He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?
~ Galatians 3:5
But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.
~ Galatians 3:22
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
They shall come with weeping, and with supplications will I lead them: I will cause them to walk by the rivers of waters in a straight way, wherein they shall not stumble: for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.
~ Jeremiah 31:9
In those days, and in that time, saith the LORD, the children of Israel shall come, they and the children of Judah together, going and weeping: they shall go, and seek the LORD their God.
~ Jeremiah 50:4
Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints;
~ Ephesians 6:18
But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost,
~ Jude 1:20
But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:
~ John 15:26
For I know that this shall turn to my salvation through your prayer, and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ,
Philippians 1:19
And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.
~ Romans 8:27
For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me.
Psalm 22:16-17
Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.
~ Revelation 1:7
Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.
~ Hebrews 4:14-16
I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
~ Galatians 2:20
And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.
~ Mark 9:24
The Work of the Holy Spirit As to the Matter of Prayer, by John Owen. The following contains an excerpt from Chapter Five of his work, “The Work Of The Holy Spirit In Prayer”.
And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.
~ Zechariah 12.10
And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.
~ Galatians 4.6
1. The principal matter of our prayers concerns faith and unbelief. So the apostles prayed in a particular manner, ‘Lord, increase our faith;’ and so the poor man prayed in his distress, ‘Lord, help my unbelief.’ I cannot think that those who never pray for the pardon of unbelief, for its removal, and for the increase of faith, ever pray rightly. If unbelief is the greatest of sins, and if faith is the greatest of the gifts of God, we are not Christians if these things are not one principal part of the matter of our prayers. To this end we must be convinced of the nature and guilt of unbelief, and also of the nature and use of faith. Without that conviction, we can neither know our own highest wants, nor what to pray for as we ought. Our Savior expressly declares that this is the special work of the Holy Ghost, Joh 16.8-9, ‘He will convince the world of sin, because they do not believe in me.’ I deny and must deny that anyone is or can be convinced of the nature and guilt of that unbelief, either in the whole or in its remainders — which the gospel condemns, and which is the great condemning sin under the gospel — without a special work of the Holy Ghost on his mind and soul. For unbelief, as it respects Jesus Christ — not believing in him, or not believing in him as we should — is a sin against the gospel. And it is by the gospel alone that we may be convinced of it; and that is by the ministration of the Spirit.
Thus, neither the light of a natural conscience nor the law will convince anyone of the guilt of unbelief with respect to Jesus Christ, nor instruct them in the nature of faith in him. No innate notions of our minds, no doctrines of the law, will reach to this. To think to teach men to pray, or to help them in praying, without a sense of unbelief, or of the remainders of it in its guilt and power — and without a sense of the nature of faith, with its necessity, use, and efficacy — is to say to the naked and the hungry, ‘Be warmed and filled,’ and not to give them those things that are needful for the body. Therefore, this belongs to the work of the Spirit as a Spirit of supplication. Let men tear and tire themselves night and day with a multitude of prayers, if a work of the Spirit of God in teaching the nature and guilt of unbelief, and the nature, efficacy, and use of faith in Christ Jesus, do not go with it, all will be lost and perish. Yet it is marvellous to consider how little mention of these things occurs in most of those compositions which have been published to be used as forms of prayer. They are generally omitted in such endeavors, as if they were things in which Christians were very little concerned. The gospel positively and frequently determines the present acceptance of men with God or their disobedience, with their future salvation and condemnation, according to their faith or unbelief. For their obedience or disobedience are infallible consequents of that. Now, if things that are of the greatest importance to us, and on which depend all other things in which our spiritual estate is concerned, and these things are not a part of the subject-matter of our daily prayer, then I do not know what deserves to be.
2. The matter of our prayer respects the depravation of our nature, and our wants on that account:
The darkness and ignorance that is in our understandings;
Our unacquaintedness with heavenly things;
Our alienation from the life of God thereby;
The secret workings of the lusts of the mind under the shade and covert of this darkness;
The stubbornness, obstinacy, and perverseness of our wills by nature;
Our wills’ reluctance toward and dislike of spiritual things; Innumerable latent guiles arising from this reluctance.
All of these keep the soul from a due conformity to the holiness of God. And so they are things which believers have a special regard to in their confessions and supplications. They know this is their duty, and find by experience that the greatest concern between God and their souls, as to sin and holiness, lies in these things. And they are never more concerned for themselves than when they find their hearts least affected with them. To give up entreating God about them — for mercy in their pardon, for grace in their removal, and the daily renovation of the image of God in them thereby — is to renounce all religion and all designs of living for God.
Therefore, without a knowledge, a sense, a due comprehension of these things, no man can pray as he should, because he is unacquainted with the matter of prayer, and he does not know what to pray for. But we cannot attain this knowledge of ourselves. Our nature is so corrupted as not to understand its own depravation. Hence some absolutely deny this corruption, thus taking away all necessity for laboring after its cure and the renovation of the image of God in us. And hereby they overthrow the prayers of all believers, which the ancient church continually pressed the Pelagians with. Without a sense of these things, I must profess that I do not understand how any man can pray. And as was said, we do not have this knowledge of ourselves. Our nature is blind, and cannot see them; it is proud, and will not own them; it is stupid, and senseless of them. It is the work of the Spirit of God alone to give us a due conviction of, a spiritual insight into, and a sense of the concern of these things. I have so fully proved this elsewhere, as not to insist on it here again.
