Since prayer is impossible apart from the filling of the Spirit, then the first order of business is to get honest about one’s condition. When it comes to prayer, honesty is not the best policy; it is the only way to reach the ear of God. There are no degrees of honesty. God knew in advance that many of us would be afflicted with S.A.D.D.—Spiritual Attention Deficit Disorder. He made provision on Calvary for cleansing from this horrible sin of forgetting and neglecting His Spirit. Thanks to God’s mercy we can get emptied and cleansed from this transgression. You can be realigned with the Holy Spirit today!
“Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you” (Prov. 1:23). Honoring the Holy Spirit is the birthplace of prayer. Responding to conviction is the path to the Spirit’s fullness. Your Christian experience will be Supernatural or Superficial, depending on your relationship with the Holy Spirit. Your prayer life correlates directly to the PERSON of prayer.
Walter Wilson was a Doctor, Pastor, and President of a Bible College in Kansas City. A missionary to France was visiting in his home and asked, “What is the Holy Spirit to you?’’ Dr. Wilson gave the orthodox answer, “He is the Comforter, guide, and third Person of the Trinity.” The missionary responded, “You have given a place of dishonor and inferiority to the Holy Spirit. What is the Holy Spirit to you?” Wilson let down his guard and got honest—“He is nothing to me. I can do quite well without Him.” This put him on a quest. Later he heard James M. Gray speaking from Romans 12:1, “I beseech you therefore, brethren…that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice…” The text does not say to whom you are to present your body. So to whom should we present our bodies?
Jesus has a body…
God the Father does not need a body…
The Holy Spirit is looking for a body.
Will you give Him yours?
Walter Wilson heeded that challenge and gave his body to Holy Spirit. He became a dynamo for God. Will you present your body to Him—right NOW?
Resolutions to “pray more” are doomed from the outset. Daily cleansing, daily emptying, daily filling, daily praying, and daily thanking are normal for those who live a Spirit-filled life. To be a praying person, you must get filled with the PERSON of prayer.
You got saved by depending on the death of Christ. You get filled by depending on the LIVING Christ. F. B. Meyer went for years desiring to be filled with the Spirit but did not know how. One day in a prayer meeting a text jumped out and accosted him—“That we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (Gal. 3:14). He left the meeting and went out into the street praying, “O Lord, if there was ever a man who needs the power of the Holy Spirit, it is I. But I do not know how to receive Him, I am too tired, too worn out, too nervously rundown to agonize.” Then a voice spoke to him, “As you took forgiveness from the hand of the dying Christ, take the Holy Spirit from the hand of the Living Christ.” Dr. Meyer said, “I took for the first time and have kept taking ever since.”
Everything you need is INSIDE of you. We already have this “treasure” within—the PERSON of prayer—the Holy Spirit. Would you YIELD, ASK, and BELIEVE for a fresh filling this very moment? This is the only way “on earth” to pray—under the control of the Spirit of God.
This article is used by permission from Harold Vaughan. After graduating from Bible College in 1979, Harold Vaughan immediately began full-time evangelism. To date, Christ Life Ministries has led him to preach in forty-eight states and many foreign countries. Shortly after entering full-time evangelism in 1979, Harold and his wife Debbie were married. Debbie works in the CLM office and maintains their home. During the Revival Summits she ministers with the children ages 4-9 in a nightly Kid’s Klub. Harold and Debbie have three grown sons. Michael and his wife, Laura have two children – John and Asa. Brandon and his wife Ashley have three children – Sara, Hope and Noah. Stephen married his wife, Emily in 2015.
