With Christ in the School of Prayer (25) ... the Holy Spirit in Prayer

by Dale Shumaker
Spirit Savvy Network
www.spiritsavvy.net

Finding your mission, Empowering your life through prayer,
Becoming a Missionary in the Marketplace
Leading others to be Missionaries in the Marketplace

An all-time Christian Classic on prayer which is a foundational study on prayer that anyone interested in Prayer should read. So, I decided to summarize it chapter by chapter. With Christ in the School of Prayer is a classroom on the Power of Prayer in your Life.

With Christ in the School of Prayer by Andrew Murray,
Chapter 25, the Holy Spirit in Prayer:

‘At that day ye shall ask in my Name. ‘  We know what ‘at that day’ means.  It is the day of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.  The great work Christ was to do on the cross, the mighty power and the complete victory to be manifested in His resurrection and ascension, were to issue in the coming down from heaven, as never before, of the glory of God to dwell in men.

The coming of the Holy Spirit was indeed to commence a new epoch in the prayer-world, we must remember who He is, what His work, and what the significance of His not being given until Jesus was glorified.  It is in the Spirit that God exists, for He is Spirit.

It is to do this that He ever lives to pray; in His unceasing intercession He places Himself in living fellowship with the unceasing prayer of His redeemed ones.  Or rather, it is His unceasing intercession which shows itself in their prayers, and gives them a power they never had before. And He does this through the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the glorified Jesus, could not be until He had been glorified.

Brother!  what we need to pray in the Name of Christ, to ask that we may receive that our joy may be full, is the baptism of this Holy Spirit.  This is more than the Spirit of God under  the Old Testament.  This is more than the Spirit of conversion and regeneration the disciples had before Pentecost.  This is more than the Spirit with a measure of His influence  and working.  This is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the glorified Jesus in His exaltation-power, coming on us as the Spirit of the indwelling Jesus, revealing the Son and the Father.  It is when this Spirit is the Spirit not only at our hours of prayer, but of our whole life and walk, when this Spirit glorifies Jesus in us by revealing the completeness of His. work, and making us wholly one with Him and like Him, that we can pray in His Name, because we are in very deed one with Him.

It is abiding in Christ that gives the right and power to ask what we will:  the extent of the abiding is the exact measure of the power in prayer.  It is the Spirit dwelling within us that prays, not in words and thoughts always, but in a breathing and a being deeper than utterance.  Just so much as there is of Christ’s Spirit in us, is there real prayer.

More on the Holy Spirit and Prayer:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/murray/prayer.XXV.html
The Christian Classics Ethereal Library has many classic works on prayer and living a Spirit-filled life.