Holy Spirit Led Prayers (346)

0:02 Welcome to the Quality Christian Living Podcast. I am your host David Friend. As you may know, we are continuing a series today dealing with the Holy Spirit, and today's topic is Holy Spirit -led prayers. Now, this could be one of the more important messages, teachings, if you will, or whatever it might be, or whatever you want to call it, of how we can get the Holy Spirit to help us have stronger, greater prayers. So I just pray that you will receive this. We're going to talk about how we can be led by the Spirit to pray, and are Holy Spirit -led prayers greater than our prayers. Does the Holy Spirit decide who he helps and who he will not help to pray? I think some people feel that way, but that's just something we need to discuss. How do I know my prayers are led by the Holy Spirit? Well, let's get started by asking the Holy Spirit to guide and direct us. Heavenly Father, I thank you for who you are. I pray now the Holy Spirit would guide and direct us through this podcast.

0:54 Help those who are listening in to receive exactly what you have in store for them. I pray, Lord, that they're trying to receive a touch from the Holy Spirit for strong prayer life that you would bring that upon them and father these scriptures I use and the comments you've given me I pray that they would bless individuals to have stronger prayers and more powerful more effective fervent prayers I thank you for it in advance and I believe you're going to do a great work today and I'll give you praise in advance for it and I ask these things in Jesus name I pray amen well you know in my introduction today I listed four significant questions on the Holy Spirit leading our prayer life and so let's just take them one at a time I think this is might be the way to best way to cover this one. First, how can we be led by the Holy Spirit to pray? Well, a lot to be said there, but let me just share a few thoughts about that. We need to surrender to the Holy Spirit in everything that we do. It's not our will, but God's will. It's not how we want to pray.

1:46 It's how the Holy Spirit wants us to pray, and we can surrender to Him before we take on any type of prayer activity. I like to start the day off with, Holy Spirit, will you guide me, guide my thoughts and my actions? And when I'm in the garage and driving out of my garage, I ask the Holy Spirit to guide the direction that I drive and my conversations and if you just do that and I'm not saying I have all the answers I'm just saying that we need to start off the day seeking for help from the Holy Spirit and asking him to help us in our life in our prayer times and the actions that we take the key word is surrender in this the word surrender is in reference to the Holy Spirit we need to ask his will and not ours you know sometimes we pray and we got a predetermined idea of how we should pray and what we should pray and what the results will be in that prayer. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not very good, but if we surrender to the Holy Spirit and ask for His leading, His guidance, His direction, our prayers will be consistently strong, they'll be focused, they'll be led by the Spirit of God, and we're going to see greater results in our prayer life. So the word surrender is really very powerful in surrendering our will to the Holy Spirit's will.

2:52 We should ask the Spirit what we must pray. Now sometimes when I take off in prayer I have a list of people pray for but before we get into that I like the Holy Spirit to guide and direct my prayer. It could be that there's people that are on that list that it's time for me to then ease up and maybe not continue to pray for them or there's new people he wants to put on or he wants to just basically have me add new people and pray for all the other ones that are there. Now let me give you an example and please forgive the personal reference but just it's something that works for me. I have a list of prayer requests every single day when I start to pray in the morning and don't get me wrong I don't get up and pray for three or four hours I probably should, but I don't pray for that long. I get up and I look at my list and I ask the Holy Spirit to help me in my prayer time. The list includes a number of nurses that have ministered to me and helped me and taken care of me over at the Mayo Clinic during the battles I've had, the cancer battles and the spinal problems I've had and how God has healed me on every single one of them. So I want to give God praise for that, but I also want to lift up the names of those individuals who are doing a great service for our city, for our community, and I just want to lift up and pray for them. So every day I speak their names out and pray for God to intervene and help them. It's just something that wrote up on my heart. Now, how long do I pray for that?

