The Spirit of God helps us to overcome 4 weaknesses of our prayers.
What are these 4 weaknesses?
1. We do not know what we ought to pray for. We often pray selfish prayers. We have our own prayer list but it can be far from the list that God has. Our list is shallow and narrow. It is often self focused, self serving and self directed.
The Spirit's list is totally different. The list is written by God himself. The things that are important to Him. It is about the Kingdom, it has eternal impact whereas our list is about ourselves, our families and even our church only. It is alright to pray for personal items, but it is not alright to stay only at that level.
2. We sometimes do not feel the urgency of things. We miss his timing. We miss what He wants to get done at a certain time. Right timing is important. Queen Esther was made by Mordecai to understand that intervention to save the Jews requires immediate action. Praying and acting after the specific dateline is over will be useless. The church was in much prayer for Peter when he was thrown into jail. They were not occupied in praying for the distribution of food or some other church programs.
The Spirit has the perfect timing. He might move you to wake up and pray in the middle of the night. A burden for prayer may suddenly land on you while you are driving or working behind your desk or cooking. When this happens, obey the Spirit of God. He is strongly nudging you to get into His presence and uphold the person or situation in prayer immediately.
3. The Spirit guides us pray in specific details to fulfill the plans of God. We may pray for the right concerns at the right time but still pray for the wrong outcomes.
This is because our ways are not His ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts.
We may pray for deliverance, but the Lord may want us to go through the fiery ordeal and teach us a valuable lesson. We may pray for provision but the Lord may want us to give up that pursuit.
We may pray for success, but the Lord may delay it because He knows what it can do to you if you have the success now.
Paul says ' we do not know what we ought to pray for.'
The Spirit of God knows the mind of God and helps us to pray specifically and accurately the will of God. When we pray in the heavenly language, the Spirit who gave us that utterance will guide our prayers to fulfil the exact will of God.
4. We often lack passion in our prayers. Passion speaks of what we feel and also how much we want what we are asking for. Lifeless, cold and repeated prayers will not be effective. The Holy Spirit expresses his burdens in us and causes us to respond with deep groanings. The Spirit wrenches our hearts and prayers beyond words are released. It can sometimes sound like a pregnant lady going through labor. In the same way, the Spirit prays through us so intensely as He uses our prayers to birth things in the spiritual. Great power is unleashed to invade the spiritual realm.
Be transformed in your prayer life with the heavenly language of the Spirit. Let the Spirit fill you and lead you in your prayers. A transformed prayer life, transforms the pray-er and the situations prayed for.
Romans 8:26 (NIV)
[26] In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit* himself intercedes for us* with groans that words cannot express.
(The Power of the Heavenly Language Part 3)
