Joshua and Judges: The doctrine of leadership part 124 - Essential qualities of leadership: Prayer.

Title: Joshua and Judges: The doctrine of leadership part 124 - Essential qualities of leadership: Prayer.

 

Announcementsopening prayer:

 

 

ROM 8:26 And in the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words;

 

He helps our weakness and teaches us how to pray as we pray filled with Him and He intercedes for us.

 

We don't always know the precise words or the order in which they should be uttered, but the Spirit helps this weakness. His groanings overtake our own and they are always in harmony with the will of God.

 

It is never the case that the believer would pray for something completely contrary to the will of God and God the Holy Spirit changes it to the will of God. If that were the case then it would never matter what we prayed for.

 

1JO 5:14-15

And this is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.

 

What the Holy Spirit is helping is the weakness of limitation but not the absence of the will of God as it has been revealed to the saints. The word of God is chock-full of the revealed will of God and it is God's will that we know it fully. We are to prove what the will of God is, that which is holy, acceptable, and perfect. From this foundation we can pray wisely, but still we are weak and limited compared to what we will be at the redemption of our bodies. The Holy Spirit helps these limitations.

 

The groanings or sighings of the Holy Spirit within us reveals His gracious work in us but also His limitations in us. The limitation is due to us. He cannot intercede overruling our will.

 

Let's say a believer is negative towards the word of God, but we know that the will of God is that he come to a full knowledge of the truth. He prays for a new job, which he thinks will make him happier in life, but it is the will of God that he get out of his carnal lifestyle and into the plan of God where he will have capacity for life and happiness. Can the Spirit pray that he will come to that knowledge and due to this the Father will force this man to do so? The Bible states that if we ask anything according to His will that He will hear us and we will receive it, the results of the opposite, praying outside of His will, is obvious.

 

In the case of a prayer that is within God's will, we may pray for a professing believer to get with it in God's truth and we expect that God will bring great misery in their lives. But do we know that it is misery that has the best chance of enlightening their hearts and not prosperity? Prosperity is a powerful tool to wake a person up to the fact that happiness is not found in the promises of the world. Our limitation is that we never know exactly how to accomplish what we desire in our prayers.  

 

So we dismiss the carnal prayer and now turn to the prayer of the saint who is filled with the Spirit and is praying according to the will of God. In this the Spirit is still limited by our understanding of God's complete will. None of us ever arrive at an understanding of all of God's will. If we did there would be no more need for growth. The prayer of the more mature is certainly more focused and on target then the less mature, but that doesn't mean that we wait for some day of maturity to start praying.

 

The comfort of the message is that He helps that weakness and delivers a prayer to the Father that is perfectly within His will.

 

We conclude that our maturity in the will and purposes of God, which He accomplishes, will mean less of a hindrance to the work that the Spirit does within us, including the effectiveness of our prayer lives.

 

The pastor must pray for the help of his weakness in attempting to communicate the perfect will of the Father.  

 

ROM 8:26 And in the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words;

 

ROM 8:27 and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

 

It is clearly stated that the Holy Spirit helps the infirmities in our prayer life.

 

"helps" - sunantilamba,nw[sunantilambano] = to lend a hand together with and at the same time with one. Martha used this word when appealing to the Lord to bid Mary to help her.

 

The Holy Spirit lends a hand together with us as we are praying. It is not that He helps us bear our weaknesses, but He helps our weaknesses.

 

It is not that He helps bear our weakness, but He helps our weakness in the form (how we should pray) and the manner (what we should pray for) of our prayer.

 

When we look at how we should pray, we are not talking about the very general, to the Father in the name of the Son and filled with the Spirit, but the accurate. We are instead referring to the full knowledge of the will of God in a particular instance. For example, my enemy is a carnal believer and I know in general what he needs, which is to study the word of God and walk in the manner of his calling in experiential sanctification, but I haven't a clue as to the specifics of how God can bring the eyes of his heart to that realization.

 

So, in a similar instance we look to Paul's great prayer in Eph 1.

 

EPH 1:15 For this reason I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which exists among you, and your love for all the saints,

 

EPH 1:16 do not cease giving thanks for you, while making mention of you in my prayers;

 

EPH 1:17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.

 

EPH 1:18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,

 

EPH 1:19 and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.

 

And in Eph 3:

 

EPH 3:14 For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father,

 

EPH 3:15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name,

 

EPH 3:16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man;

 

EPH 3:17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love,

 

EPH 3:18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,

 

EPH 3:19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fulness of God.

 

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ROM 8:26 And in the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words;

 

ROM 8:27 and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

 

So again, the weaknesses spoken of here are two, what we should pray for (the matter of prayer), and how we should pray (the form and manner of our prayer).

 

The text does not necessarily state that we do not know how to pray, but what to pray for.

 

ROM 8:26

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. [NIV]

 

"how" - the neuter pronoun tis. It has an article before it = "the what" to pray for. We do not know the definite thing to pray for.

 

The article emphasizes the identity of something rather than the quality of that thing. Our weakness is that we cannot identify the very thing to pray for, but we know the general will of God, and so we pray within His will and for the reasons of His will and purposes and God the Holy Spirit helps our weakness.

 

As to the general subjects for prayer, the salvation of the lost, the sanctification of the saints, our daily needs, these we know of.

 

But to be specific in our praying involves a knowledge of God's will in particular instances, and of that we are naturally ignorant. It is right here that the Spirit comes to our aid.

 

This perfectly explains why the answers to prayer are so often not what we anticipated, and if you're humble enough to see it, the answers were far better than you anticipated. It has not entered into the mind of man the things that God has for those who love Him.

 

The word "pray" has a prefixed preposition which means literally "toward." The composite word refers to prayer directed to God, a conscious definite commitment to Him of our needs, our desires, our petitions. The Holy Spirit thus energizes the saint along the line of prayer for particular things which are according to the will of God, prayer directed consciously to Him.

 

Prayer is always "toward" the Father and so the HS energizes the saint along the line of prayer for particular things that are directed consciously toward the Father that are according to His will.

 

We must not presume to know all that God the Holy Spirit is doing here, to do so with this limited glance into the workings of the Father and the Spirit in our prayer lives would be a grave mistake. Is it possible that the Spirit is putting requests on my heart as I pray? Is He revealing the will of God to me as I pray and so I alter my requests and supplications as I pray? Is He answering my questions in real time and so altering my petitions for others during my prayer time? Can we say no to any of these? No.

 

We must caution ourselves from getting overly intellectual concerning any of these and just take the simple truth to heart. I am weak in several ways when it comes to prayer and the Spirit helps my weakness. Not carnality or fleshliness, but weak as far as limitation.