Eph 6:18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.
Mat 26:41 Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.
Jud 1:20 But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost,
In the Spirit
The spiritual world is as real as our physical world. It has its own law; its own possibility is totally different than what we experience in the physical world. You use spiritual senses to feel what’s going on in that world; your physical sense won’t work there. In the spirit, that is not possible in the physical is possible, and the law of the spirit is higher than the law of the physical. That is, by the law of the spirit the impossible can be made possible in the physical realm.
A human being can have access to that spiritual realm by faith, and can feel what’s going on in there by the human spirit.
Ø So when we meet the expression ‘in the spirit’in the scripture (not ‘in the spirit of – a person’s name: Elijah / or an adjective: meekness’) it can mean mostly: something done/known by faith in the spiritual world felt and experienced by the spirit. John 11:33; Act 18:5; Rom 2:29; Rom 8:9; Gal 3:3; Eph 6:18; Php 3:3; Col 1:8; Col 2:5; 1 Tim 3:16; 1 Pet 4:6; Rev 1:10; Rev 4:2.
In the spirit can be godly as it is under the influence of the Holy Spirit of God and the same kind of experience can be under demonic influence also. The witchcraft and that kind can be in the spirit, but it is in a dead (separated from God) spirit.
Worship in the spirit
Mat 26:41 Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.
Jud 1:20 But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost,
In the Spirit
The spiritual world is as real as our physical world. It has its own law; its own possibility is totally different than what we experience in the physical world. You use spiritual senses to feel what’s going on in that world; your physical sense won’t work there. In the spirit, that is not possible in the physical is possible, and the law of the spirit is higher than the law of the physical. That is, by the law of the spirit the impossible can be made possible in the physical realm.
A human being can have access to that spiritual realm by faith, and can feel what’s going on in there by the human spirit.
Ø So when we meet the expression ‘in the spirit’in the scripture (not ‘in the spirit of – a person’s name: Elijah / or an adjective: meekness’) it can mean mostly: something done/known by faith in the spiritual world felt and experienced by the spirit. John 11:33; Act 18:5; Rom 2:29; Rom 8:9; Gal 3:3; Eph 6:18; Php 3:3; Col 1:8; Col 2:5; 1 Tim 3:16; 1 Pet 4:6; Rev 1:10; Rev 4:2.
In the spirit can be godly as it is under the influence of the Holy Spirit of God and the same kind of experience can be under demonic influence also. The witchcraft and that kind can be in the spirit, but it is in a dead (separated from God) spirit.
Worship in the spirit
Jesus said that “the true worshipers of the Father worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23). So according to what we’ve said about what does ‘in the spirit’ mean, we can understand that worshiping the Father in spirit means: worshiping by faith in the spiritual world experienced by the spirit through the Spirit of God. That’s why having the Holy Spirit is the first thing to happen of being
a child of God so we can worship him first of all (Rom 8:9)
And that is the very thing we do with prayer: by faith, in the spiritual world, we seat with Jesus (Eph 2:6) and have boldness of childshiphood (Rom 8:15) to go before the throne of God asking him stuff, praising him, worshiping him.
Distance is not a problem anymore, what is possible and not (sickness, miracle) is not matter anymore, because we know that the law of the spirit is higher than the law of the physical world, we just set things right in the spirit, and it will be so in the pysical. And it gives us more reason, and courage to pray more and more.
But as Jesus said, the spirit is willing but the body is weak (Mat 26:41): we want a prayerful life but after some day of trying we realize that it’s too hard or just easy to be forgotten, because the body is weak. For this cause, Paul exhorts us to walk in the spirit: “Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh? (Gal 3:3)… This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. If we live in the Spirit (Rom 8:9 But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his), let us also walk in the Spirit. (Gal 5:16,25)
Pray in the Spirit
As we saw before, no worship is acceptable before God but worship in the spirit and in truth. Therefore, praying in the spirit is a ‘must’, I mean (with the previous definition) we must pray by faith, in the spiritual world experienced by our spirit through the Spirit of the Living God. (Eph 2:18)
Ø By faith: for without faith no one can please God (Heb. 11:6). “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Heb 11:1)
Ø In the spiritual world experienced by our spirit: for God is Spirit (4:24). It is not how much you bow, nor how much loud you speak as you pray, nor how much you cry or kneel or raise your hand (all of that in the physical), but let be all that follow as your state of spirit, first, is revering and honoring God. Receive the answers of your prayers in your spirit first, don’t worry about what you see, but instead feel the peace that God gives you by his Spirit in your heart.
