Taking the training wheels off our prayers
Brandt Gillespie
(Audio: English)
SUMMARY: Prayer is not meant to be habitual or structured, but rather communion with God. The Spirit helps us in our weakness, offering intercession through wordless groans. To become effective in prayer, we need to move beyond rote and reasoned prayer and into the mysterious and vulnerable arena of intercessory praying in the Spirit. This involves coming into agreement with the mind of God, praying in unintelligible expressions that take us to supernatural places in His presence. This is the kind of praying that empowered the disciples on the Day of Pentecost and launched the Church in the Book of Acts. We must take the "training wheels off" and soar into this next realm of prayer to fulfill God's divine calling and see breakthroughs in His Kingdom.
Today, we read from the New International Version of the Bible in Romans Chapter 8 and verses 26 and 27.... “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 through wordless groans. And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.”
We are not unlike the disciples who came to Jesus and said, “Lord teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). In response to this request, Jesus shared the model prayer that has become known as “The Lord’s Prayer,” which many of us learned and memorized as children and can repeat by rote memory. However, most of us who have lived a little longer, and have kept on praying while valuing this familiar prayer, have come to realize that anyone of us can slip into what I term “habitual praying.” I never want to criticize anyone with a sincere heart who prays “patterned prayers” that are beneficial and uniquely focus attention on God. That being said, even as we had to take the “training wheels” off our bicycles as children, we must take the “training wheels” off our prayers, if we are going soar into the Heavenly’s with Christ as He longs for us to do.
We are not unlike the disciples who came to Jesus and said, “Lord teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). In response to this request, Jesus shared the model prayer that has become known as “The Lord’s Prayer,” which many of us learned and memorized as children and can repeat by rote memory. However, most of us who have lived a little longer, and have kept on praying while valuing this familiar prayer, have come to realize that anyone of us can slip into what I term “habitual praying.” I never want to criticize anyone with a sincere heart who prays “patterned prayers” that are beneficial and uniquely focus attention on God. That being said, even as we had to take the “training wheels” off our bicycles as children, we must take the “training wheels” off our prayers, if we are going soar into the Heavenly’s with Christ as He longs for us to do.
