I spent five years immersing myself in the sermons of Martyn Lloyd-Jones. It was truly a transformative season in my life. What was the biggest lesson? The answer may surprise you. He taught me to pray.
For those who really knew Lloyd-Jones, this answer will not surprise you. His wife once said, “No one will understand my husband until they realize that he is first and foremost a man of prayer, and then an evangelist.” Lloyd-Jones, the man of prayer, taught me to pray in the Holy Spirit.
My hunger to learn to pray in the Spirit came from a perplexing problem. I read Ephesians 6:18: “Praying always in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.” This text really bothered me because I could parse the words and diagram the grammar, but I had the feeling that I wasn’t experiencing reality. Lloyd-Jones mentored me in making this verse a living reality. He guided me through three stages of discovery: (1) what it is not, (2) what it is, and (3) how to do it.
What Praying in the Spirit Is Not
First, it helped me see what it means to pray in the Spirit by contrasting it with its polar opposite: praying in the flesh. Prayer in the power of the flesh is based on human capacity and effort to carry out the prayer.
“We all know what it’s like to feel a dying prayer. Having difficulty praying. Being quiet, with nothing to say, so to speak. Having to force ourselves to try. Well, to the extent that this is true of us, we are not praying in the Spirit” (Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Living Water, p. 99).
How do we overcome this difficulty in prayer? Praying in the flesh makes us trust in human ability and effort to overcome this difficulty. If we don’t know what to say when we pray, we can try to overcome that difficulty with a stream of many words. Jesus warned us not to think that we would be heard by using too many words (Mt. 6:7).
If we struggle to give up after a short time of praying, we will be focusing on how long we pray. Success in prayer does not depend on how much time we spend praying. Sometimes we try to overcome dying prayer by focusing on how well we can pray. We subtly rely on perfectly composed and doctrinally correct sentences that are based on the correct diction, cadence, language, emotion, or volume.
These attempts to overcome the difficulties of prayer in the power of the flesh really only imitate the vivacity that the Spirit gives in prayer.
“The Spirit is a Spirit of life and also of truth, and the first thing it always does is make everything alive and vital. And of course, there is a lot of difference between the life and vivacity that the Spirit produces, and the prayer that is artificial, that is a brilliant and pompous imitation, that people produce” (Living Water, p. 99).
If praying in the flesh is a counterfeit or imitation of praying in the Spirit, how can we genuinely pray? The second thing is to discover what it is to pray in the Spirit.
What it is to pray in the Spirit
Here is the key difference: in the flesh, we want to push the prayers, while in the Spirit, we are moved by the way He leads the prayer. Praying in the Spirit is experiencing the Spirit of life that brings life to prayer.
Sometimes praying in the Spirit will not feel electrifying at all. It will feel like a moan.
Praying in the Spirit means that the Spirit empowers prayer and leads it to the Father in Jesus name. Prayer has a quality of life that is characterized by warmth and freedom and a sense of sharing. We realize that we are in the presence of God, speaking to God. The Spirit illuminates your mind, moves your heart, and gives you freedom of expression.
Lloyd-Jones frequently used stark contrasts to emphasize his point. He did not go back to qualify the contrast between praying in the flesh and praying in the Spirit. He didn’t focus on different degrees of experience; he was simply showing sharp polarities to help us see the difference between the two.
It is good to recognize that there are different degrees of experience when it comes to praying in the Spirit. It doesn’t feel like revival every time we pray in the Spirit. There are various experiences of how one is carried or pushed forward. Sometimes praying in the Spirit will not feel electrifying at all. It will feel like a moan. The Spirit helps us in our weakness and intercedes for us according to God’s will (Rom. 8:26-27).
I remember riding a bike where there was a gradual incline for the first half and a gradual downhill for the second half. Sometimes I think of it as the experiential difference between praying in the flesh and praying in the Spirit. Praying in the flesh feels like a climb in which we have to push ourselves up the hill. Praying in the Spirit reflects the reality of the downward slope. Obviously, there are degrees of decline. But one feels the energy of the descent throughout the trip on a downward slope.
When we pray in the Spirit, according to Lloyd-Jones, we experience being led in prayer to God by the Spirit, but how is it done?