It is not easy to conjecture how men pray, or what they pray about, who do not know the plague of their own hearts. Indeed, this ignorance, lack of light into, or conviction of, the depravation of their nature — and the remainders of it even in those who are renewed, with the fruits, consequents, and effects of it — are the principal cause of men’s barrenness in this duty. It is such that they can seldom go beyond what is prescribed to them. And from this, they can also satisfy themselves with a set or frame of well-composed words. They might easily discern that their own condition and concern are not at all expressed in these, if they were acquainted with them. I do not fix measures for other men, nor give bounds to their understandings. Only, I will take leave to profess, for my own part, that I cannot conceive or apprehend how any man does or can know what to pray for as he should, in the whole compass and course of that duty, if he has no spiritual illumination enabling him to discern, in some measure, the corruption of his nature, and the internal evils of his heart. If men judge that the faculties of their souls are undepraved, their minds are free from vanity, their hearts are free from guile and deceit, their wills are free from perverseness and carnality, I do not wonder on what grounds they despise the prayers of others, but would wonder on what grounds they might find real humiliation and fervency in their own.
To this I may add the irregularity and disorder of our affections. These, I confess, are discernible in the light of nature. And rectifying them, or attempting to, was the principal end of the old philosophy. But the chief respect it had to them on this principle, is that they disquiet the mind, or erupt into outward expressions by which men are defiled, dishonored, or distressed. This is how far natural light will go. And by this light, in the working of their consciences, as far as I know, men may be put to prayer about them. But the chief depravation of the affections lies in their aversion to spiritual and heavenly things.
They are, indeed, sometimes ready to like spiritual things under false notions of them, and to like divine worship under superstitious ornaments and meretricious dresses. In this respect, they are the spring and life of all that devotion which is in the church of Rome. But take heavenly and spiritual things in themselves, with respect to their proper ends, and there is a dislike of them and an aversion to them in all our affections, which are corrupted. These variously act themselves, and influence our souls to vanities and disorders in all holy duties. No man knows what it means to pray, who is not exercised in supplications for mortifying, changing, and renewing these affections which are spiritually irregular. And yet it is the Spirit of God alone which reveals these things to us, and gives us a sense of our concern in them. I say, the spiritual irregularity of our affections, and their aversion to spiritual things, is discernible in no other light than supernatural illumination. For if spiritual things cannot be discerned without that, as the apostle assures us they cannot, 1Cor 2.14,then it is impossible that the disorder of our affections can do so. If we do not know the true nature of an object, we cannot know the actings of our minds towards it. Therefore, although there is an innate, universal aversion to spiritual things in our affections, seeing that by nature we are wholly alienated from the life of God, it cannot be discerned by us in any light except that which reveals these spiritual things to us. Nor can any man be made sensible of the evil and guilt of that disorder, who does not also have a love implanted in his heart for those things which the heart finds obstructed thereby. Therefore, the mortification of these affections, and their renovation with respect to spiritual and heavenly things — being no small part of the matter of the prayers of believers, and a special part of their duty — they have no other acquaintance with them or sense of them except as they receive them by light and conviction from the Spirit of God. Those who are destitute of this, must necessarily be strangers to the life and power of the duty of prayer itself.
As it is with respect to sin, so it is with respect to God and Christ, and the covenant, grace, holiness, and privileges. We have no spiritual conceptions about them, no right understanding of them, no insight into them, except what is given to us by the Spirit of God. Without an acquaintance with these things, what are our prayers, or what do they signify? Men without such an acquaintance, may pray on to the world’s end,without giving anything of glory to God, or obtaining any advantage for their own souls. And this I place as the first part of the work of the Spirit of supplication in believers: enabling them to pray according to the mind of God, which they do not know how to do of themselves, as insisted on afterward in this passage of the apostle. When this is done, when a right apprehension of sin and grace and of our concern in them is fixed on our minds, then in some measure we always have the matter of prayer in readiness. Its words and expressions will easily follow, though the aid of the Holy Spirit is also necessary for this, as we will afterward declare.
And this is why the duty performed with respect to this part of the aid and assistance of the Spirit of God has lately been vilified and reproached by some (as said before). Formerly all their exceptions lay against some expressions, or against the weakness of some persons in conceived prayer, which they did not like. But now scorn is poured out on the matter of prayer itself, especially the humble and deep confessions of sin (upon its discovery mentioned before) which are made in the supplications of ministers and others. The things themselves are maligned as absurd, foolish, and irrational, as all spiritual things are to some sorts of men. Nor do I see how this disagreement is capable of any reconciliation. For those who have no light to discern those respects of sin and grace which we mentioned, cannot help but think it is uncouth to have them continually made the matter of men’s prayers. On the other hand, those who have received a light into sin and grace, and are acquainted with them by the Spirit of God, are troubled at nothing more than this: that they cannot sufficiently abase themselves under a sense of them, nor in any words can they fully express that impression on their minds which is made by the Holy Ghost, nor can they clothe their desires for grace and mercy with words sufficiently significant and emphatic. And therefore this difference is irreconcilable by any except the Spirit of God himself. While it abides, those who respect in their prayers only what is discernible in the light of nature, or from a natural conscience, will keep themselves to general expressions and outward things. They will use words prepared for that purpose by themselves or others, do what we can to the contrary; for men will not be led beyond their own light, nor is it fitting that they should. And those who receive the supplies of the Spirit in this matter, will principally be conversant in their prayers, about the spiritual, internal concerns of their souls in sin and grace, however pleased others may be to despise and reproach them for it.
It is in vain to contend much about these things, which are regulated not by arguments but by principles. Men will invincibly adhere to the capacity of their light. Nothing can put an end to this difference except a more plentiful effusion of the Spirit from above. According to the promise, this is what we wait for.
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