Sometimes life overwhelms the heart. It leaves us feeling broken and desperate. We cry out to God. We beg for the circumstances to change. We want restoration, reconciliation and healing. We don’t know how to move forward. In the midst of this, our spirit prays.
Sexual assault left me emotionally destroyed. I was angry at God. My prayers didn’t know where to begin.
Jackson was two weeks old. We had just been told that he needed heart bypass surgery. My heart was overwhelmed. My prayers seemed to fall short.
My niece died from cancer. My heart was broken. Comfort felt far away. My prayers fell short.
In all of these instances, my spirit prayed for me, as well. I needed to physically, emotionally, and spiritually express myself in prayer. It took all of me to express to God what was in my heart. It took more than the words my mind could pull together.
So, when you pray in your private prayer language, don’t hoard the experience for yourself. Pray for the insight and ability to bring others into that intimacy. If I pray in tongues, my spirit prays but my mind lies fallow, and all that intelligence is wasted. So what’s the solution? The answer is simple enough. Do both. I should be spiritually free and expressive as I pray, but I should also be thoughtful and mindful as I pray. I should sing with my spirit, and sing with my mind. If you give a blessing using your private prayer language, which no one else understands, how can some outsider who has just shown up and has no idea what’s going on know when to say “Amen”? Your blessing might be beautiful, but you have very effectively cut that person out of it.18-19 I’m grateful to God for the gift of praying in tongues that he gives us for praising him, which leads to wonderful intimacies we enjoy with him. I enter into this as much or more than any of you. But when I’m in a church assembled for worship, I’d rather say five words that everyone can understand and learn from than say ten thousand that sound to others like gibberish.(1 Corinthians 14:13-19MSG).
Praying in the spirit doesn’t have to be weird. It is, as the scripture says, spiritually free and expressive. How that looks for me is only for me. Prayer becomes a full body experience not just my mind saying words. It doesn’t have to be saved for extreme anguish. It is where I learned it. Now, it is part of my intimate, personal prayer experience.
Did you know our spirit prays? Have you developed this practice? Share your experience here and breathe life and bring hope to others.