How to pray in the Spirit
Praying in the Spirit has three aspects: (1) admitting our inadequacy, (2) enjoying creating a living fellowship with God, and (3) asking boldly and confidently for God’s promises.
Step 1: admit our inability to pray
We must start with confession: we must admit our inability to pray as we should. We must confront our tendency to try to pray on our own. We begin by recognizing that prayer is a spiritual activity, and the power of the flesh is of no benefit. We should feel our dryness and difficulty and confess our dullness, lifelessness, and spiritual slowness (Living Water, p. 86).
But this step is not passive. It is the act of giving ourselves to the Spirit. Confession leads to expectation and prayerful anticipation.
Step 2: Enjoy Living Communion with God
“You are aware of a communion, a sharing, a give and take, if I could use that expression. You are not dragging; you are not forcing the issue; you’re not trying to strike up a conversation with someone you don’t know. Nerd! The Spirit of adoption in you leads you directly into the presence of God, and it is a living act of fellowship vibrant with life” (Lloyd-Jones, The Christian Soldier, p. 100)
I start praying in my living room, and suddenly I feel like I’m before the throne of heaven.
The place where you pray seems to have been transformed. I start praying in my living room, and suddenly I feel like I’m before the throne of heaven.
One of the key differences here between praying in the flesh and praying in the Spirit is that you don’t feel the need to rush into saying anything when you pray in the Spirit. The living reality that the Spirit creates is the awareness of the presence of God. Experiencing his presence will seem much more important to you than any request you make (Lloyd-Jones, The Christian Soldier, p. 82).
But the Spirit will not lead you to simply rest in the presence of God in a passive way. There will be a holy boldness to claim the promises of God.
Step 3: Plead with Holy Boldness
The result of the work of the Spirit is that we bow before God as humble children of God in the fear of God. We do not bow before an unknown or distant god, and we do not present ourselves in the presence of God with vivid familiarity. We come with a real sense of intimacy and wonder. The Spirit also infuses us with bold life in our prayers, a holy boldness that pleads for God’s promises in God’s presence.
The beauty of this boldness is that it is a humble and holy boldness. There is no sense of presumptuous demand.
“Do not claim, do not demand; let your requests be made known, let them come out of your heart. God will understand. We have no right to demand, not even revival. Some Christians tend to. Pray urgently, beg, use all the arguments, use all the promises; but do not demand, do not claim. Never put yourself in the position of saying, ‘If we do this, then that will happen.’ God is a sovereign Lord, and these things are beyond our understanding. Never use the terminology of claiming or demanding” (Lloyd-Jones, The perseverance of the saints, p. 155).
Don’t quench the Spirit
Lloyd-Jones once said that the fastest way to quench the Spirit is not to obey the urge to pray. This point is very, very personal to me, so let me tell you a story from my own experience.
Once I was driving home from working at a courier company. I worked the night shift during my PhD days, and never seemed to get enough sleep. One morning around 4:30, I was driving home very early and was falling asleep at the wheel. I tried everything to stay awake. I turned on the radio and tried to sing. I even slapped myself. Next thing I know, I woke up in my driveway. I was puzzled. I didn’t know how I got there.
I entered the house, now wide awake, and when I entered our room I noticed a very strange thing: my wife was also awake. She normally would be asleep, but instead, she was sitting on the bed waiting for me.
She said, “Hi honey, how was it?”
I said, “It’s funny you ask. I really struggled to stay awake on the way home. In fact, I don’t know how I got here.”
She said: “Yes, I noticed…”.
“Okay,” I said, “please continue!”
“Well,” he said. I woke up at 4:30 very suddenly, and I felt this intense urge to pray. I thought you must be struggling on the road since it’s about the time you usually come home. So I prayed for you.”
I think I’m still alive and writing these words because my wife didn’t quench the Spirit at that time. She obeyed the Spirit’s promptings to pray. I hope this story gives you a greater sense of what is at stake in prayer. Our tendency to quench the Spirit is not a small, inconsequential problem. Let us surrender to the reality of praying in the Spirit, and let us renounce the temptation to try to pray in our own strength. And, following the example of Lloyd-Jones, let us always obey every impulse to pray.
Originally posted on. Translated by Team Coalition.
Image: .