Study in Prayer

Groaning that come out of your spirit and escape your lips are the Spirit of God helping or assisting you in prayer. Amen! There are some things that come out of your heart that cannot be expressed in words and are, therefore, expressed by groanings too deep for articulate speech.

These groanings are inspired by the Holy Spirit. They come from deep within you and come up and escape verbally through your lips. Praying with groanings is one way of making intercession. Remember what we have already covered, intercession or intercessory prayer is praying for someone else, not for yourself.

An intercessor take the place of another in their prayer time. There is a prayer of intercession for the lost, of course. But I’m talking here about intercession for another person. It could be a family member or someone close to you. It usually is, at least in my experience.

So praying with groanings too deep for articulate speech could also include praying in tongues because speaking in tongues is inarticulate speech as well, as we have already shared from Romans 8:26 in other sessions.

That agrees with what the Apostle Paul said. Paul said that when he prayed in an unknown tongue, it was his spirit praying. In other words, praying with your spirit by the help of the Holy Spirit is prayer that is not coming out of your mind – it is coming out of your spirit. Amen!

It may be a prayer in an unknown tongue, that is unknown to you but known to another person as their native language, or it may be totally unknown and known only to God. But it is prayer that is inspired and directed by the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is the one who helps the believer TO pray! Amen! And He helps us to intercede with others and for others in the process. However, the Holy Spirit does NOT do our praying for us, as I have taught previously. 

It is our responsibility to take the time to pray and to intercede for others and to obey the gentle urgings of the Holy Spirit to do so. As we yield to the Holy Spirit in this process, we may pray in groanings according to the will of God.

We can also pray in other tongues at will. We do not need to wait for the Holy Spirit to prompt us to do that. We can take that initiative on our own. As we yield to the Holy Spirit’s guidance He will give us utterances according to the will of God. That utterance be groanings or it may be intercession in tongues, an unknown tongue to man and known only to God or unknown to us but known by another man.

Either way you look at, praying in tongues and uttering groanings in the Spirit are forms of prayers for intercession. Amen!

Let’s Pray!

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Scripture For Today:

1 Corinthians 14:15

 “So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my understanding; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my understanding...”

 Praying with Understanding

 In our scripture reference for today, we can see the Apostle Paul asking for understanding in his prayer life. And he realizes it only comes through the Holy Spirit.

In Ephesians 1:3, he says, “Blessed by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who HAS blessed us with ALL Spiritual blessings in Heavenly places IN CHRIST.” Amen!

You can say what you want or desire and even quote scriptures until you are blue in the face. But when it comes to prayer, many times, often times, especially when you are praying for other people, we don’t really know WHAT we should be praying for as we ought. 

Sometimes they will ask us to pray for one thing but the real reason is hidden from us. And when we are lifting them up in prayer before the Lord, what we are asking for just isn’t sitting right in our spirit man. That’s when we need to shift over into tongues and let the Holy Spirit guide our Words – even if we don’t know what it is we are praying about. He DOES! Amen!

Thank God that He comes along and helps us like that. He helps us in our infirmities. He helps us in our times of weakness. He helps us to effectively pray for others as well. Amen!

This includes a lack of knowledge about what to pray about. HE is the one who is making intercession with us through groanings in the Spirit which cannot be uttered in articulate speech (that’s in Romans 8:26).

Again, this scripture does not mean prayer is something the Holy Spirit does APART from you! That would make the Holy Spirit responsible for YOUR prayer life. That is not happening! Amen!

He is NOT responsible for YOUR prayer life – YOU ARE! Amen! Never forget that!

Notice also the Bible says, in Romans 8:26, that the Holy Spirit HELPS the believer in prayer. He is not DOING the prayer – He is HELPING the believer in prayer. He is helping you to pray through what GOD KNOWS needs to be done in your life or in the life of the person you are praying for. 

But the responsibility TO PRAY is yours, and mine and the responsibility of every believer. Amen.

I want to pray for you right now that you would begin to pray for others. This could be loved ones or it could be co-workers, neighbors or someone the Lord has put on your mind to pray for. It could be a nation. It could be OUR NATION – God knows this nation needs prayer and a lot of it. Amen!  But I want to pray that you will allow the Holy Spirit to come along side your prayer time and HELP YOU through groans and spiritual utterings to focus in on the exact need that, in fact, needs prayer. Amen! 

Let’s Pray!