Ø Through the Spirit of the Living God who gives life, called the Spirit of adoption (Rom 8:15) by whom we are bold enough to call God our Father. God is the King from the beginning, he is our Creator, but he prefers to be called our Father, Jesus came so as we believe we have the power to be children of God, go before his throne as his beloved child.
Those conditions mentioned are to rectify anyone who says that Pray in the Spirit means Pray in tongues because if Prayer in the Spirit has to be Prayer in tongues then many prayer won’t be valid before God because He is Spirit and the prayer addressed to him must be in Spirit and in Truth, according to Jesus. And we see that Paul was no always praying in tongues (1 Cor 14:15), just like me and many Christians since the first Church.
So how will we then pray in the spirit?
Ø Just let God know what you think, no matter how (just think it, God knows your thought, or speak it out with the language you know or the hearer can understand – especially do this if you want to bless someone else with your prayer- 1 Cor 14:16), believe that he has heard it because you have believed Jesus as your savior and as you believe that you have the Holy spirit of God, because only by Him that you can call Jesus as Lord (1 Cor 12:13).
Ø Let your spirit pray directly what he wants to say to God, you understand it or not (1 Cor 14:2). In other word: pray in tongues (out loud or not).
Depth of Praying in the Spirit
Whenever you pray in the spirit, then you pray in the spirit, but it is clear that some prayer is deeper or let me say more effective than the others, for instance the prayer of a righteous man (James 5:16), the fervent prayer of the child of God(Acts 12:5), the prayer with fasting (Mat 17:21).
What we’ll do in this section is just to rank the prayer with understanding, the prayer in tongues, and the prayer and fasting by effectiveness.
- Praying with the understanding vs. Praying in tongues
We learned in the chapter of Prayer (the first chapter) that the Holy Ghost gives us what to pray according to the will of God. So when the prayer comes it follows the next chart:
a child of God so we can worship him first of all (Rom 8:9)
And that is the very thing we do with prayer: by faith, in the spiritual world, we seat with Jesus (Eph 2:6) and have boldness of childshiphood (Rom 8:15) to go before the throne of God asking him stuff, praising him, worshiping him.
Distance is not a problem anymore, what is possible and not (sickness, miracle) is not matter anymore, because we know that the law of the spirit is higher than the law of the physical world, we just set things right in the spirit, and it will be so in the pysical. And it gives us more reason, and courage to pray more and more.
But as Jesus said, the spirit is willing but the body is weak (Mat 26:41): we want a prayerful life but after some day of trying we realize that it’s too hard or just easy to be forgotten, because the body is weak. For this cause, Paul exhorts us to walk in the spirit: “Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh? (Gal 3:3)… This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. If we live in the Spirit (Rom 8:9 But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his), let us also walk in the Spirit. (Gal 5:16,25)
Pray in the Spirit
As we saw before, no worship is acceptable before God but worship in the spirit and in truth. Therefore, praying in the spirit is a ‘must’, I mean (with the previous definition) we must pray by faith, in the spiritual world experienced by our spirit through the Spirit of the Living God. (Eph 2:18)
Ø By faith: for without faith no one can please God (Heb. 11:6). “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Heb 11:1)
Ø In the spiritual world experienced by our spirit: for God is Spirit (4:24). It is not how much you bow, nor how much loud you speak as you pray, nor how much you cry or kneel or raise your hand (all of that in the physical), but let be all that follow as your state of spirit, first, is revering and honoring God. Receive the answers of your prayers in your spirit first, don’t worry about what you see, but instead feel the peace that God gives you by his Spirit in your heart.
Ø Through the Spirit of the Living God who gives life, called the Spirit of adoption (Rom 8:15) by whom we are bold enough to call God our Father. God is the King from the beginning, he is our Creator, but he prefers to be called our Father, Jesus came so as we believe we have the power to be children of God, go before his throne as his beloved child.
Those conditions mentioned are to rectify anyone who says that Pray in the Spirit means Pray in tongues because if Prayer in the Spirit has to be Prayer in tongues then many prayer won’t be valid before God because He is Spirit and the prayer addressed to him must be in Spirit and in Truth, according to Jesus. And we see that Paul was no always praying in tongues (1 Cor 14:15), just like me and many Christians since the first Church.
So how will we then pray in the spirit?
