... Praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.—Ephesians 6:18–20

Introduction

This week is the fifth installment in a nine week sermon series entitled: Fill These Cities: 25 x ’25. The “25 x ’25” is our vision for the next decade and expresses our gospel ambition that the next 25 months would act as a catalyst to accelerate the next decade of spreading so that by God’s grace we would plant 25 new churches and engage 25 unengaged people groups by the year 2025. Let me clear up any potential confusion here. Don’t hear 25 x ’25 and think to yourself, Oh, I get it. We are setting our sights on planting 25 churches and engaging 25 unengaged people groups by 2025. Got it.

Almost—you got 2 out of 4 (50%). Good start! Here is the way I want you to picture it: The first two (strengthening the core/building a permanent facility South) are the source of spreading and the second two (25 churches planted/25 unengaged people groups engaged) are the surge of spreading. That is how the first two aspirations of 25 x ’25 are so tightly tied together with the second two.

You heard last week about aspiration #2 (build a building South): Who will forget the video of Chuck standing in the middle of a field in Lakeville with a drone flying down to him?! This week think about what strengthening the core means. Our three campuses are like three light posts along I-35: Mounds View, Downtown, Lakeville. "The lamps used in streetlights vary in both size and consumption (typically between 35 and 250 watts) depending upon whether they are lighting a residential area, main road or a town centre" (Power of a Streetlight).

Strengthening the core means increasing the watts or lumens for our light posts. That is why we handed out the DNA booklet during week 2. Let’s strengthen the core so we can shine brightly! Strengthening the core means digging deeper into our priorities so that we can light up a whole city center (North, Downtown, South) with the bright light of the gospel of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

A permanent facility—a permanent light post in Lakeville—will increase the luminosity of the lamppost (like the high pressure sodium lamps that put out 50,000 lumens).T he bottom line is that we want to burn brighter so the light will reach further.

Now you might be saying to yourself, “All of this sounds great. But what are you asking me to do. What can I do as one dot?” I am glad you asked. The next five weeks answer that question in great detail. I can answer that question in two words: Pray and Obey. These five weeks focus on three main calls: praying, going, and giving. We want 100% participation in prayer. Let’s bathe these next five weeks in prayer and make this a high tide of prayer at Bethlehem. In the next two weeks, during Global Focus, I am trusting that as you are all praying, God will call some of you to go. Some will go to do theological education to strengthen the church in places that are already reached with the gospel (John Piper preaching). Some will go to take the gospel to the unengaged and unreached peoples of the world (Week 2 of Global Focus).

The fourth and fifth weeks will be calls to give (not just to give of your money, but to give of yourself). We are going to try to be as clear as possible in the weeks to come. Today, I am asking God for grace to help you pray like never before for the next five weeks. To do that we are going to look at only 12 words this morning there in Ephesians 6:18, “Praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.”

We are doing a Q & A with Paul on prayer. We have four questions in these verses for Paul to answer: (1) What is prayer? (2) When do we pray? (3) How do we pray? (4) Where do we pray?

Outline

1. What is Prayer?

2. When Do We Pray?

3. How Do We Pray?

4. Where Do We Pray?

1. What is Prayer? 

Praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.—Ephesians 6: 18

Let’s take nothing for granted here. Prayer is one of those familiar words. We can easily be lulled into thinking we all know what it means. Many people define prayer only as a physical act, not a spiritual act. Christians cannot reduce prayer to something physical. Prayer cannot be limited to what you do with your mouth (talking) or what you do with your body (bowing your head, folding your hands, closing your eyes, or getting down on your knees).

Let us answer the question by exploring three angles: general terms, Trinitarian terms, contextual terms. First, let us start in general terms. Prayer is first and foremost communion with God. Think through the implications of that statement. Because prayer is communion with God, our prayer life reflects the quality of our communion with God. Martyn Lloyd-Jones stated that prayer is “the greatest indicator of one’s spiritual health” (Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, Volume 2, p. 46). 

Therefore, a thriving prayer life reveals the vibrancy of our relationship with God, but a poor prayer life pulls back the curtain to expose the poverty of our relationship with God. How can you love God and not prize time spent with him in prayer? Is prayer a burden? Is it boring? Or is it beautiful and bountiful—a delight to you?