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You can also WATCH these session on our Facebook Playlist at this link: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtKWeKtmv-BwgkquBTsSh-GznbmuUp_R2

 We’ve been discussing how praying in tongues and we covered that pretty in-depth. We found that praying in tongues can help to enhance our prayer life and also enable us to pray supernaturally as the Holy Spirit gives us utterance.

Now we will look at how the Holy Spirit can help enable us to intercede for others. We can intercede with our understanding, as Abraham did, or we can intercede with our spirits in tongues or in groanings and travail. But, we must keep in mind that intercession can only be accomplished by the leading and guiding the Holy Spirit. 

In Romans 8:26, we can read, “Likewise the Spirit also helps our infirmities, for we know not what we should pray for as we ought. But the Spirit itself makes intercession for us with groaning which cannot be uttered.”  (in articulate speech)

First Corinthians 14:14 says, “For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prays, but my understanding in unfruitful.”

The Amplified Bible translates that as, “For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit, by the Holy Spirit within me, prays. But my mind is unproductive and bears no fruit and helps nobody.”

Can you see the connection between Romans 8:26 and First Corinthians 14:!4?  In both of these verses, the Holy Spirit enables our spirit to pray apart from our understanding.

According to Romans 8:26, we don’t always know for what to pray as we should. We think we do sometimes, but we don’t. Not really. We cannot possibly know in our natural mind everything we should pray about in every situation and in every circumstance.

Therefore, praying with our understanding sometimes falls far short of what we should do in this kind of praying. We should pray as much as we know with our understanding, of course. Never stop that. Praise God. But sometimes, just saying a few words in general for others really just works wonders. Many times, for their spirit – and they don’t even know why! Amen!

Ephesians 1:3 says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we has blessed us with ALL spiritual blessings in Heavenly places in Christ.”

You could say what you want or what you desire and even quote the scripture references to back it up. But when it comes to prayer, many times – especially when we are praying for others, we don’t know what to pray for as we ought or as we should.

But, Praise the Lord, HE helps our infirmities! Amen!  What is an infirmity?

An infirmity is any weakness you may have, physically, spiritually, emotionally, which would include a lack of knowledge about how to pray. The Holy Spirit makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered in articulate speech. Amen.

Again, this scripture does not mean the Holy Spirit is totally responsible for your prayer life. No way. YOU are. Amen! You must take the first step. If you move towards God – He moves toward you. That’s the way it works. You are responsible for YOUR OWN prayer life! The Holy Spirit just comes along side of you and gives you a Spiritual jump start. Like a booster shot or hooking jumper cables up to a battery. Amen!

Notice, Romans 8:26 says the Holy Spirit HELPS the believer to pray. The Holy Spirit is not sent to actually do your praying for you. He is sent to help you in every aspect – every aspect – of your life. That includes your prayer life. Amen!

I want to pray for you right now. I want to pray that you will allow the Holy Spirit to come alive in your prayer time. Allow Him to guide your thoughts while you pray. Allow Him to bring people to your mind while you are praying. Your next door neighbor or someone at work. A loved one. A friend that lives across the country. 

During your prayer time, when the Holy Spirit brings that person to your mind, pray for them. 

“What should I pray, brother Bob?”  I’m so glad you asked! You will pray as the Holy Spirit gives you utterance! You may not know what they need!  They may not know what they need! But God does! He is using YOU to speak into existence those needs being met. 

We will get into the Groanings of the Holy Spirit tomorrow and this will make a lot more sense. Amen!

Let’s Pray!

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You can also WATCH these session on our Facebook Playlist at this link: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtKWeKtmv-BwgkquBTsSh-GznbmuUp_R2

Abraham, father of the Faith. A man whom God called his friend. 

In Genesis chapter 18, we see the example of Abraham as one who stood in the gap on behalf of others. When Abraham became aware of the impending judgement upon the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, he interceded in their behalf. 

Instead of reading the entire scripture, I’ll just summarize in paraphrase form here. 

When Abraham asked the Lord to spare the city if there were 50 righteous people in it, God said, “IF I find 50 righteous people within the city, then I will spare all of the city for their sake.”

Then, Abraham said, “Lord, I’d just like to speak a little further with you, if you don’t mind. What if there are only 45 righteous in the city. Would you spare the place for the 45?

In effect, the Lord answered Abraham, “Yes, I’ll do it, only because you asked me too. I’ll spare the entire city for the sake of the 45.”

Then Abraham continued to ask the Lord to spare Sodom and Gomorrah, reducing the number each time until he got to 10 righteous people. And God agreed, if there were 10 righteous people in the city, God would spare the entire city and not render it under judgment.

