Prayer: What It Is—and What It Isn’t | Discover How Christ Prays Within You

My dear brothers and sisters, what have we said tonight? Praise the Lord, there is someone in you praying. The Lord has given your own spirit to pray with. Both spirits pray out to the Father all the time. Just learn to come, open yourself to the Lord, and pray in the Lord. Be in His Spirit, and you will be in prayer. Just learn to come and turn on your spirit, and you will be in the spirit of prayer. Don’t ask for things; don’t say, “Lord, help me;” but rather give up even the future, “Lord, you’re going to,” and give up the past, “Oh Lord, why is…?” and give up your questions. But there is the proclaiming. There is the praise. There is the thanking. When you come together to pray, pray quickly. If you’re coming together to offer up the Scripture, and you should, because it is so rich, if you do this properly, it is so rich. Offer up whatever you get stuck with. If there’s nothing more to be said, another brother or sister should quickly run to the rescue and offer whatever they are stuck with. If you’re going in a circle, you know when it’s your turn. You know. Nobody has to tell you. You’ve got to come and offer something to the Lord. In a moment or two, all of you will begin to move toward the Spirit. You will never move toward the Spirit while sitting there, quiet or mumbling to yourself. Speak quickly. In a moment, someone is going to see a light turn on, and if you all keep moving quickly, it’s going to get really neat.

These are some beginnings. It’s the same way in the meetings. In the meeting, it’s not “Lord, we thank you, you’re going to…,” or “Lord, we need,” or “Lord, help us.” If you have the sense of praying that, turn that prayer immediately and say, “Thank you, Lord, you have,” or “Thank you, Lord, you are,” or “Thank you, Lord, I am.” Make sure you pray in the Spirit. As Brother Don said, you cannot pray, “thank you god that everyone in Goleta just got saved.”

Brothers and sisters, you have an anointing with him. You have a perfectly normal mind. You know what you cannot pray. You can pray, “Oh God, thank you that you have raised up a church to be the city here for an evil city to see. Thank you, Lord, that this city has seen your city. Thank you, Lord, that this city has seen your building. Thank you, Lord, that you have built your church. Thank you, Lord, that you have built us together. Lord, you are building us together. Thank you, Lord, that we’re more built today than yesterday.”

Brothers, take God’s view of these matters. Sisters, there is so much of this for us to learn. If you go back to the New Testament and try to find the kind of praying that we’ve prayed in the past, the only time you can find such a prayer, as far as I know, was when Peter was out on the water and said, “Lord, save me,” and he meant physically. Some of the people who were lost said, “O Son of David, help me.” But try to find a prayer among Christians that says “Lord I need,” “Lord help me,” or “Lord give.”

The whole attitude of the prayer of the church is in the spirit of what the Lord wants to do. Praise the Lord. The Lord is bringing us into the deeper matters of prayer. The Lord is giving us real prayer.