384 The Spiritual Man
In order to receive burdens from God our spirit has to be kept
continuously free and untrampled. Only an untrammeled spirit can
detect the movement of the Holy Spirit. Any spirit which is already
full of concerns has lost the sharpness of its intuitive sense and hence
cannot be a good vessel. Due to his failure to act according to the
burden which he already has received from God, the believer often
finds himself painfully burdened for many days. During this period
God is unable to give him any new one. Consequently, it is highly
necessary to search out the meaning of a burden through prayer, with
the help of the Holy Spirit and the exercise of one’s mind.
Frequently the burden or concern in the spirit is for prayer (Col.
4.12). As a matter of fact we are not able to pray beyond our burden.
To continue to pray without it can produce no fruit because the
prayer must be emanating from our mind. But the prayer burden in
the spirit can only be lightened through prayer. Whenever God
concerns us with something, such as prayer, preaching the Word, and
so forth, the only way to lessen that concern or burden is to do what
it calls for. The prayer burden in the spirit alone enables us to pray in
the Holy Spirit with sighs too deep for words. When our spirit is
concerned with prayer burdens nothing can discharge that burden
except prayer. It is lifted soon after the work is performed.
Because of the large accumulation of prayer burdens we often find
it difficult to pray at first, but the longer we pray the more our spirit
responds with amens. We should try our best to pour out all the
burdens in our spirit by prayer until all of them have left us. The
more life is poured out through, prayer, the happier we are. A
common temptation, however, is to cease praying before the burden
is lifted. When we begin to feel buoyant in our spirit we assume our
prayer is answered, not realizing we are just beginning to engage in
spiritual work. If at that moment we turn away to attend to other
matters, then spiritual work will suffer great loss.