The Power of Love in Prayer [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. It's a radical thought, but I believe it with all my heart that love is not merely that which accompanies the powerful flow of God's purposes. It is not just something that comes alongside of God's power.

I've come to believe that God's love and God's power are moving such at the same time that love is power. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear today's message in the series called Praying with Power, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries.

As you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. More on that later in the program. But right now, let's get started with today's teaching in the series Praying with Power.

Here is Alan Wright. Jesus' inaugural message is laden with surprising twists upon what people had always assumed to be the goal of righteous living. For example, we had always figured it is a far better thing to not have to be in a position to mourn. But Jesus said at verse 4, blessed are those who mourn. There's something about the heart that is not so afraid of being broken that that heart will spill out with genuine grief about that which has not yet been or has been lost. Because in the midst of that, God can bring the miracle of divine comfort.

We might have heard a sense of God saying let there be light and know that God is light. But in verse 14, He astounds us all and says not only is Jesus Christ the light of the world, you are the light of the world. It comes to verse 21. You've heard that it was said to the people long ago to not murder and anyone murderers will be subject to judgment. But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment.

Wow! I thought Jesus came as a new covenant. This whole deal is going to be easier now. This is a higher righteousness, isn't it? Verse 27, you heard it said to not commit adultery.

I tell you anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery within his heart. And it comes to verse 43 and maybe it comes to the most remarkable, stunning and hardest exhortation of them all. You've heard that it was said love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you that you may be sons of your father in heaven. He causes his son to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?

Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not the pagans do that? Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.

I just need to be honest with you and say I'm not doing a lot of that. Most people in our prayer lives, if we're really honest about it, we're kind of like feeling pretty good if you had a good 10 or 15 minutes of prayer in the morning and had a good prayer to cap off the end of the day. You prayed for the kids and the dog and the cat and for your sore tooth. And then through in there, hopefully, God blessed the church and the pastor and then you went right to sleep. I'll take it.

I'll take anything I can get. But who amongst us is crouched by their bedside in the morning, awakened with some deep passion to pray for the people that have hurt us? Who among us has got a compelling urge to intercede for those who are persecuting you and making your life more difficult? What manner of command is this and what sort of love must it be rooted in to call us to such a prayer life? It's been profoundly important to me what I've been learning over these past couple months about prayer.

But here are just some important things we've been seeing. First is that we're tripartite beings, spirit, soul, and body. There's a number of places in Scripture that refer to us not just as soul and body but spirit, soul, and body. In fact, the Word of God is living and active and sharp enough to divide, Hebrews says, between spirit and soul.

There's some distinction, close, but a distinction. And Paul blesses the Thessalonians that they'd prosper in their whole spirit, soul, and body. And what we've said is that while we understand our physical being, our body, and maybe we can grasp that the soul is the Greek language, the Greek language calls the suke, the psyche, the mind, the will and the emotions and desires within us, that comprise, make up perhaps parts of our personality, emotional and mental life, we might think of our soul, but that when we are in Christ, we are, Jesus says, born from above, born anew. A miracle takes place when you, and if you've never done this, you can do this today.

It's so simple, it's so powerful, you can do this. You just say, Lord, I've tried it my way, and I can't save myself nor deliver myself from all of my sin, but I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, died for me, and it is raised from the dead. And I hereby quit trying to trust in religion or my own righteousness, and I put my entire trust in what Jesus did on the cross, so you come and be my Lord. And when you do that, what happens is the same thing happened in my life, and anybody who's in Christ, whether it happens when you're a little three-year-old child who hasn't even had that much time on earth to get a whole bunch of sin, or whether you have been a raging sinner for 80 years and come and pray that prayer, what happens is a miracle takes place. And what happens in that miracle, Paul says, is that you become alive in Christ. Now your physical body is already alive, and your mind is already alive, so what becomes alive is your spirit being.

It's like a resurrection takes place, and you, once dead in sin, become alive unto God, and a fellowship is restored, and that fellowship that gets restored is a miracle. And it means that you are able to have communion with God, and God is spirit, and you are a spiritual being. And you will always be a spiritual being and live on in eternity as a spiritual being, and you'll be given one day a spiritual body.

Now we've got a body that was made out of the dust, and it'll return to the dust. But the spiritual being that you are will live on forever, and you will always, in Christ, have communion with God. The problem that we face on earth is that the old that is gone when we're born again is not totally gone from our minds nor from our bodies. But I'm being transformed and renewing of my mind, and my soul is advancing as I grow in the Lord, and sanctification as we call it.

I'm becoming more and more like that. But what we've been saying is that what God's aim is, is for the vitality and life of the human spirit, communing with God's Holy Spirit to be the priority focus and ruling factor in all of our life, that I don't live according to the desires of the flesh, but according to the desires of the spirit. And Jesus said to his disciples in Gethsemane, he said of his own soul, I'm troubled even to the point of death. And he said, will you please pray?