Ø Just let God know what you think, no matter how (just think it, God knows your thought, or speak it out with the language you know or the hearer can understand – especially do this if you want to bless someone else with your prayer- 1 Cor 14:16), believe that he has heard it because you have believed Jesus as your savior and as you believe that you have the Holy spirit of God, because only by Him that you can call Jesus as Lord (1 Cor 12:13).
Ø Let your spirit pray directly what he wants to say to God, you understand it or not (1 Cor 14:2). In other word: pray in tongues (out loud or not).
Depth of Praying in the Spirit
Whenever you pray in the spirit, then you pray in the spirit, but it is clear that some prayer is deeper or let me say more effective than the others, for instance the prayer of a righteous man (James 5:16), the fervent prayer of the child of God(Acts 12:5), the prayer with fasting (Mat 17:21).
What we’ll do in this section is just to rank the prayer with understanding, the prayer in tongues, and the prayer and fasting by effectiveness.
- Praying with the understanding vs. Praying in tongues
We learned in the chapter of Prayer (the first chapter) that the Holy Ghost gives us what to pray according to the will of God. So when the prayer comes it follows the next chart:
So as we can see, the Holy Spirit gives us what to pray according to the will of God for He knows the will of God (1 Cor 2:11) and our resurrected spirit by the faith we have in Jesus Christ (Joh 5:24; Eph 2:1,5) can pray it directly by tongues; he can pass the prayer items to our mind also to be processed. Doing the prayer at the level of our spirit will be better because our spirit can pray all things even the mystery that we are not supposed to know (because it is just not good for us to know) or we can’t understand (1 Cor 14:2), and because our mind with its reasoning won’t interfere on the will of God. If we don’t pray in tongues then the prayer item is sent to our understanding to be prayed.
So we see that in each level downward the prayer is losing its originality, which means its effectiveness. Closer to the source it is more effective it will be, because lesser factor will interfere the will of God to be prayed. And the biggest enemy of our prayer is the lack of faith which resides in the level of our understanding when we don’t agree/believe on what the Holy Ghost asks us to pray, and it just spoils everything.
Some prayer even, to not say most of them, is sent directly from the Holy Ghost to God (Rom 8:27) because it is inexpressible even by tongues (Rom 8:26).
So what does all this mean? It means:
Ø If you don’t pray in tongues, ask the Holy Spirit to give you at least one (1 Cor 14:18) because it is something that all believer should have (Mar 16:17) because it is with it that we edify ourselves (1 Cor 14:4); but remember, there is nothing wrong to not pray in tongues (1 Cor 14:5).
Do not say that you won’t ask for tongues because Paul said that prophecy is better. Remember they are not in the same category of gift of the Holy Spirit, prophecy is not for everyone, the Holy Spirit gives as it pleases him (1 Cor 12:4, 11), but tongues is in the same category as the gift of healings and authority over the power of darkness which every believers need/supposed to have, and Jesus promised to give every believer (Mar 16:17) because of the benefits we have seen before.
Ø If you pray in tongues, then continue to pray with it even more than what you already are doing. Ask also that the Holy Ghost gives you more (1Co 14:18) for your personal edification as we said earlier. And do not cease to pray with your understanding, because it pleases God to see your whole being worshiping him (1 Cor 14:15; Psa 103:1; Col 3:16): your spirit, your mind/soul, your body.
Ø If you are skeptic of this tongues thing, maybe because you are not used to it or something to be ashamed of because of the community where you are, or maybe you think it is for the charismatics, or maybe because you think those people doing it is just pretender, not genuine, or because you might think that tongues is just not for you or because of any other reason, then this is what I can say: it’s about your ‘personal’ edification so your decision shouldn’t be related with anyone else’s point of view or what they do, they can fake if they want but you can have the genuine one. And know that whatever sound people does, none of them has no meaning, you might not know what does it mean, but all of sounds in the world has meaning (1Co 14:10). So the question is not whether the tongues someone is using to pray is meaningless or useful at all, but the question should be: are the meaning praising God or not. So your answer to this is based on what is your belief: do you believe that Jesus is in you, the Holy Spirit of God is in you? If you believe that, then you should have the confidence that if you pray in tongues, it will be for praising God for sure, because God won’t allow you to pray a prayer to curse him. If you still doubt whether you have the Holy Spirit or not, then it’s very normal for you to be afraid to pray in tongues.
- Prayer and Fasting
There is a lot to say about prayer and fasting, but in our context we’ll just put its position in our scale.