I believe Abraham figured, “Surely, there are at least 10 righteous people in those towns…Lot, his wife, two daughters and two sons-in-law, there’s six right there!” 

But, if you read Genesis 19 a little more closely, looking at verse 12 where the angel is speaking to Lot, the angel said, “Do you have any one in this town beside you here? Son-in-laws, your sons (plural) and your daughters…” so there were SONS that would not listen as well. It could also be the two daughters that went with Lot were NOT the ones we see refenced in this verse. 

Notice, it says in verse 15, to “take your two daughters which are here… So this is obviously two other daughters that had already married other men… PLUS at least TWO sons because of the plural use of the word SONS.

That would mean, Lot, his wife, the two young daughters, the two married daughters and their husbands and at least TWO sons – that equals 10 people right there!

Many have asked “Why would Abraham stop at 10?”  That’s the reason right there!  He figured Lot and his family were the 10 righteous and their family’s presence would be enough to stop the determined judgement.

But that is not what happened is it?

That’s because his sons-in-law, and by virtue, the daughters that were married to them, decided to ignore the old man. As did his other sons. This goes to prove, you cannot provide for the salvation of your family. It has to be a CHOICE they make.

You can bring them up in church and representing Jesus to them in your life and manners, etc. But the ultimate choice is theirs and theirs alone to make. It is not a pretty picture. It saddens me to think about it like that. But it is Biblical Truth.

If under the OLD COVENANT, Abraham interceded for other people and God would heed his prayer and be willing to stay judgement, how much more would that be a factor for us under the NEW COVENANT?

We, as covenant children, just like Abraham was, but our covenant is even better…we are CHILDREN of the MOST HIGH GOD, Heirs of God and Joint Heirs with Jesus of all things!

We are in a more perfect place for intercession! Amen! We have the authority to use Jesus Name to help others through prayer and intercession and to effect a change in nations themselves! Glory to God!

I want to pray for you right now to take your rightful place and begin to intercede for others. Others the Lord puts on your heart. Intercede for your family. Intercede for your nation. Intercede for this nation. This nation needs a lot of prayer. If there was EVER a nation that was deserving of Judgement, it is the United States of America right now…and JUDGEMENT is coming! 

It is unstoppable!  BUT – we can delay it – IF we start to intercede and give God SOMETHING to work with. That SOMETHING is our Faith! Amen!

Let’s Pray!

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You can also WATCH these session on our Facebook Playlist at this link: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtKWeKtmv-BwgkquBTsSh-GznbmuUp_R2

I want to look at Intercessory Prayer today. The word “Intercede” means to “act between two parties with the thought of reconciling the two of them.”  So the prayer of intercession is standing in the gap on behalf of another. Normally, we would intercede for the unsaved. That is the most common occurrence.

God desires for His people to pray for others in intercessory prayer. In Isaiah 64:7, it is written, “And there was none that called upon your name, that stirs up himself to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have consumed us, because of our iniquities.”

This verse implies that IF someone would have stirred himself up to pray and intercede and to call upon God, judgment on the nation of Israel could have been stayed or stopped! 

Think about that concerning our nation right now! The immoral forces of darkness have now launched every weapon in their arsenal to destroy the United States from within. And they are scoring major victories on every front. What will it take to stop them?

YOU.

You – if you yield yourself to intercede and pray for GOD to turn the spiritual darkness and the forces of evil around for this nation. 

Ezekiel made a similar statement in Ezekiel 22:30, “And I sought for a man among them, that would make up the hedge, and STAND IN THE GAP before me for the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found none.”

Do you realize what these verses are saying? God “LOOKS” for people, every day people like you and me, to stand in the gap, to make up the hedge and to intercede so that people’s lives can be spared.

Will you be willing to do that? Are you willing to be used by God to pray a prayer of intercession for your nation or for those you may not even know?

I want to pray for you today to have a spiritual understanding of the importance of being used by God in situations just like that.

Let’s Pray!

Please subscribe to this podcast, leave us a quick 5 star review on Apple Podcasts to help us grow and be sure to visit our website for more information on our ministry: https://podcastersforchrist.com. And while you are at the website, download the free resource I have for you… it is free and is called, “How to Start a Christian Podcast.” It will bless you – go and download it today.

You can also WATCH these session on our Facebook Playlist at this link: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtKWeKtmv-BwgkquBTsSh-GznbmuUp_R2