My favorite line from the documentary, Logic on Fire, comes from Sinclair Ferguson as he summarizes Lloyd-Jones’ approach to prayer. “He did not believe in prayer. He believed in God and therefore he prayed.” That is why we are talking about prayer only after feasting our eyes on the greatness and glory of God for three weeks. If we get God wrong, we get prayer wrong.

Do we know the One to whom we pray? He is free from all restrictions, all limitations, all boundaries. He is exalted as the cause of everything because the existence of everything depends upon him and derives from him. He is supreme over and above everything. Therefore, small views of God lead to puny prayers. As our vision of God expands, the scope of our prayers will expand.

I love the way that John Newton celebrates this in one of his hymns: 

Thou art coming to a King, large petitions with you bring,
For his grace and power are such, none can ever ask too much.

Application

We are bringing large petitions—his grace and power are such that $38 million, 25 unengaged people groups, and 25 church plants are not too much.

Second, now let’s move from general terms to Trinitarian terms. Prayer is a Trinitarian activity, not just a physical activity. Prayer is part of our access to God. Paul gives a succinct Trinitarian explanation of our access to God in Ephesians 2:18—“through him [Christ] we both have access in one Spirit to the Father” (Ephesians 2:18). The prepositions here are profound. If prayer is addressed to God the Father and offered to him through Christ the Mediator, then prayer is carried in the Holy Spirit. Prayers are addressed to the Father and are offered to him through Christ the mediator (the blood of Christ doesn’t just make our prayers biblical but possible). These prayers go to the Father through the Son in the Spirit.

Third, now that we see what prayer is in general and Trinitarian terms, let’s also make sure we see the specific context of this verse in which the word “praying” appears. The word “praying” is a dependent participle connected to the verb “stand” in verse 14. We stand in seven ways in verses 14–18. We stand by (1) strapping truth around your waist, (2) by putting on the breastplate of righteousness, (3) by putting on your feet the preparation of the gospel of peace, (4) by taking up the shield of faith, (5) by taking the helmet of salvation, (6) by taking the sword of the Spirit, and (7) by praying at all times in the Spirit (Ephesians 6:14–18).

So why does Paul add the part now about praying at all times in the Spirit? Some people think that praying is another piece of armor. I believe that is profoundly wrong for two reasons. First, verse 18 breaks the pattern in the previous verses that were so consistent: Identifying a piece of armor and then saying “put on the _____ of _____”). Second, and more important, it misses the whole point that Paul is making about prayer. Christians are not complete even in the full armor of God if prayer is missing. The armor of God is not meant to replace a relationship with God. All that you do with this armor in this fight must come from a constant attitude of prayer and dependence upon God.

I think the hymn writer of “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus” got this point exactly right in the third stanza of the hymn: “Put on the gospel armor, each piece put on with prayer.” Bethlehem, here is what we are saying in the next five weeks. This is not a political campaign or a giving campaign, but it’s like a military campaign against principalities and powers and cosmic forces of this present darkness. We are going to the frontlines and push back the powers of darkness. The fight will get more intense. Get your armor on and pray! That leads to the second question—when?

2. When Do We Pray?

Praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.—Ephesians 6:18

When should we pray? Answer: “At all times.” At all times is the right time to pray. Always, keep at it, don’t give up. Prayer should not be start and stop, hit and miss, now and then, once and a while. Prayer should not show up only in seasons of trouble or distress. It should not be something you turn to only when you feel vulnerable and needy (you are always that way, even when you don’t feel that way). Don’t assume you can do it on your own—don’t go on autopilot, don’t go through the motions—pray always and don’t lose heart, pray without ceasing, stay alert and keep praying. You can see that Paul unpacks the need for perseverance in prayer further at the end of verse 18: “To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints.” The word “supplication” here reminds us that there are different kinds of prayer. This leads to the next question: How do we pray?