When you fast your body is weak, making your spirit more sensitive of the spiritual world and have more power over your soul. So when it is combined with Prayer it gives you more authority in the spiritual realm (Mar 9:29) if we are talking about spiritual warfare, but more humility and repentance if we are talking about worshipping God (Dan 10:2-3,12).
So fasting can be combined with praying in tongues (with our spirit) or praying with understanding.
Note about Mar 9:29
Jesus said unto His disciples, “This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.”
That kind was called by Jesus in the previous verse (Mar 9:25) “dumb and deaf spirit”. Jesus didn’t call that spirit so because the spirit ignored the command of the disciples casting them out (Mar 9:28) since the father himself knew that the spirit is dumb (result of being deaf, Mar 9:17) but because they couldn’t hear the command.
The disciples then need to pray and fast so the deaf spirit will hear them being also in the spiritual realm by the fasting.
So we see that in each level downward the prayer is losing its originality, which means its effectiveness. Closer to the source it is more effective it will be, because lesser factor will interfere the will of God to be prayed. And the biggest enemy of our prayer is the lack of faith which resides in the level of our understanding when we don’t agree/believe on what the Holy Ghost asks us to pray, and it just spoils everything.
Some prayer even, to not say most of them, is sent directly from the Holy Ghost to God (Rom 8:27) because it is inexpressible even by tongues (Rom 8:26).
So what does all this mean? It means:
Ø If you don’t pray in tongues, ask the Holy Spirit to give you at least one (1 Cor 14:18) because it is something that all believer should have (Mar 16:17) because it is with it that we edify ourselves (1 Cor 14:4); but remember, there is nothing wrong to not pray in tongues (1 Cor 14:5).
Do not say that you won’t ask for tongues because Paul said that prophecy is better. Remember they are not in the same category of gift of the Holy Spirit, prophecy is not for everyone, the Holy Spirit gives as it pleases him (1 Cor 12:4, 11), but tongues is in the same category as the gift of healings and authority over the power of darkness which every believers need/supposed to have, and Jesus promised to give every believer (Mar 16:17) because of the benefits we have seen before.
Ø If you pray in tongues, then continue to pray with it even more than what you already are doing. Ask also that the Holy Ghost gives you more (1Co 14:18) for your personal edification as we said earlier. And do not cease to pray with your understanding, because it pleases God to see your whole being worshiping him (1 Cor 14:15; Psa 103:1; Col 3:16): your spirit, your mind/soul, your body.
Ø If you are skeptic of this tongues thing, maybe because you are not used to it or something to be ashamed of because of the community where you are, or maybe you think it is for the charismatics, or maybe because you think those people doing it is just pretender, not genuine, or because you might think that tongues is just not for you or because of any other reason, then this is what I can say: it’s about your ‘personal’ edification so your decision shouldn’t be related with anyone else’s point of view or what they do, they can fake if they want but you can have the genuine one. And know that whatever sound people does, none of them has no meaning, you might not know what does it mean, but all of sounds in the world has meaning (1Co 14:10). So the question is not whether the tongues someone is using to pray is meaningless or useful at all, but the question should be: are the meaning praising God or not. So your answer to this is based on what is your belief: do you believe that Jesus is in you, the Holy Spirit of God is in you? If you believe that, then you should have the confidence that if you pray in tongues, it will be for praising God for sure, because God won’t allow you to pray a prayer to curse him. If you still doubt whether you have the Holy Spirit or not, then it’s very normal for you to be afraid to pray in tongues.
- Prayer and Fasting
There is a lot to say about prayer and fasting, but in our context we’ll just put its position in our scale.
When you fast your body is weak, making your spirit more sensitive of the spiritual world and have more power over your soul. So when it is combined with Prayer it gives you more authority in the spiritual realm (Mar 9:29) if we are talking about spiritual warfare, but more humility and repentance if we are talking about worshipping God (Dan 10:2-3,12).
So fasting can be combined with praying in tongues (with our spirit) or praying with understanding.
Note about Mar 9:29
Jesus said unto His disciples, “This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.”
That kind was called by Jesus in the previous verse (Mar 9:25) “dumb and deaf spirit”. Jesus didn’t call that spirit so because the spirit ignored the command of the disciples casting them out (Mar 9:28) since the father himself knew that the spirit is dumb (result of being deaf, Mar 9:17) but because they couldn’t hear the command.
The disciples then need to pray and fast so the deaf spirit will hear them being also in the spiritual realm by the fasting.