He came back and they'd fallen asleep. And he said, the flesh is weak, but the spirit is willing. The word in the Greek means desiring and wanting. The spirit within you is wanting communion with God, is wanting to worship God, is wanting to love others, and is wanting to pray. And so what we have been saying is that what we need if we're going to have an effective, powerful prayer life, is to move out of just praying prayers according to the flesh or about, you know, just my little pleasures, or just even the prayers according to the soul, what we call soulish prayers that have only to do with my own personal and sometimes vain ambitions. And instead, we want our prayer life to become spiritual.

That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Prayer. As a Christian, you know it's important and you want to make it a priority. But if you're like most, your prayer life can slip so easily into routine, lacking fervor and passion. Maybe you're wondering, what is the key to praying with real power? In Ephesians chapter six, the Apostle Paul has a clear answer, pray in the spirit. But what does it mean to pray in the spirit?

Some would say that Paul is referring only to the spiritual gift of a supernatural prayer language. But in Alan Wright's unique series, Praying with Power, Pastor Alan reveals five different ways of praying in the spirit. Discover how praying God's word is praying in the spirit. Learn how to listen to the spirit as you pray. Come to see Jesus as your prayer partner. It's practical.

It's powerful. Get Pastor Alan Wright's Praying with Power and discover the power of praying in the spirit. Change your prayer life and you'll change the world. When you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's messages through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. We're in the final days of this special offer being made available to you. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. Just as the body can experience pleasure, the soul experiences happiness, there's a spiritual thing called joy. It's a thing of the spirit. The body can experience satisfaction. The soul can have contentment. There's a thing that Jesus said is peace I give you, not as the world gives unto you, but my peace I give unto you. And it's a peace that is elsewhere called a peace that passes all understanding. That there is that which can come and be apprehended by your living spirit, by the grace of God and the communication of the Holy Spirit that is peace.

And this peace can come regardless of your circumstances and this is God's will and design and destiny for every believer to live out of the spirit. And so the whole point of this is to say is that prayer is a spiritual thing. Prayer, effective prayer, is connected up with as a spiritual thing the life of the spirit.

In, out of, through the human spirit, in communion with God's spirit. That's what makes effective prayer. So we're talking about praying in the spirit or spiritual prayer and that means that we want to move our prayer lives away from this lower realm, if you will, into the realm of a spiritual life with God. So that's why Paul says to pray in the spirit. Now what we said with this is that there are many different ways that you can pray in the spirit and there is a spiritual or heavenly language that Paul calls praying in tongues and this is a good gift. This has been a controversial gift obviously in the body of Christ. Part of the problem has been that there is one theological perspective that says if you don't have this particular spiritual gift then you're not filled with the Holy Spirit and that's not a perspective that I think is accurate biblically and so what we have to do with this is understand that this along with the other gifts of teaching, the gift of generosity, the gift of mercy or leadership, the gifts of prophecy, all of these diversity of gifts that God gives us are all good and they're all given by God and Paul says to earnestly desire the spiritual gifts and so it's a good thing to seek the face of God but it is also biblical to ask God for His gifts and so it's a good thing to ask God for this gift. But don't be obsessed with this gift as if this is the litmus test of spirituality and I think we've made a mistake by simply saying that to pray in the spirit only means to pray in tongues because what happens is there are people that don't have that particular gift and say well therefore I can't pray in the spirit and yet Paul has commanded all Christians to pray in the spirit at all times on all occasions. So I think that we must be clear that there is more than one way of praying in the spirit and I've been talking some about this over these six messages. One of which Paul refers to in Romans is that the Holy Spirit helps us and will bring about something that is like groans with things that are too deep for words and it comes from an intimate connection with God in which you gain the burden of God for the matters that are on God's heart and you can have an expression of compassion. I know some real intercessors who they'll get almost a physical sensation of a burden.

Perhaps there's some people here today and you're an intercessor and you've not known this and that at times you'll feel almost like there's a heavy weight that is there and you don't quite know what to do with it. And what you have to do with that is even if it's in the middle of the night you've got to get up and you've got to pray it through and you've got to let God just let it come through you and He's using that as participation with Him for up building His kingdom. There is another kind of praying in the spirit that is so absolutely important that we've dwelt on it a bit and that is learning to pray the scripture. We looked at the prayer, the simple prayer of Mary when she had been visited by an angel, told of all the events that were going to come that she was going to receive the overpowering of the Holy Spirit, be the mother of the Messiah. This knowledge is too wonderful for us to understand and she comes to this simple prayer and says, let it be unto me according to your word.

And I've suggested to you that probably the most powerful single thing you could do in developing the skill of your prayer life is to practice learning, practice to pray the scriptures. The scriptures are God's word and everything that God has spoken is filled with God's Spirit. God's Spirit is also synonymous with God's breath in the Old and the New Covenant words for spirit.