3. How to Pray

Praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.—Ephesians 6:18

Paul breaks prayer down into two categories “with all prayer and supplication.” The first phrase “with all prayer,” means all kinds of prayer. Think of the types or spectrum of prayer—private prayer, public prayer, silent prayer, vocal prayer, ordered prayers, spontaneous prayers, short prayers, long prayers, prayers for yourself, prayers for others—we could keep sub-dividing.

The second word for prayer Paul uses is “supplication.” Supplication is an even more specific kind of prayer. We could call them specific requests or particular petitions that one makes to God. So Paul calls for more than just prayers of praise, lament, worship, adoration, thanksgiving, but also specific requests. This is similar to what he says in Philippians 4:6. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

Are you praying for specific things? For example, if God answered every prayer on your prayer list for specific people to be saved, how many would be saved? Are you praying specifically for people or do you pray vague, generic prayers for God to move? Are you praying specifically for unsaved coworkers, family members, specific people groups? How about our weekend services? What about other people in the family of God? We are called to pray at all times with all kinds of prayers. Now we ask our last question: Where do we pray?

4. Where to Pray (the Power to Pray)

Praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.—Ephesians 6:18

But here is the question: Why not say, “praying at all times with all prayer and supplication?” Why add the words “in the Spirit”? What I have discovered in those three words has been one of the most precious discoveries of my life.

What does Paul mean? Commentators are divided on two different ways to translate this phrase: (1) praying “by means of the Spirit” (dative of means) or (2) praying “in the realm of the Spirit” (dative of sphere). I don’t think we are meant to keep these two categories as separate as people try to make them. I regard “in the Spirit” as the right translation. Here is what I think Paul means: Paul has a notable pattern in his letters of contrasting the flesh and the Spirit as opposing forces. The question here is “Is the activity of prayer carried out in the realm and power of the Spirit or in the realm and power of the flesh?” Do you know the difference?

a. What It Is Not (i.e., praying in the flesh)

Prayer in the realm and power of the flesh relies upon human ability and effort to carry the prayer forward. Imagine someone pushing something up a hill – that is what “praying in the flesh” is. You may struggle to concentrate, you may find your mind-wandering, or you may find it difficult to gather your thoughts. How can human ability and effort overcome those things to push a prayer forward? We can rely how many words we use in prayer (Jesus warns us not to think we will be heard for our many words) or how long we pray or how well we pray (perfectly composed, doctrinally correct, relying upon diction and language and cadence and emotion and volume). 

b. What It Is (i.e., praying in the Spirit)

Here is the key difference: In the flesh, we are carrying—in the Spirit, we being carried. In the flesh, we are pushing—in the Spirit, we are being pushed. Praying in the Spirit is when the Spirit of life brings prayer to life.

We all know what it is to feel deadness in prayer, difficulty in prayer, to be tongue-tied, with nothing to say, as it were, having to force ourselves to try. Well, to the extent that is true of us, we are not praying in the Spirit. The Spirit is a Spirit of life as well as truth, and the first thing that he always does is to make everything living and vital. And, of course, there is all the difference in the world between the life and the liveliness produced by the Spirit and the kind of artifact, the bright and breezy imitation, produced by people. (Lloyd-Jones, Living Water, p. 99)

Praying in the Spirit means that the Spirit creates the prayer, carries us along as we pray, and empowers us to offer the prayer to the Father. The prayer has a living quality characterized by warmth and freedom and a sense of exchange as we realize that we are in God’s presence speaking to God. There is an awareness that you are not so much pushing as being pushed, not so much carrying, but being carried. The Spirit illuminates your mind, moves your heart, gives you words and freedom of utterance, liberty of expression.

Now there are degrees of experience at this point. I remember going on a bike ride where there was a gradual slope (incline) for the first half and a gradual slope down (decline) for the second half. I sometimes think of that as the experiential difference. The downward slope has different degrees, but there is still an awareness of a downhill effect or energy.

Application: How Do We Cultivate This Kind of Prayer?

There is good news today! Your prayer life may feel like a valley full of dry bones and dull prayers. The Holy Spirit can breathe life into your prayer life. No prayer life is too dead for the Spirit.

Praying in the Spirit has three aspects: (1) admitting our inability, (2) enjoying the creation of a living communion with God, and (3) pleading the promises of God with boldness and assurance.

