the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
John Gossner's Treasury
Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Romans 8:26. And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us. 1 John 3:24.
He who has a desire to pray is certainly not without the Holy Spirit and therefore not without Christ. Where the Spirit of prayer dwells, there Jesus dwells also, and the Father. A sure sign that you are a temple of God in the Spirit is this, that you find your greatest joy in communing with God in the Spirit and in walking with Jesus, that you delight in prayer. Prayer is not a mumbling of words; true, holy prayer is an unutterable groaning of the Spirit. As long as you talk much in prayer, there is yet much of your own fire, a not altogether clean, but, perhaps, a strange and unholy fire in it. But when the Holy Spirit lays the live coals in the censer and puts incense thereon, then the holy flame lifts us ever higher and the voice fails us; we can no longer find words. The heart and spirit say more without words in the presence of God than the lips can utter. We would, nevertheless, by no means condemn oral prayer. Everything has its time. I only mean that he who prays with the lips only, has little or no use for the Holy Spirit; he relies too much on himself and thinks that he does not need the divine Advocate.
Lighten Thou our darkness,
Be Thyself our light;
Strengthen Thou our weakness,
Spirit of all might!
Spirit of adoption!
Make us overflow
With Thy sevenfold blessing.
And in grace to grow.
