SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/11/2019
1:11 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
“The Power of Prayer”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Eph. 6:18
Message of the verse: “18 praying at all
times in the Spirit,
with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance,
making supplication for all the saints” (ESV).
I
have taken the time to highlight “in the Spirit” from Eph. 6:18 which is the
key for believers to have the power of prayer.
I have mentioned in my SD’s about how it was or better what was used to
bring me to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
One of the things was a prayer that I prayed to the Lord years before I
became a believer so I have to believe that perhaps this prayer was not in the
power of the Holy Spirit because at that time I knew little if anything about
the Holy Spirit. My prayer was that God
would get me out of the army as it was not the place that I wanted to be, and God
answered that prayer, but there was a deal that I made with God at that time,
and that was if He would answer my prayer that I would never swear or take His
name in vein again. The answer to that
deal would be seen later on when the Holy Spirit gave me an effectual call for
salvation and took my desire to swear away from me.
John
MacArthur writes the following: “This
supreme qualification for prayer has nothing to do with speaking in tongues or
in some other ecstatic or dramatic manner.
To pray in ‘the Spirit’ is to pray in the name of Christ, to pray
consistent with His nature and will. To
pray in the Spirit is to pray in concert with the Spirit, who ‘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; 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’ (Rom. 8:26-27). As the ‘Spirit of Grace and of supplication’
(Zech 12:10), the Holy Spirit continually prays for us; and for us to pray
rightly is to pray as He prays, to join our petitions to His and our will to
His. It is to line up our minds and
desires with His mind and desires, which are consistent with the will of the
Father and Son.”
Now
we have talked about the filling of the Holy Spirit in our stud of Ephesians
ever since we dealt with “18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is
debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18).” We spent weeks on this one verse talking
about the consumption of alcohol, then the filling of the Holy Spirit. MacArthur adds “To be ‘filled with the Spirit’
(Eph. 5:18) and to walk in His leading and power is to be made able to pray ‘in
the Spirit,’ because our prayer will then be in harmony with His. As we submit to the Holy Spirit, obeying His
Word and relying on His leading and strength, we will be drawn into close and
deep fellowship with the Father and Son.”
As
a true believer in Jesus Christ I am to line up my will with the will of the
Father, and this can only be done through the filling of the Holy Spirit.
I
have one more thing to add to this section of this SD, and that comes from the thought
that John MacArthur brings up about how some believe that when a person is
filled with the Spirit they will speak in unknown languages, tongues. When the Lord saved me He took away from me
swearing, the language that would not be what I speak in again, something I
could not do on my own.
Our quotation from “Love in Action”
comes from Job 8:4 and 8:20.
“God will not cast away the blameless,
nor will He
uphold the evildoers (Job 8:20). If your
sons have sinned against Him,
He has cast them away for
their transgression”
(Job.
8:4).
11/11/2019 1:40 PM
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