Step One: Admitting Our Inability to Pray

We should start with confession: We must admit our inability to pray as we ought. We must come face to face with our tendency to try to pray on our own. We start with the recognition that prayer is a spiritual activity and the power of the flesh profits nothing at all. We should feel our dryness and difficulty and confess to him our dullness, lifelessness, and spiritual slowness and sluggishness (Lloyd-Jones, Living Water, p. 86). 

But this step is not passive; it is the act of yielding ourselves to the Spirit.  Confession leads to expectation and prayerful anticipation.

Step Two: Enjoying a Living Communion With God

You are aware of a communion, a sharing, a give-and-take, if I may use such an expression. You are not dragging yourself along; you are not forcing the situation; you are not trying to make conversation with somebody whom you do not know. No, no! The Spirit of adoption in you brings you right into the presence of God, and it is a living act of fellowship and communion, vibrant with life (Lloyd-Jones, The Christian Soldier, p. 100).

One of the ways I talk about it is the very real sense that our living room or the three-season room is transformed into the throne room. One of the differences here is that you don’t feel the need to rush to say anything because an awareness of his presence is much more important than anything you are going to say. (See also The Christian Soldier, p. 82.)

Step 3: Holy Boldness

The result of the Spirit’s work is that we bow before God as humbled children of God in awe of God. We don’t bow before an unknown or far away god and we don’t skip into God’s presence with breezy familiarity. We come with an awakened sense of intimacy and awe. The Spirit also breathes bold life into our prayers—a holy boldness that pleads the promises of God with God in the presence of God.

The beauty of this boldness is that it is humble and holy boldness. There is no presumptuous sense of demand.

Do not claim, do not demand, let your requests be made known, let them come from your heart. God will understand. We have no right to demand even revival. Some Christians are tending to do so at the present time. Pray urgently, plead, use all the arguments, use all the promises; but do not demand, do not claim. Never put yourself into the position of saying, “If we but do this, then that must happen.” God is a sovereign Lord, and these things are beyond our understanding. Never let the terminology of claiming or of demanding be used (Lloyd-Jones, The Final Perseverance of the Saints, p. 155).

What If My Prayers Don’t All Feel That Alive?

Does that mean that an experience of life and liberty and enlargement is the only real kind of prayer? I am not saying that. Hear me clearly. The blood of Christ alone is what makes prayer possible. Our Father is such a loving Father that he listens to our hearts and hears our prayers and cares about our prayers even when they feel weak and poor and don’t seem to go past the ceiling. The Spirit’s empowerment may not always seem like a mountain top experience. It can feel like the valley, even when we have an awareness that he is at work. For example, the same apostle Paul as Ephesians 6:18 says that sometimes a Spirit-led prayer is a groaning prayer.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.—Romans 6:26–28

I am not calling for prayer to be a perpetual mountaintop experience. I am simply asking you to open up your prayer life to the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit empowers endurance in prayer. How can we avoid losing heart in prayer when we are called to praying some of the same things again and again? I love an illustration that Tim Keller borrows in his book on prayer from Norwegian author Ole Hallesby. Here is how Keller explains the illustration.

Hallesby likens prayer to mining as he knew it in Norway in the early twentieth century. Demolition to create mine shafts took two basic kinds of actions. There are long periods of time, he writes, “when the deep holes are being bored with great effort into the hard rock.” To bore the holes deeply enough into the most strategic spots for removing the main body of rock was work that took patience, steadiness, and a great deal of skill. Once the holes were finished, however, the “shot” was inserted and connected to a fuse. “To light the fuse and fire the shot is not only easy but also very interesting ... One sees ‘results’ ... Shots resound, and pieces fly in every direction.” He concludes that while the more painstaking work requires both skill and patient strength of character, “anyone can light a fuse.” This helpful illustration warns us against doing only “fuse-lighting” prayers, the kind that we soon drop if we do not get immediate results. If we believe both in the power of prayer and in the wisdom of God, we will have a patient prayer life of “hole-boring.” Mature believers know that handling the tedium is part of what makes for effective prayers (Keller, Prayer, p. 137).