4:06 I don't know. I may continue to pray for another year, for two years or three years, or maybe a month. I don't know. I want the Holy Spirit to let me know when it's time for me to slow down or bring other people into the prayer group or just basically cease from praying for that group of people. So I won't stop until I truly believe in my heart and my mind, my spirit, that it's time to either stop or change the way I pray for them. In addition to that, there's a number of people in our church who have physical problems. So then the Lord has directed me, I believe, to ask for the divine healing touch of the Lord Jesus Christ to heal these individuals. I like to say their names. I like to mention that what they're going through, the battle they're going through, and the Lord's just kept those on my heart. And then there's a list of people that in our church, our friends, and it's just a whole bunch of people that God puts upon my heart. I don't pray for them all every single morning, but I pray for most of them every single morning. And then if I haven't completed them all, then in the evening before I go to bed, I like to spend a little more time lifting up those individuals that the Lord has put up on my heart, but I can't even go to bed or can't go to sleep unless I... I lift up those individuals to the Lord and ask the Holy Spirit to help them, bless them, answer their prayers and their needs, and then guide me in my prayers. We need to ask the Holy Spirit to direct our thoughts during our prayer time. We can't let our mind drift when we are praying and seeking God to do something special in our life or someone else's life. If we're allowing our mind to start thinking about things that we need to do that day, we need to get that stuff out of our mind and ask Him to direct our prayer times. Ask Him to to pray,

5:38 even pray for us. I think that's just incredible because that's why we have the gift of the baptism of the Holy Spirit because then we can start praying in the Spirit. And when we pray in the Spirit, we are praying the divine will of God and the Holy Spirit is praying for us. So I've gone into all of those issues about the baptism and on prior podcasts. So I'm not gonna take the time now to go there because I just wanted to focus on this particular question right now. How can we be led by the Spirit to pray? I hope that's helpful to you. Let's go to the second. question now, and see how we deal with this one. Are the Holy Spirit's lead prayers greater than ours? Well, you might want to ask the question, is He greater than us? Well, He lives in us and He certainly is the Spirit of God, so He obviously is more powerful than us, has greater prayers than we have, and yes, they are stronger than or greater than ours, but He can bring our prayers into a level that comes up to His prayer level, because Jesus said that greater works we will do. Jesus said that when the Spirit comes, He'll comfort us. Jesus said that the Holy Spirit is there, our advocate, and will bless us and guide us and direct us. And we can then receive the power of the Holy Spirit's prayers in our prayer life, and so it will increase the strength and the greater results of our prayers. Now, let's always remember that the Holy Spirit has the gift of greater prayers, and He can give that gift out. He can give us that gift if we ask for Him and seek for it. Now, He's the final say on it, that He's the one that decides who gets the nine power gifts, and one of them is faith. greater faith and He's the one that can give us greater prayers. The gift of faith is

7:09 listed with the eight other power gifts of the Holy Spirit. Let me read a couple of scriptures that will help us stay on track in this question about can the Holy Spirit's prayers be greater than ours and basically can He give us the gift of prayer, the gift of faith. 1 Corinthians chapter 12 verse 4 in the New International Version says this, there are different kinds of gifts but the same Spirit distributes them all. I'm just saying this so we keep in proper context what I'm talking about here in prayer and the gifts of the Spirit. 1 Corinthians chapter 12 verse 9 the New International Version says to another faith he gives that gift by the same spirit so I could go down all and read them now but I don't want to take the time to do that because I've done it several times in these podcasts but one of the gifts of the Spirit is faith and faith is the difference between having greater prayers are ineffective prayers that the prayers of a righteous man are led of God And we want to have strong prayers, greater prayers, and prayers that can be increased by the power of the Holy Spirit working in our life. The gift of faith is listed, remember, in all the power gifts.

8:11 But it's one of the most important ones, I believe, because without faith, there's not a whole lot we will accomplish in our prayer life. Matter of fact, there's nothing we'll accomplish in our prayer life without faith. Therefore, the Holy Spirit gives us the gift of greater faith. So never forget that the gift comes from the Holy Spirit. That's why it's so important to understand the Holy Spirit -led prayers because the gift of faith is absolutely crucial to have successful effective prayers and that gift comes from the Holy Spirit and that's when we receive faith for a purpose and that is when our prayers become equivalent or equal to the prayers that the Holy Spirit has. I'm not saying we become on His level. I'm just saying that we can increase our prayers based upon the gifts that He gives us. Our gift of faith to pray is God's Spirit to pray. Remember, it's God's Spirit who dwells inside of us. The Holy Spirit is. God's Spirit and we have that operating in us on a daily basis.

