That we may have a clear and distinct idea of the Spirit’s agency as “the Spirit of grace and supplication”, let us observe more particularly:
1A further section of a chapter entitled, “The Work of the Spirit as the Spirit of Adoption”, in Buchanan’s book, The Office and Work of the Holy Spirit. The first section was subtitled: “How the Spirit Makes Intercession” and appeared in June.
(1.) He prepares us for prayer by disclosing to us our needs, our sins and shortcomings – to impress us with a deep sense of our absolute dependence on God.
This is intimated when it is said: “The Spirit also helpeth our infirmities; for we know not what we should pray for as we ought”. Self-ignorance is a great hindrance to fervent prayer. We are not duly conscious of our needs, and hence we have no earnest desire for those supplies of grace which we really need; we are apt to say with the Laodiceans: “I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing;” not knowing that we are “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked”.
Our prayers have to do with either our temporal or our spiritual needs, and for both we need the enlightening and directing grace of the Spirit. It might seem that we could have little difficulty in understanding our temporal needs and in praying for them, but every experienced believer will be ready to acknowledge his ignorance on this subject and to confess that he often does not know what is really good for him. Every condition of life has its special snares, temptations and trials, and one of the most precious fruits of the Spirit is a disposition to resign ourselves to the will of God and to pray for temporal blessings only in so far as they may be consistent with, or conducive to, our spiritual welfare.
This resigned and spiritual frame of mind is beautifully expressed in the prayer of Agur: “Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: lest I be full, and deny Thee, and say, Who is the Lord? Or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.” This is so far from being the natural disposition of our hearts that the Apostle James represents the very opposite spirit as prevailing among professing Christians, and breathing in their very prayers: “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts”.
Again we are often lamentably ignorant of the nature and extent of our spiritual needs, and they who have paid most attention to the state of their hearts will be the first to feel how much they need the grace of the Spirit to direct them to a discovery of their sins. Thus David exclaims, “Who can understand his errors? Cleanse Thou me from secret faults”; “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting”. Nothing is more necessary to prayer than to know the plague of our hearts.
(2.) The Holy Spirit, besides disclosing to us our needs, our weaknesses and our sins, makes known the rich provision of all needful grace which is treasured up in Christ.
This is as useful for directing and encouraging us as finding out our necessities is necessary to awaken our desires, since it is, in a great measure, owing to our ignorance or unbelief of the rich provision of the gospel that we “know not what we should pray for as we ought”. The Holy Spirit makes known to the believer the inestimable blessings of redemption, in all their fulness and variety, for He takes of the things of Christ and shows them unto us; and He is sent “that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God”.
A clear discovery of the rich and glorious privileges which Christ has purchased for His people is at once a means of direction and a source of encouragement in prayer. When these privileges are placed before Christ’s people in all their variety and extent, they feel how much they need them, how suitable they are to their real necessities, and how infinitely precious and desirable they are in themselves. When believers vividly conceive of such blessings as pardon, repentance, holiness, peace of conscience and eternal life, that have been purchased by the Saviour for His people, and are offered to all without exception in the gospel, they see what they should pray for. And they also feel that they have a free right and warrant to pray for them, though they are infinitely great and precious.
Ignorance of the gracious provisions of the gospel, or a dim and indistinct apprehension, either of the nature of these blessings and how they were provided, or of the terms on which they are offered, is a great hindrance to prayer. But prayer becomes free and lively in proportion as we are taught by the Spirit to know the things which are “freely given to us of God”. These are great blessings, and when we pray for them we may well feel that we make a great request of God. But when we know that they are all treasured up in the fullness that is in Christ, and that they are freely offered to us in the gospel, we “come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need”.
(3.) The Holy Spirit assists us in prayer by working in us such dispositions and desires as make us seek for the supplies of grace we need, with earnest, importunate and persevering supplication:
“As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?”
Naturally we have no such disposition or desire. The carnal mind, which is enmity against God, is naturally averse to the spiritual blessings it needs. True, it desires to be exempted from pain and punishment and danger; but whatever is spiritual it finds obnoxious. Thus even if we might suppose an unrenewed mind (a case which is never found in actual experience) to be conscious, on the one hand, of its sin and misery and danger, and enabled to perceive, on the other, the number and variety of the blessings which have been purchased and offered by Christ; it would refuse to accept God’s great salvation, if left to follow its own inclination without the restraining and renewing grace of the Spirit!
The awakening of spiritual desire in the heart is the work of God’s Spirit; and that desire must be kept alive by His continued agency. “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled.” This new disposition or desire makes prayer natural, easy and delightful to the people of God. Just as a natural man hungers and thirsts for food and drink, so the renewed man hungers and thirsts after righteousness. He has a new spiritual appetite, which naturally and spontaneously seeks its proper spiritual food. Hence those commands and observances which are a burden and bondage to mere formalists are an easy yoke to every living Christian.
(4.) The Holy Spirit helps us in prayer by strengthening and bringing into lively exercise those spiritual graces which are essentially implied in communion with God.
Prayer properly consists in the exercise of these graces: it is not merely to utter words, nor is it even the mere expression of natural feeling; it is an exercise of repentance, of faith, of love, of trust and of delight in God; of repentance, which is expressed in the language of confession of faith, “for he that cometh to God must believe . . . that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him”; of love, for believers call Him “Abba, Father,” “our Father which art in heaven;” of trust, for they commit their case into His hands; and of delight, for the promise is, “Delight thyself also in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart”.
These graces are not only presupposed or implied in prayer, but prayer properly consists in the lively exercise of them, so that, where these graces do not exist, there is no prayer, whatever forms may be observed and whatever words employed. Now let it be remembered that all these graces are the fruits of the Spirit, that they are at first implanted and must ever afterwards be nourished by the Spirit. You will perceive at once how the Spirit may assist us in prayer simply by strengthening and exciting into lively exercise all the gracious affections of the soul. By this means He gives us freedom and comfort in prayer: for where these graces are absent, prayer is a mere form; where they are weak, prayer is cold and languid; but where they abound, prayer is the soul’s communion with God.
(5.) The Spirit aids God’s people in prayer, by helping their infirmities, when He either removes the hindrances to prayer, or stirs up to watch against them and to rise above them.
There are many hindrances to prayer, some of them external, arising from the body or the world; others of them internal, arising from the state of the heart. Of the internal, I may mention ignorance, unbelief, indifference, despondency and such like, which are removed by the Holy Spirit, as He is the enlightener, the sanctifier and the comforter of God’s people. And of the external, I may mention bodily infirmities, the cares and business of life, the dissipating influence of society and such like, from which the Spirit promises no exemption to any of His people, but strengthens them to resist and enables them to overcome. But if we would overcome these hindrances to prayer, we must avail ourselves of those helps which the Spirit of God has provided, remembering that He acts in the use of ordinary means, and that His grace is to be sought in the way of duty.