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If depended on my prayers, I pray in the Spirit

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How would I answer this question on a daily basis?

“If revival in this land depended on your prayers, your faith, your obedience, would we ever experience revival?”  – Del Fehsenfeld Jr.

Psalm 80 challenges me right in this area and leaves me with a message.

I should pray earnestly for revival among God’s people.

With impending doom in sight, mostly due to the unfaithfulness of the people in following God, there is a prayer, an earnest prayer, asking God to send revival. In fact, it is repeated three times.

Bring us back, O God!
    Show us your mercy, and we will be saved! Bring us back, Almighty God!
    Show us your mercy, and we will be saved! Bring us back, Lord God Almighty.
    Show us your mercy, and we will be saved. – Psalm 80:3,7,19 GNT

The prayer format goes something like this –

  • restore and save
  • how long will You be angry?
  • here is what has been happening when You were involved and then when You were not
  • God come and take care of Your people again – restore and save them

How can I develop greater faithfulness and fervency to pray for revival?

When Paul was writing the Corinthian church  he quoted a passage from Isaiah that just might shed some light here.

If you won’t listen to me, then God will use foreigners speaking some strange-sounding language to teach you a lesson. He offered rest and comfort to all of you, but you refused to listen to him.  – Isaiah 28:11-12 GNT

When I read this chapter, this verse sticks out like a sore thumb for it does not fit into the context of the chapter at all. Of all the verses Paul could have quoted when speaking about the abuse of the gift of tongues and all things relevant, he picks this little verse from Isaiah to explain what God was talking about. This is what God was going to do – God was going to pour out, over the church, the gift of speaking in tongues and it was going to be a restful experience to those who exercised it.

And I have found that in my own devotional life, when I have a problem and I don”t know how to pray over a particular situation, or I have a problem and I want to praise God and I feel a total inadequacy in English, that as I begin to praise the Lord in the Spirit or I begin to pray in the Spirit that it is such a restful experience. And I just find great rest in it. Great peace in it.  – Chuck Smith

Make conscience of daily exercising thy graces in meditation as well as prayer. Retire into some secret place, at a time the most convenient to thyself, and, laying aside all worldly thoughts, with all possible seriousness and reverence look up towards heaven; remember there is thine everlasting rest; study its excellency and reality; and rise from sense to faith, by comparing heavenly with earthly joys. Then mix ejaculations with thy soliloquies; till, having pleaded the case reverently with God, and seriously with thy own heart, thou hast pleaded thyself from a clod to a flame; from a forgetful sinner, and a lover of the world, to an ardent lover of God; from a fearful coward to a resolved Christian; from an unfruitful sadness to a joyful life; in a word, till thou hast pleaded thy heart from earth to heaven; from conversing below, to walking with God; and till thou canst lay thy heart to rest, as in the bosom of Christ, by some such meditation of thy everlasting rest as is here added for thy assistance. – Baxter

 

Invoking God in prayer for help even when feeling prayers are not being answered

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Oil – never bluntly stated in the Old Testament but we know from the New Testament that it is symbolic of the Holy Spirit.

Then Moses took the anointing oil and put it on the Tent of the Lord‘s presence and everything that was in it, and in this way he dedicated it all to the Lord.He took some of the oil and sprinkled it seven times on the altar and its equipment and on the basin and its base, in order to dedicate them to the Lord.He ordained Aaron by pouring some of the anointing oil on his head. – Leviticus 8:10-12 GNT

The idea I get is that “without God, I can’t.” If I put my trust in rituals, and God is not in the picture, it is a waste of time. More importantly, maybe more specifically, if the Holy Spirit is not working in the background “lubricating the machinery,” it is a waste of time.

How can I help someone without invoking God in prayer for help? How could I teach God’s Word without asking God for help? There is a danger in relying on my own strength.

Being dedicated places everything in God’s hands. The tabernacle is no longer just a building – it is a building whose sole purpose is to help people intercede to God. Aaron is no longer an ordinary person, but “ordained” as one fully committed to dedicating his life to interceding for people to God.

I am ordained to help others too. I have been “anointed” for the purpose of helping other Christians.

I use the Psalms as they turn into a prayer for help and relief in the middle of trouble.

Be merciful to me, O Lord!
    See the sufferings my enemies cause me!
Rescue me from death, O Lord,
     that I may stand before the people of Jerusalem
    and tell them all the things for which I praise you.
I will rejoice because you saved me. – Psalm 9:13-14 GNT

I want to be one who seeks to live a godly life even to the very gates of death. The good news is that God is the One who lifts me up from those very gates. I can pray for help and receive it so that I might praise God for His deliverance and salvation. My deepen joy and praise to God are the end results of my prayer for help. As God increases my joy in Him so do my praises to Him increase.

God’s help is not given just because He favours one over the other. It comes because His people have a relationship with Him. They know Him. They trust Him. They come to Him.

Those who know you, Lord, will trust you;
    you do not abandon anyone who comes to you. – Psalm 9:10 GNT

It must be a serious trial for anyone to feel abandoned by God. I know that I feel that way sometimes when I have sinned, face more trouble than I can handle, have a job to do that is weighed with responsibility or when I feel my prayers are not being answered.

I come back to God, seeking Him, because I know Him.

“We never trust a man till we know him, and bad men are better known than trusted. Not so the Lord, for where his name is poured out as an ointment, there the virgins love him, fear him, rejoice in him, repose upon him.” – Trapp

“Men complain of their little faith: the remedy is in their own hands; let them set themselves to know God. . . .  But for all this, you must make time. You cannot know a friend from hurried interviews, much less God. So you must steep yourself in deep, long thoughts of his nearness and his love.” Meyer

“O Almighty God, in your unmerited goodness to us and through the merit and mediation of your only beloved Son, Jesus Christ, you have permitted and even commanded and taught us to regard you and call upon you as one Father of us all.” – Martin Luther