9:09 Just stop for a second and think about that. I mean that is just overwhelming to think about it and we've got to remember to call upon the Holy Spirit. Why would we want to spend our time praying all these big long lists and whatever without asking for the Holy Spirit's guidance and direction? That's the Spirit of God living and dwelling inside of us. We need to call upon Him. We need to ask for His direction. We need to know how we should pray, what we should pray, when we should pray, who we should pray for. and when it's time to move on to other people because we can do that. You know, I've had some people I have prayed for and I'm not boasting. Please forgive me if you think I am. I'm not boasting. I have had people that I have prayed for sometimes as long as 20 years or more. Just simply every day I have to lift them up and I'm saying to the Lord, is it time now to move on?

9:55 I had one particular person I was praying for. He gave me a very difficult time in business and I'll never forget that. It was just extremely difficult. He was a Christian guy but he just gave me terrible time building him a home and so when the home was finished we got it completed we we parted his friends everything was fine but then the Holy Spirit told me keep praying for him I won't give you his name, but bottom line, I said, Lord, would you bless, and I would say his name and help him and bless his family. And I thank you for him, Father. And I would just say something very simple like that. But that went on for over 20 years, take the list or not. And bottom line, it was no, not yet. Well, I can remember the years went by. One night, my wife and I went to a banquet where they were raising funds for a charity in our community.

10:38 And we're sitting here through the whole banquet. It was like a two -hour meeting, maybe longer. the meeting I pushed my chair back and when I did my chair banged into somebody who was sitting behind me into their chair and I turned on said oh I'm sorry I turned on and there he was that's the man I had been praying for for over 20 years and I thought oh my Lord this is kind of awkward and I said hey how are you doing and he looked at me he says here just second come here and he grabbed my arm and he walked and he asked attention to the people at his table there's probably eight or ten people there and he looked he says I just want you guys to know you know the home that we live in most of you have been there I just want to let you know This is the man that built that home and we have loved our home We have been blessed by our home And I just want you to know if you need to have a good home built then go to this man because he's a good home builder now think of that think of that it was that the Lord getting that prepared and for that time had to be and for this man to be that strong and that powerful and in that much kindness to me was just simply a result of the Lord keeping him on my heart and we chatted a little bit and he says things are good he says I've gone through a lot of difficult times physically and I thought There we go. That's why the Holy Spirit is still having me pray for him. So I just thought I'd give you that story. It's a very powerful story on being led by the Holy Spirit and also in knowing that the Holy Spirit has great things in store for our prayers and he wants to increase our prayers. to be greater than they are today. Okay, here's the third point I made in my introduction. Does the Holy Spirit decide who helps and who He does not help? Well, this question is kind of interesting. It has two parts. Part one is, I think, found in 1 Corinthians

12:10 chapter 12 verse 11 in the New International Version. It refers to the nine gifts of the Spirit. Verse 11, all these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and He distributes them to each just as He determines. Well, the Holy Spirit determines who he blesses and helps in their prayers, and he also can determine who he's going to hold off on until they're either ready or prepared or praying in the right direction. And we'll talk about that in a little bit. What's the right thing to pray for and the right way to pray. Verse 11 tells us the Holy Spirit has final say over who gets the individual prayer power gifts and who does not. Who gets the gifts of faith, who gets the gifts of healing and all the other power gifts of miracles and... Oh, wisdom and knowledge and discerning of spirits and just all the wonderful power gifts, the Holy Spirit makes that decision, so therefore that's why we need to invite Him into our prayer time.

13:01 He's the one that has the decision -maker, is the decision -maker. Now part two of that question on if the Holy Spirit helps some and doesn't help others is answered, I believe, in Hebrews chapter 13 verse 5 in the New International Version. Listen to this. God has said, never will I leave you or forsake you. Well, that to me answers the question that God God is telling us He will not forsake us. He's not going to hold back blessings from us as long as we are operating in His will and living a godly life, a righteous life, a holy life, not a perfect life, because we can't do that. The only one that ever walked this earth perfect was Jesus Christ. And so we can't live a perfect life, but we can live a good life, a godly life, a righteous life, a life that is surrendered to God and to His will. And when we do that, when we do that, God doesn't pick and choose who He'll bless and who He won't.

