272 The Spiritual Man
the will of God in his intuition. The command insisted upon in the
Bible is to “pray at all times in the spirit” (Eph. 6.18). If that is not
the way we are praying we must be praying in the flesh. We should
not open our mouths too hastily upon approaching God. On the
contrary, we first must ask God to show us what and how to pray
before we make our request known to Him. Have we not consumed a
great deal of time in the past asking for what we wanted? Why not
now ask for what God wants? Not what we want but what He wants.
If such be the case, then the flesh is provided no footing here. It takes
a spiritual man to offer true prayer.
All spiritual prayers have their source in God. God makes known
to us what we ought to pray by unfolding to us the need and by
giving that need as a burden in our intuitive spirit. Only an intuitive
burden can constitute our call to pray. Yet how we have overlooked
many delicate registrations in the intuition through carelessness. Our
prayer should never exceed the burden in our intuition. Prayers
which are not initiated or responded to in the spirit originate instead
with the believer himself. They are therefore of the flesh. So that his
prayer may not be fleshly but may be effectual in the spiritual
domain, the child of God ought to confess his weakness that he does
not know how to pray (Rom. 8.26), and petition the Holy Spirit to
teach him. He next should pray according to His instruction. God
gives us utterance to pray just as he gives us utterance to preach. The
need for the former equals that of the latter. In acknowledging our
total weakness, we then are able to depend on the movement of the
Holy Spirit within our spirit for uttering His prayer. How empty that
work is which is done by the flesh; how likewise fruitless is that
prayer which is offered in the flesh.
Not only should we pray with the spirit; we should “pray with the
mind also” (1 Cor. 14.15). In praying, these two must work together.
A believer receives in his spirit what he needs to pray and
understands in his mind what he has received. The spirit accepts the
burden of prayer while the mind formulates that burden in prayerful