Lord, Teach Us To Pray! Part 59

Prayers of Petition continued...

So why would asking God for the Holy Spirit be so important that it is one of the things for which we ought petition Him? It is important to petition God for the infilling of the Holy Spirit, because there is no alternative, at least biblically, to asking God for this gift and promise.

If you want to drop a few pounds there are alternatives, or different ways and means by which you can do it. You can run, jog, bike, take an aerobics class, or even swim if all the other options and alternatives are not to your liking.

When it comes to the Holy Spirit, there are no alternatives. We must ask in order to receive, and if we ask, in faith, we will receive the Holy Spirit because it is a promise God made to all of His children.

Nowadays men do more damage, and wreak more havoc with partial understanding, than they would with total ignorance of a certain pillar of the faith. Because they did not take the time to study the word of God, because they gave it a passing glance, and even that while distracted by something else, men’s doctrines do not line up with the word of God, and rather than say they don’t know a certain thing, they make it up as they go along.

If you don’t know something, admit you don’t know something, and say you don’t know that something concerning which you have been queried.

In regards to the Holy Spirit, and His presence in our lives, I’ve heard answers from seminarians that varied from ‘the Holy Spirit is no longer among us’, to ‘the Holy Spirit is everywhere, so we have Him from birth’, to ‘the moment you walk into a church the Holy Spirit falls on you’, to what the Bible actually says, which is pray and earnestly desire to receive the Holy Spirit, and God the Father will give Him to you.

We petition God for worthless thing after worthless thing, whether a new car, straighter teeth, or less acne, and we ignore the counsel of His word when it tells us we ought to ask Him for the Holy Spirit, that He might give it to us, altogether.

God is not a concierge service, it’s not His job to know what you need, and dutifully deliver it to your door. He is God the Father, omnipotent creator of all that is, and in His love He answers our prayers of petition, and gives us the Holy Spirit when we ask Him.

If I were to write on the importance of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer every day for the next thirty years, there would be no risk of over-emphasizing or exaggerating the need for Him in our lives.

Yet, we pray for sunshine when we want to go on a picnic, we pray for our favorite team to go to the playoffs, but we have better things to do when it comes to praying for the Holy Spirit.

Luke 12:12, “For the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.”

The aforementioned verse is just one of many throughout the Bible which highlights the importance of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will teach us what to say, during times, and in situations where our own words, our own intellect will utterly fail us.

Jesus is speaking to His disciples, forewarning them that they would be brought before the synagogues and magistrates and authorities, but that they ought not to worry as to what they will answer, or what they will say.

The reason they ought not to worry was not because Jesus thought them exceedingly intelligent and capable of getting out of tough situations, but because the Holy Spirit would teach them in that very hour what they ought to say.

There have been countless times when I know with certitude, and absent equivocation, that the Holy Spirit taught me the words I was to say, the very hour I needed to say them.

For me, the greatest tragedy of the current condition of the church is that it could have been prevented. Our ignorance, duplicity, hypocrisy, rampant sin, rebellion and idolatry were all preventable, if we would have come before the heavenly Father, and petitioned Him to give us the Holy Spirit, which would guide us, and lead us, and comfort us, and teach us.

John 14:26, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.”

Jesus promised the Father would send the Holy Spirit in His name, God promised He would give the Holy Spirit if we asked it of Him. So if there is a weak link in the chain, if someone hasn’t done their duty, it is us. It is we who have not asked, it is we who have not petitioned God, it is we who were distracted by the things of this world, and overcome by the cares of this world instead of laying them down at His feet.

Try as we might, we will find no fault in God, and sooner or later we will have to hold our own selves accountable for what we have failed to do.

Not only were we busy asking for other things, we were repeatedly encouraged to ask for them, because the ignorance of the many is to the profit of the few, and they would have preferred to see the household of faith continue in their ignorance forever.

Thankfully, the alarm bells are getting too loud to ignore, and some are waking from their slumber, searching for the truth, hoping there is still time to prepare for that which is to come.

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.