{"id":3916,"date":"2015-05-16T07:47:04","date_gmt":"2015-05-16T07:47:04","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-04-12T11:51:29","modified_gmt":"2020-04-12T09:51:29","slug":"prayer-in-the-spirit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orthodoxalbania.org\/2020\/en\/2015\/05\/16\/prayer-in-the-spirit\/","title":{"rendered":"Prayer in the Spirit"},"content":{"rendered":"

    All Christian prayer must be prayer in the Spirit; and all genuine prayer most certainly is. Men pray to the Father, through Christ the Son and Word of God in the Holy Spirit. This is the case wherever men pray, whatever their method, whether they know it or not. For prayer is not man\u2019s lonely cry across empty spaces to a far-off God. Prayer is man\u2019s being in God; being in the Holy Spirit, as made in Christ\u2019s image, the dwelling place of God.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Do you not know that you are God\u2019s temple and that God\u2019s Spirit dwells in you?… God\u2019s temple is holy, and that temple you are. (I Corinthians 3:16-17, cf. Deuteronomy 30:9-14, Psalms 139:7-14, Romans 10:5-13)
<\/span><\/p>\n

    Christian prayer is done consciously in the Holy Spirit, with all faith and awareness. It is addressed to and through Christ, to the Father. In the Orthodox Church there is only one prayer among all the prayers of the Church addressed to the Holy Spirit. This is the prayer O Heavenly King<\/strong> which begins all prayers and clearly creates the conditions in which all prayer is performed.<\/span><\/p>\n

    O Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth,<\/span><\/p>\n

    You are everywhere and fill all things,<\/span><\/p>\n

    Treasury of blessings and Giver of Life,<\/span><\/p>\n

    Come and abide in us, cleanse us from every impurity and save our souls,<\/span><\/p>\n

    O Good One.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Even on Pentecost Sunday in the Orthodox Church the three special prayers of the feast are addressed to Christ and the Father.<\/span><\/p>\n

    The prayer to God for the coming of the Spirit is itself a sign that the Spirit is already in man enabling him to call to the Father. This is the mystery of man\u2019s nature and existence; that he is only truly man when the Holy Spirit is in him. This is the mystery of God\u2019s gracious work in man. It is the mystery of prayer and life itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

    One calls God \u201cOur Father\u201d only in the Spirit. One calls Jesus \u201cLord\u201d only in the Spirit. One prays to God in any manner or form only in the Spirit. The words of the psalms, the prayers of the Saints, the liturgical worship of the Church, is the \u201cbreathing of God\u2019s Spirit<\/strong>\u201d in man. (Father John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ<\/em>) For all prayer, like the scripture itself, is by the inspiration of God.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Even when men do not know how to pray or for what they should ask, it is the Holy Spirit who prays in them that they would have what is needed, that God\u2019s will would be done.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with signs too deep for words. And He who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit be- cause the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. (Romans 8:26-27)<\/span><\/p>\n

    Thus the prayer in the Spirit, as well as the prayer for the Spirit, has as its purpose the \u201cacquisition of the Spirit\u201d so that by the \u201cfruits of the Spirit\u201d man would be holy and divine by God\u2019s grace. This is the basic mystery of the spiritual life. For as Saint Augustine has said, the person who seeks the Lord has already been found by Him. The very seeking in prayer, when one knows not how to pray, makes a person already the dwelling place of God.<\/span><\/p>\n

    In his first letter to the Corinthians the Apostle Paul speaks of a special kind of prayer in the Spirit. It is the spiritual gift of \u201cspeaking in tongues.\u201d With this particular gift the person praises God in a language he cannot understand. His \u201cspirit prays\u201d with ecstatic utterances, but his \u201cmind remains unfruitful.\u201d According to the apostle, who himself had this gift and says that it should not be forbidden, such prayer in the Spirit is without benefit to man unless it is accompanied with \u201csome revelation or knowledge or prophecy (i.e. the directly inspired Word of God) or teaching.\u201d He says that it should not be done in the public gathering of the church unless there be some interpretation and that even then there should be \u201conly two, or at most three<\/strong>,\u201d and that those who are \u201ceager for manifestations of the Spirit should strive to excel in building up the church<\/strong>\u201d and should \u201cnot be children in their thinking\u2026but in thinking be mature.\u201d He says that all should seek rather to prophesy, i.e. to speak the Word of God clearly and plainly so that those who observe Christians would declare \u201cthat God is really among\u201d them and not consider them mad.\u201d He says finally that \u201call things should be done decently and in order.\u201d (cf. I Corinthians 12-14<\/em>)<\/span><\/p>\n

    It is apparent that the gift of praying in the Spirit with tongues was the cause of no small confusion and disorder in the Corinthian Church, and that those having this gift of ecstatic prayer were disturbing and dividing the community by considering themselves more spiritual than others. St. Paul insists that not all have the same gifts, and that tongues are but one of the gifts, the last of those mentioned, to serve as a sign not for those who already believe, but \u201cfor unbelievers.<\/strong>\u201d (I Corinthians 14:22<\/em>) In general it is clear that the sole purpose of the apostle\u2019s extended discussion of the spiritual gifts, and his insistence on giving up \u201cchildish ways\u201d in the pursuit of perfection when one becomes mature, was to rebuke the members of the Corinthian Church for their misuse and abuse of the spiritual gift of tongues.<\/span><\/p>\n

    There is no evidence in the spiritual tradition of the church that any of the saints had the gift of praying in tongues or that such kind of prayer was ever a part of the liturgy of the church. The only mention that can be found of it, to our knowledge, was at the baptism of Montanus, a third-century heretic who left the Church to found his own spiritualist sect. If any of the saints or spiritual masters had this gift, they did not write about it or propagate it openly. It was unknown, for example, to Saint John Chrysostom by his own report, (cf. Commentary on Corinthians<\/em>) Since a number of believers have this gift in our time, and since there are persons who seek it, it is critically important that this method of prayer be understood according to the counsels of Saint Paul and in the light of the teaching of the spiritual masters on prayer.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    All Christian prayer must be prayer in the Spirit; and all genuine prayer most certainly is. Men pray to the Father, through Christ the Son and Word of God in the Holy Spirit. This is the case wherever men pray, whatever their method, whether they know it or not. For prayer is not man\u2019s lonely cry across empty spaces to a far-off God. Prayer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","inline_featured_image":false,"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1525],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prayer-fasting-and-almsgiving"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPrayer in the Spirit - Kisha Orthodh\u03bfkse Autoqefale e Shqip\u00ebris\u00eb<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/orthodoxalbania.org\/2020\/en\/2015\/05\/16\/prayer-in-the-spirit\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Prayer in the Spirit - Kisha Orthodh\u03bfkse Autoqefale e Shqip\u00ebris\u00eb\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"    All Christian prayer must be prayer in the Spirit; and all genuine prayer most certainly is. 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