Recently, I have been thinking more about the Holy Spirit. In two earlier posts (January 15, 2008 and January 21, 2008) I wrote of the Holy Spirit and His role in the Church. These posts were concerned with identifying the activities of the Spirit in the Church and specifically His manifestation within congregations and in the individual lives of believers. In the posts I argued that if we indeed, as Christ’s Church and as individual believers, truly do have the indwelling Holy Spirit, there should be tangible evidence to that effect. I also argued that if there is an obvious lack of His presence, then it is not because He has been withheld or withdrawn from the Church but rather that we, in some way, have rejected Him. I still maintain this belief.
However, this post is concerned with something slightly different. It is more concerned with the relationship of prayer, the Spirit and the revealed will of God: prayer without the Spirit is useless for the furtherance of the will of God, since the will of God is not to be discovered through prayer but through the serious study of and obedience to the Word of God which is a complete and sufficient expression of God’s will for His people, both collectively and personally.
But first, we should know how we are to pray. What are some marks that characterize Godly prayer?
We are to pray with humility in ourselves (James 4:6, 10; 1 Peter 5:5) but with boldness in Christ (John 15:7; Heb.4:15-16). We are to pray trusting that our prayers are heard, and not with a doubting attitude (Matt. 21:22; Mark 11:24; James 1:5-8; 5:14-15). We are to pray in the name of—or by the authority of—Jesus Christ (1 John 5:14-15) and by the efforts of the Holy Spirit (Luke 11:13), not by our own efforts. Therefore, if we are grieving the Spirit (Eph 4:30) or quenching him, we can be assured our prayers will be of less or no effect. (See also Romans 8:26-27; Eph. 6:18; Jude 20; others: Rev. 1:10; Luke 10:21; Acts 19:21; Rom. 9:1; Eph. 2:18; Col. 1:8.)
In the fourth volume of his expositional commentary on the Gospel of John (BakerBooks, Grand Rapids, 1999, p. 1,312) James Montgomery Boice has this to say about the Holy Spirit and prayer (in the context of living a holy life or the experience of sanctification):
“A …way in which we will not find holiness is through prayer or still less, through prayer meetings. Prayer is important, and the Christian who is growing in the Christian life will inevitably find that times of prayer, both public and private, are increasingly precious to him or her. But however valuable prayer is, it is not the God-ordained means for growth in holiness. Prayer is preparation for such growth. But at what point in prayer does God actually speak to us and direct us in the way we should go? It is only when God the Holy Spirit brings the words of Scripture to our minds or directs us to the Bible for the direction we need. Apart from this corresponding reflection on the Word of God prayer is merely a monologue. As such, it may relieve our personal anxieties, but it does not provide direction. On the contrary, when we study the Word and pray over it, God leads us clearly and keeps us from the suggestions of Satan or the kinds of autosuggestion (or wish fulfillment) that all too frequently pass for divine guidance in the lives of some Christians” (emphasis added).
From a slightly different perspective, Ray Stedman has written:
“… the brutal fact is that, though every true Christian has the Spirit of Truth, thousands walk in darkness and understand no more about themselves than the most blind pagan around. Though we have the Spirit available to us, we are as deluded and as blinded as any worldling living next door. Though we have the potential he does not have, we are not getting into it. We may be Bible-taught, but we are not Spirit-taught. Why not? Because Jesus says "... he dwells with you, and he will be in you," and there is a vital distinction there.
“Now, please don't nail me to the mast for heresy. I know as well as you do that every believer, when he receives Jesus Christ, receives the indwelling Spirit of God; that He is in us from the beginning. We do not need later to pray for his coming. He is there right from the start. Historically, it was true that these disciples were not to receive the indwelling of the Spirit until the Day of Pentecost. He dwelt with them before but he was to be in them on the Day of Pentecost. But, having said all that, it is still true that, positionally, though the Spirit of God is dwelling in you, as far as you are concerned, experientially, it is as though he only dwelt with you. You are not laying hold of his indwelling life, and for all practical purposes he is not there, he is only with you.
“This is the explanation for the prevailing weakness in Christian living.
“The other night at our Board of Elders meeting we were wrestling with this problem. We were asking ourselves this question, "Why is it that though truth seems to be poured out continually in this place, through our teachers, in the pulpit and in so many ways, yet in many of our peoples' lives there is such a superficial shallowness? There is so little reflection of the truth our ears are hearing. Why is this? How is it that Christians can know so much and experience so little?" We were wrestling with this problem. I commented how disturbing it is to sit down with a group of people and mention some great promise of Scripture or Christian life that ought to be ours and to have everybody nod their head in agreement with it, and then to see the look of shock come into their eyes when you propose some action on it. They look amazed that you intend to take these words seriously, and act on them. As we talked about this, one of the young men who was with us said a very helpful and insightful thing. He said, "You know, I think I know what it is. I have found it in my own life. When I simply give up arguing back, and start obeying the Lord, I discover all these things begin to work. In my experience I have discovered it is possible to have God at arm's length, dwelling with me. And when he is out there, nothing works; but when I yield to his sovereign direction in my life, and I begin to act on what he says, then he is in me and things begin to happen." He put his finger right on the point. This is what Jesus says.