13:48 He's not going to say, well, okay. I'm going to bless you today, but not you today, because you're both good people and all that good stuff, but I just kind of feel like I only want to bless you. That isn't how God works. It says, God has said, never, he says the word, never will I leave you or forsake you. God does not forsake us in our times of prayer. If we have a difficult time getting through to the Holy Spirit, or feel like our prayers are not being heard, it has something to do with us, nothing to do with him. The Bible says that if you want to get close to God, then you need to draw to him and then when you do that he'll draw near to you. He doesn't say he'll think about drawing near to you, no he says I will draw near to you. God always hears our prayers and he's always ready to listen to them. So let's make sure we understand that the Holy Spirit helps everyone equally and how our prayers get answered has a great impact on how we're living our life and what our prayer is about. So I'm going to address that a little bit in just a moment about what we should pray and what we shouldn't. Okay the fourth question is this, how do I know my prayers are led by the Holy Spirit. Now that's really important. A lot of people say, I don't know how to pray. Well, that's when I tell them, have you received the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in your heavenly language? And if they haven't, I want to pray with them and will pray with them to receive the baptism, the infilling of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of having their prayer language that's different than tongues and interpretation in the nine power gifts. This is simply the Holy Spirit moving into our life and changing our prayer life. And then he prays according to the divine will of God when he's

15:19 praying through us. And so how do I know if my prayers are led by the Spirit? Then start off maybe by praying in the Spirit and asking him to lead you into your English or Spanish or whatever your language is as you go through your prayer time. There are a number of ways that we'll know that our prayers are led by the Holy Spirit. Here's a few. Let me just give you a couple of points I think that are helpful. Our prayers are in agreement with God's Word. Then we know that he's hearing our prayers and that they're being led by the Holy Spirit if they're in agreement with God's Word as the example. We cannot pray something like, God, give me revenge over that person. That is not according to God's Word. We can't pray, God, give me money so I can go and gamble it away to make more money. I mean, those are things I've actually had people come to me and say, Pastor, would you pray for me that when I go to the casino today that God will bless me and so I can gain the finances I need to get out of trouble. That is not a prayer that's acceptable to God because you're trying to use the the world system to receive a blessing from God, and that just doesn't work. So our prayers must be in agreement with God's word in order for our prayers to be led by the Holy Spirit.

16:25 Number two, when we have peace, we know the Holy Spirit led our prayers. You know, if you're struggling in your prayer time and you're struggling over what you're praying for and how you're praying for things and how long you should pray, those types of things, it's good to just stop. Bible says, be still and know that I'm God. Sometimes we need to just stop as we're going through all these things and just ask the Lord help me guide me Holy Spirit lead my prayer time take me in the direction that I should go and when we pray that A peace of God will come over our heart. Remember, it's so important that we have the peace of God that guides our hearts and guides our mind and protects us in our thought process and protects our direction that we're going in our prayer life. So we've got to understand that when we have peace during our prayer time, that we know that we bring lead of God. Now, I'm not saying if we're lazy, because the difference between lazy and peace, it's a huge difference between them. Lazy is things that are people that don't accomplish much. lazy person kind of gives up a lot, but a person who's at peace will move on to do things even though on the outside it doesn't look like it's gonna work.

17:30 Let me give an example. There are two great scriptures that kind of give an example of when you know you're praying in the right direction. The first one is in Proverbs 3 .5 where it says, trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding and all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths. Now, that means don't lean on your own understanding. If we're leaning on our own understanding, we can sometimes never receive the peace that we need to know. that our prayers are being led by the Holy Spirit. Another scripture that is so powerful to me, and I've used it many, many times, is Philippians chapter four, verse six, to be anxious for nothing but everything through prayer, petitions with thanksgiving. Let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God that passes all understanding will guard our hearts and guard our minds in Christ Jesus. Now, those two scriptures tell us how to have peace, tell us that don't lean on our own understanding. And then the other one says to not to be anxious, but to continue to press into God. And when you pray and thank Thank God during your prayer time, then you will receive the peace of God that passes all understanding and will guard our heart and will guard our mind in Christ Jesus and we will know that the Holy Spirit is leading our prayer time. Here number three, we simply need to yield to the Holy Spirit to direct our prayers. Now, I've covered that a little bit earlier, but that's so important.