Conclusion

Don’t lose heart if your prayer life is not all that you want it to be. Rather than lose heart, I am praying that you will take heart because God will grip you with the hope that your prayer life can be more than it has been. I am praying in these days for a holy sense of discontentment for anything less than the provisions for a vibrant prayer that God has purchased for us by the blood of Christ.

The Spirit is not rejected at Bethlehem, but neglected. Not denied, but assumed and not pursued. In what areas of your life have you neglected the Spirit? One of the clearest places I was grieving the Spirit was in my prayer life. It could have been said of me like the disciples of John the Baptist that Paul found in the book of Acts 19:2 …

And he said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” And they said, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”

Has the Holy Spirit ever factored into your prayer life? Has He been assumed, neglected, or even quenched? Here is what I mean. Anytime we see something dead and dry and dull in our lives (places where Jesus does not have first place) – we invite the Holy Spirit to breath life and vitality there. The quickest way to quench the Spirit is to not obey an impulse to pray. This last point is very, very personal to me, so let me tell you a story from my own experience.

Once I was driving home from working at UPS. I worked the night shift during my doctoral days and didn’t get enough sleep. I was driving home at about 4:30am and falling asleep at the wheel. I tried everything to stay awake. I turned up the radio and tried to sing along. I even slapped myself. The next thing I knew I woke up in my driveway. I was more than a little shaken. I didn’t know how I got there. I walked inside the house now eerily wide awake, and I noticed the strangest thing: my wife was wide awake too. She would normally be asleep, but instead, she was sitting up in bed waiting for me. She said, “Hi, honey, how was your drive?” I said, “It’s funny you should ask. I really struggled to stay awake on the drive home. In fact, I don’t know how I got here.” She said, “Yeah I figured …”

“Okay," I said, "please continue!”

“Well,” she said, “I woke up at about 4:30am very suddenly and felt this intense prompting to pray. I figured you must be struggling on the road since that is around the time you normally come home. So I prayed for you.”

I think I am still alive and speaking these words because my wife did not quench the Spirit. She obeyed the Spirit’s prompting to pray.

It is a wonderful experience personally, but it is even more glorious corporately. Lloyd-Jones tells a story from personal experience.

A prayer meeting started on night at 7:15 in a church in South Wales. It was a hot summer’s evening on a Monday night. Two men had taken part in prayer. Then a man stood up whom we all knew so well, an unimportant man, not a gifted man by any means, a man whose prayers could be stilted and formal and dry and discouraging. He began to pray, and suddenly something happened to him. The whole man was transformed. His voice deepened, and he began to pour out one of the most eloquent prayers I have ever heard in the whole of my life. And he lifted up the entire meeting, myself included. Every one of us was “in the Spirit,” in the realm of the Spirit. And on the meeting went, one after another praying. Men and women whom I had heard on other occasions, praying, were now praying as I had never heard them pray before—language, thought, everything was perfect, and the warmth and freedom and liberty were remarkable. And on and on it went until about ten minutes to ten. We had forgotten time. We were in the realm of the Spirit, we were in eternity. Time did not matter, nothing mattered. This is what you get in revivals: and we were being given a taste of it. (“Praying in the Spirit,” The Christian Soldier, p. 348).

Sermon Discussion Questions 

Outline

The sermon focuses on 12 words in verse 18: Praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. We have four questions for Paul to answer ... 

1. What is prayer?
2. When do we pray?
3. How do we pray?
4. Where do we pray?

Main Point: Bethlehem, pray in the Spirit at all times with all kinds of prayer.

Discussion Questions

• What is prayer?
• What does it mean to pray at all times?
• What does it mean to pray all kinds of prayers?
• What does it mean to pray in the Holy Spirit?

Application Questions

• As a result of hearing this sermon, what is the first change you need to make in your life? Are there further long-range changes or adjustments you need to make?
• Share any experiences you have had of being prompted by the Spirit to pray or praying in the Spirit.
• What are “hole-boring” prayers? What are some examples of them in your life right now? Pray that some of them would become “fuse-lighting” prayers in the days ahead.

Prayer Focus

Pray for a blood-bought grace that the Spirit of life would breathe life into our prayer life.