‘In you’ means that you are under the control of the Holy Spirit, and yielding obedience to his totalitarian sovereignty. It means the total collapse of all your rebellion against him.
‘Oh,’ you say, ‘I'm not in rebellion against the Spirit of God. Why, I'm a Christian. I don't rebel against him.’
“Let me ask you: ‘What kind of life are you living? Is it God-centered, or is it self-centered? Is it to please yourself that your activities are done and your desires aimed?’ 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. I am ready to obey.’
“It is not our relationship with Jesus Christ which counts before the world; it is our resemblance to him.”
(From The Holy Spirit and Prayer, an online Bible Study, emphasis added.)
Basically, Stedman says here what I have tried to say in my previous posts: the promises of the Spirit must be appropriated by us. If we grieve or quench the Spirit—the Spirit of Truth—by our disobedience and lack of trust, then we cannot legitimately expect to be blessed by Him. This holds true in all areas of our lives affected by Him, including our prayer life.
I believe both men are saying a similar thing from slightly different positions. The main point is, I think, that prayer is simply ineffective as a means for discovering God’s will (1 John 5:14-15) and that if we wish to know God’s will in order that we might be obedient to it, we must know God’s Word, for it is in His Word that God reveals His will.
(It is interesting to note, in this respect, how it is mentioned in the OT that it was the discovery of the Book of the law and the reading of it that God’s OT people discovered the deep error in which they lived and the kinds of conditions God had set out for their blessing. It always was a shock for them upon reading from the Book, just how fallen and sinful they had become. A good example of this is the discovery and the reading of Scripture as described in 2 Kings 22:8-13.)
So prayer is not given to us to determine God’s will. God’s sovereign will is hidden from us until after it has been worked out in temporal and spatial terms (Deut 29:29). God has given us the Canon of Scripture for us to determine His will. If we cannot determine what God’s will for us is by consulting Scripture, it means that we have the freedom to make choices as we see fit, dependant on our level of knowledge, wisdom, circumstance and experience. Everything we need to know about God and His will is evident in Scripture. To use prayer as a means for establishing just what His personal will is for use in any set of circumstances is an act of mistrust.
So then, prayer is not to be used as an excuse for not appropriating the promises God has made to us through faithful and trusting obedience. It is through just such obedience that the promises of God are made manifest as such in our lives. This is the obvious thrust of the OT passages of cursing and blessing, in which God specifies “if you do this, I will bless you. If you do that, I will curse you” (Deut. 30:15-20 for example).
(Sidebar: In this passage, God says do this that I "may bless" you. The use of the word "may" indicates that the required behaviour is in keeping with and is a reflection of God’s holy character and can therefore be a blessing. That is, God is almost forced by the constraints of His own holy and just character to give blessing when the attitudes and behaviour of His people are in accord with His own character and nature. This of course is in no way to deny God’s covenantal graciousness in blessing His people in spite of the fact that they almost never were sincere in their efforts to be like Him.)
Now we are called to pray “in the Spirit” (Eph. 6:18) and we know that the Spirit helps us in our praying (Rom. 8:26). But if we are not obedient to the will of God, doing those things that He has clearly called us—as Christians—to do, what kind of prayer life should we expect to have? If, as Stedman describes, we merely have the Holy Spirit with us —experientially, not positionally—instead of in us experientially, can we live holy lives that are pleasing to God? I think not. It is not enough to simply pray. The Christian life is an active life of obedience to the revealed will of God. We must do. We must act. We must not be afraid. We must appropriate the promises and blessings of God by undertaking to do them.
When we have grieved the Holy Spirit, He must, by His very nature, remove himself from us in an opposite manner to the one of God being able to bless us, described in the sidebar paragraph noted above. When we, experientially, are in accord with the providential and revealed will of God, then as said above “God is almost forced by the constraints of His own holy and just character to give blessing.” But if we are not in accord—through the inner blessing of the Holy Spirit of Christ—with God’s will then how can we expect to have any of our prayers answered.
When we pray, our prayer is effective to the degree we pray in the authority of Christ (in His name) and in the power of the indwelling Spirit: “If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it” (John 14:14), “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” (Luke 11:13), "I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you” (John 14:16-17), “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you” (John 14:26).
Let us go down on our knees in humble submission to God and be bold then, doubting nothing, going to Him in prayer to adore and praise Him, to seek His forgiveness for our sin, to offer up our heart-felt thanksgiving for all His blessings, to make our own petitions and to intercede on behalf of those whom we know are in need of His loving-kindness. But let us also be quick to then rise up, gird our loins and to undertake the task of obeying our God through obedience to His Word in the power and courage of the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Soli Deo Gloria.
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