18:40 You know, you've probably heard me say this before, but I don't ever like to start a podcast without stopping and inviting the Holy Spirit in to take control and run this prayer. meeting and help me in my prayer times and help me in this podcast and help me when I'm praying around the table. Those are things that just has become a part, I think, of my life because God has placed it there. Once again, forgive the personal reference, but this is what works for me. And when something works for me, I want to share that with other people. If we want to be led by the Spirit of God, then we've got to yield to the Holy Spirit. I know that when we do these podcasts, I always start off in the middle of it and thank God for the podcast and thank Him for what He's done. But now, Holy Spirit take over, take control, I submit to you, I yield to you. When we do that, I'm telling you, you get the attention of the Lord, you get the attention of the Holy Spirit who dwells inside of us, and He's going to direct our prayers. I believe that because so many times when I say that, there'll be a time during the prayer meeting where I'll change direction, or a time during the podcast where I'll change direction, and I know it's the Holy Spirit guiding and directing where He wants us to go. Number four, our prayers are based on the truth in our circumstances.

19:48 means that you can't be praying and covering up a truth. God certainly knows our ways. He knows our hearts. He knows what we're thinking. He knows what we're going to say before we say it. But bottom line, we cannot try to hide from the truth in our prayer time. John 16 and verse 13 says, the Spirit leads us into all truth. Prayers will be led by the Spirit of God when they are prayers that are truthful, prayers that reveal the truth. If someone's offended you or you're having a conflict with someone, make sure you admit where you've gone wrong or the areas that you've gone wrong, or if you don't feel you've gone wrong, then ask God to help you and reveal to you what you said wrong or did wrong to help you so that then we're operating in truth when we go to the Holy Spirit and ask for Him to lead our prayer time. All right, Zechariah 4 .6 says this in the New International Version.

20:36 It's not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord. This verse, I believe, tells us that and kind of summarizes everything that I'm talking about today. It tells us that God's work can be successful because God is doing it and not us. It's not our own strength. It's not by what we know or what we think we know. It's by His Spirit that truly gets great results in our times of prayer. The Holy Spirit has power and He wants to share that power with us. Holy Spirit -led prayers take us from natural to supernatural prayers. You know, I hope that this podcast has been a blessing to you. I've certainly enjoyed doing this. And I want to close with just a couple of comments I think that really kind of helps us solidify what we're getting into today. The Holy Spirit leads us to pray if we submit to Him and surrender to Him. The Holy Spirit takes our prayer deeper and deeper than we've ever thought possible. The Holy Spirit wants to guide us. He wants to direct us. He wants to lead our prayers. Does the Holy Spirit help us? Yes, He does. Does He? Think of one person as being more important than another. No, he does not. And it's important that we understand that we can be led by the Holy Spirit to pray as long as we put him first, as long as what we're praying is truthful, and as long as what we pray about will glorify God and give him thanks. And that the Holy Spirit -led prayers are so great and so powerful that why would we not want to be led by the Spirit of God to have prayer? So with that, I'm going to close by praying for you.

22:00 And I believe that God wants to touch you and help you. For those of you who are maybe struggling with your prayer life or you're struggling, wondering whether your prayers are being led by the Spirit or being led by the flesh, let me just pray for you right now and ask the Holy Spirit to help you. Heavenly Father, for those who are listening in and maybe are challenged with some of the things I just mentioned, Father, I pray that you would bless them. I pray that they would be faithful to prayer. They would pray without ceasing. That doesn't mean 24 -7. It simply means they'll pray continually in their heart and their mind as they go through the day and give praise to the Lord and ask for guidance and pray for other people and just simply make it a way of life to let prayer just flow through us. That will increase our faith and then to invite the Holy Spirit to lead us and direct us in our prayer time. For those people who have not received the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of praying in their heavenly language, I pray, Lord, that the Holy Spirit would then bring that forth in them so they could have prayers that can go on and on. Lord, that they'll be able to pray for an hour and it seemed like two minutes.

