tell you what it is,
praying in the Spirit's at the end of all this armor
that we need to fight demonic powers.
Do you remember this?
We fight not against flesh and blood, right?
Isn't that how this chapter starts?
All this warfare talk?
Praying in the Spirit is the kind of prayer
you need to pull down demonic strongholds.
It's the kind of prayer you need
to go up and fight against
these principalities and powers
and wicked dominions in high places.
I don't know that I can exactly define what praying in the Spirit is,
but I can tell you this,
typically when you're praying in the Spirit,
you have a sense of it.
Or when you're in a prayer meeting
and you hear other people pray in the Spirit,
you have a sense of it.
And I'll tell you this,
the kind of prayer that brings down
demonic strongholds
is not where you just whip out your laundry list,
and "Lord, heal Aunt Tilda's toe,
and Lord, help my neighbor who lost their dog,
and Lord, help..."
I mean, when you just throw out the cheap little laundry list...
What kind of prayer is it that pulls down
demonic strongholds?
I'll tell you what it is.
It's when people begin to recite the character of God
like they did there in Acts 4.
It's when they begin to recite the promises of God
until that Spirit takes that promise
and lights them up on fire
so that they are able to lay hold upon God
and have what they're asking for,
and not let God loose, though He shake them
like that angel of the Lord did with Jacob.
And they hold on till they get what they pray for.
I'll tell you what,
you don't pray in the Spirit when you've grieved the Spirit.
When you've got all sorts of sin and wretchedness in your life.
And that Spirit of God,
He tends to energize and He tends to be effectual
in God's people's lives
when their eyes are set upon Christ.
These are things that I would say.
You want to pray in the Spirit? Don't grieve the Spirit.
You want to pray in the Spirit? Set your eyes on Christ.
You want to pray in the Spirit? Set your eyes on the character of God.
You want to pray in the Spirit?
Set your eyes on the promises.
And I'll tell you this,
you don't pray in the Spirit unless you pray.
And it's not going to be these
cheap little flippant things.
And I'm not saying it's always got to be all dramatic,
some of the times, like this guy,
he feels frailty and feels weak
and all he can do is weep;
some of the most "in the Spirit" prayers may be
where you can't even get a word out.
All it is is a weep or a groan or a tear that runs down your face.
It doesn't have to be all dramatic and everything.
But it's where men with pure hearts
are ascending the hill of the Lord
and they're laying hold on the arm of God.
That's praying in the Spirit.
And though it may be a sigh, it may be a groan,
it's pure men that pray like this.
Pure women.
Not those who defile themselves and grieve the Spirit of God.
I can't exactly define all of it, but I'll tell you what,
I know when in the depths of my own soul
a promise of God has come to my heart
where I am determined to have it and not let go of God.
I've heard men pray before,
where I've just entered in.
And you know it.
You folks know it.
You've been in prayer meetings
and you've heard some people pray
and it's just kind of like
a drone that it doesn't feel like
there's been a laying hold on God.
It's just kind of talking
and it's just going on;
where others, they've just been lifted up
and they say, "God, You are like this."
And then the whole congregation
just kind of says, "Yes!"
"And Lord, we need to have this."
And it's like, "Yes!"
"Lord, we'll not be denied."
And you just feel there's this swaying
and the Spirit is moving.
Where other times,
it's just this chatter and this drone.
But you guys know what I'm saying is right.
You can sense it. You can feel it.
There's certain times when people pray
and it's like I'm lifted away; I'm in another place,
I'm carried up.
May God give us that.
And we have times like that in our prayer meetings.
And I'm thankful for it.
May God give us those kind of times
in our personal lives as well.
Well, that's it for today.
Any questions or comments anybody want to make?
Did I kill you with time?
(from the room)
How would you exhort somebody who feels discouragement?
Tim: I would say this,
pray through your discouragements.
Live through your discouragements.
Press on in your discouragements.
I'll tell you one of the most discouraging things for me,
is the silence of Christ.
And what I mean by that is when you pray,
and then there's no answer.
And you pray again.
And there's no answer.
And if I were to bring in
a real life situation,
I would bring in the Syrophoenician woman.
"Lord, my daughter's got a demon."
He didn't answer her.
She kept pressing the matter.
Then, when He did answer,
He says look, you're a Gentile dog.
I didn't come for the dogs,
I came for the children.
She said, "Lord, even the dogs
eat the crumbs that fall off of the table."
She kept pressing Him; she kept pressing Him.
There are times for me,
that's great discouragement;
but the silence of Christ
is not meant to turn us away.
And it's not meant to communicate to us
that Christ doesn't love us.
It's meant to stir those longings even deeper,
to press the faith even further.
If you look at that Syropheonician woman,
just pressed her to become
more violent in her attempts to
get a response from the Lord.
And in the end,
she had what she came for.
So, in the midst of our discouragements,
I would call the Syropheonician woman...
Because why are we discouraged?
We get discouraged because we don't have
certain things that we want.
That's really what it is.
Discouragement comes because I want something
that the Lord is not giving me.
He's gone quiet on me.
If you think about it.
I mean, are you discouarged when all the things that give you joy
and happiness and pleasure are all being heaped upon you?
Typically not.
Typically, we're discouraged when we feel something's lacking.
We either feel His face is withdrawn,
we feel there's something we feel so pressed
to have from Him;
and He's gone silent.
(from the room)
I heard an analogy once that prayer is like digging
for buried treasure.
And that some people around you are going to hit that treasure
before you do, but that doesn't make you stop digging.
It's still down there.
Tim: And Spurgeon's likened it to
shaking a fruit tree
trying to get the fruit to fall off.
And that a lot of people quit beating on the tree
one stroke before... if they would have hit it one more time,
it would have fallen.
And it's true,
we have not, because we ask not.
And those that press through, are the ones that receive
what they ask for.
Do you know George Mueller
prayed fifty-some years for
one of his brothers
every single day that God would save him,
and God finally did save him?
God saved some of his family members
who he prayed for every day of his life after he died.
He didn't even get to see it in this life.