Breath is the synonym. So as surely as I'm speaking words right now, only because breath is coming out of my mouth, so it is with every word of God that proceeds from the mouth of God is infused with, fueled by and flowing through the power of His own Spirit. In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God, He was in the beginning with God and through Him all things have been made and apart from Him nothing that has been made has been made. In other words the Word, the eternal Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son and the eternal triune God is the means through which the Word has been spoken through which creation comes about but it is the Spirit of God which proceeds through Christ and brings about all of the creative endeavor of God. Everything that God speaks comes to pass because it's filled with His Spirit.

Every word, the Bible says of itself, of the scripture is God breathed and as an inspired word or breathed by God what we're saying is this is full of the Holy Spirit. So if you just open up your Bible and you just start praying what God has already spoken you can be guaranteed you're praying in the Spirit. You're praying what the Spirit has already given utterance to. Learn to pray the scriptures. Your prayer life will transform both in its adventure, excitement and its power and effectiveness if you just learn to pray the scripture.

Just at this morning's service I just opened up and said well here's a good one. The one we're familiar with is Psalm 91. Let's say you're going through a time, a perilous time. Instead of just bringing your fear to God, instead of just kind of trembling over it with some little puny, fearful prayer, just take God at His Word.

You may not have the Word. You may not even have much confidence but you come to His Word and just taking the fact that this is His Word you come back to Him and say, oh Lord God I believe that Your Word that says whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. And so I come to You dwelling in that shelter right now and I say to You, You are my refuge and my fortress. You're my God and whom I trust. Surely You will save me from the fowl or snare and the deadly pestilence. You'll cover me with Your feathers and under Your wings I'll find refuge in You. It may not be my faithfulness or righteousness but Your faithfulness will be my shield and my rampart. I might tremble in my own flesh but in You I will not fear the terror of the night nor the arrow that flies by day nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness nor the plague that destroys at midday. Oh God You've promised that a thousand might fall at my side, ten thousand at my right hand but You've promised it will not come near me, that I'll only observe with my eyes the punishment of the wicked and so I make my dwelling in You the Most High, the Lord God, my refuge so that no harm will befall me. Oh God, you see that's praying and that's not hard to do.

It's really not hard to do. Now if you try to just come up with a whole bunch of wonderful things to say out of your own little mind and everything and think that's prayer, that's kind of hard and actually it's just, God's just going to be like well that's some good words you got there but you bring it to Him and it's praying and it's power of the, get the power of the Spirit into your prayer life. So learn to pray the Scripture. I've suggested to you Sylvia Gunter's books, prayer portions. They're three volumes, Sylvia Gunter, Beth Moore's stuff on praying the Word is good. There are a number of resources out that are good and they can help you just learn to just how you take the Scripture, speak it back to the Lord and say let it be according to your word. We have said that another way that we pray spiritual prayers is from the revelation of God and that every Christian can hear from God because Jesus says my sheep hear my voice.

So if you're His sheep you can hear from God. Allen Wright and today's teaching on the power of love in prayer. Prayer, as a Christian you know it's important and you want to make it a priority but if you're like most your prayer life can slip so easily into routine lacking fervor and passion. Maybe you're wondering what is the key to praying with real power. In Ephesians chapter 6 the Apostle Paul has a clear answer, pray in the Spirit. But what does it mean to pray in the Spirit?

Some would say that Paul is referring only to the spiritual gift of a supernatural prayer language but in Allen Wright's unique series Praying with Power Pastor Alan reveals five different ways of praying in the Spirit. Discover how praying God's Word is praying in the Spirit. Learn how to listen to the Spirit as you pray. Come to see Jesus as your prayer partner.

It's practical, it's powerful. Get Pastor Alan Wright's Praying with Power and discover the power of praying in the Spirit. Change your prayer life and you'll change the world. When you make your gift to Allen Wright Ministries today we'll send you Pastor Alan's messages through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today we will send you today's special offer. We're in the final days of this special offer being made available to you. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website pastorallen.org Now here in the studio, Allen, we're embarking on this teaching Praying with Power is the series, the teaching today, the power of love in prayer and if God says he is love and we hear so much buzz about love there could be some confusion about exactly what is love and what does that have to do with prayer, right? I think that one of the ways that we fulfill Paul's exhortation to pray at all times in the Spirit is to pray with God's supernatural love in our hearts. God sheds his love abroad in our hearts and Daniel when his love and I know many of the listeners right now can identify with me in that you experience a supernatural love for others. When you experience the depth of love that's God's kind of love an unconditional love, a love that can even love your enemies a love that can even love those that have hurt you or wronged you when you have that kind of love it comes from only one place, that is God's love which is to say that it is the Holy Spirit that is causing that love to be shed abroad in your heart and therefore to pray with that love is to pray in the Spirit's power. And so we're showing that this though many people never think of it this way that I suggest that praying in love is a form of praying in the Spirit and that's what we're talking about. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.