22:56 Lord, just bless them and help them in their prayer life, I pray. I thank you, Lord, for their desire to learn from you. from your word and I pray that you bless each and every one of his father to have stronger prayers that will be more faithful to prayer will be more faithful to lead as the Holy Spirit to lead us and direct us that we will invite him in to do things his way and not our way that will we surrender ourselves to him and that he will be glorified and all that takes place I believe great things are going to take place for those who are listening today their prayers will increase they'll be more powerful they'll be more effective and that you'll receive the glory you'll receive the praise and honor for it these things I ask now in Jesus Amen. Well, thank you for listening to this podcast. I can make a couple comments about the podcast series that we're in, the Holy Spirit. We're going to continue on in that for a while. And my next podcast, I believe, unless the Holy Spirit changes us, is going to be called Holy Spirit Gives Comfort. And that's something that was well received several months ago when I spoke on it. I really believe I need to get into that in a little deeper and see how the Lord guides us and directs us. So I hope that you would be interested in getting to know quality Christian living a little better. If you'd like to know more about us, you can go to my webpage at davidcfriendauthor .com. When you get there, on the front page, there'll be a link to all the podcasts we've done. I think this is the 25th or 26th podcast that we've done on the Holy Spirit, and we're gonna continue as the Spirit of God leads us.

24:18 If you'd like to know more about my writings and what the things that we've done that the Lord's given me, you can scroll down on my webpage and you'll see a list of books that are on Amazon dealing with faith, dealing with how to handle your finances, just some general help. that'll be a blessing and pray for me if you would. I'm trying to put together a new book on the Holy Spirit and I think I might want to call it the Experience the Holy Spirit because that has been a very powerful on my mind lately so I hope that you would just pray for me that God would direct me in that area and if you'd like to subscribe to my podcast you can do that by going to cpnshows .com or wherever you listen to your podcast. I pray that the Lord will bless you. I thank you once again for listening in. Thank you for taking time out of your day and taking 25 -30 minutes with me so that we can cover these topics and I know that the Lord is pleased. I know the Holy Spirit wants to work in each and every one of us. He loves all of us the same. He doesn't have favorites. He blesses us and helps us and sometimes I think we sit back and say, well how come that guy's getting blessed so much and how come that person is or that girl is or their business is doing well or they've got lots of money and God must like them best. That's just not true. God loves all of us equally. He loves each and every every person on earth, whether we're following him or not, he still loves us.

25:32 And he'll continue to love us until he brings us into his kingdom. And I just pray that all of us would think about people who don't know Jesus as our Lord and Savior, and we should share our faith with them. The Holy Spirit came upon us. One of the greatest challenges that we were given was that we would be witnesses, which means we would share our faith and talk about Jesus to others. So I hope that you will be led by the Spirit of God to witness your faith to other people and lead people to Jesus Christ. There's really nothing than that. Honestly, it's one of the most joyful things that the Lord has shown me to do, is to take every opportunity that I have to lead people to Jesus. So I pray that you'll be blessed with that. If you'd kind of like to know what we're going to talk about in the next upcoming podcast, let me just share a couple thoughts before I close this up today.

26:14 I mentioned the podcast will be on the comfort of the Holy Spirit, but we're going to base it upon a scripture that's so wonderful. The Spirit is upon me. It's in Luke chapter 4 and verse 18. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. What does that mean? I'm not even change the title from comfort to the Holy Spirit is upon us. And talk about that. I think it's something that's powerful. It'll help us to understand how we can walk in the power of the Holy Spirit. And I pray that you'll listen to that. Let your friends and family members know that we're going to be covering this in our next coming podcast. In closing, I'd like to thank you for listening. And if you enjoyed this podcast, this episode I should say, please take a moment and rate it and review the podcast. It really is helpful to us to be able to reach out to more people. You can leave a review on Apple Podcasts, on Amazon Music, on Charisma Podcast Network, or give us a star rating on Spotify. However you choose to support us, we certainly appreciate it. So let me close with a blessing. May the Lord bless you and keep you and may his face shine upon you. May he be gracious to you and give you peace. May you prosper and be in good health even as your soul prospers.

27:18 So until next time, may God richly bless you. Thank you once again for listening to Quality Christian Living. I'm your host David I look forward to seeing you on our next podcast. God bless you.