Praying was always a mystery to me. I never quite figured it out, and it was hard to get into a habit. I especially didn’t like public prayer — I felt silly praying out loud, and I didn’t like all the pressure. In my faith tradition, prayers were never scripted, unlike sermons, so it was a burden to get up to the front and lead the group in an unscripted prayer.

Praying in the Spirit

Prayer was hard until I took a class in college called “Counseling for Ministers.” It was a semester of tips on how to counsel churchgoers in their times of need. What I learned about prayer in that class stuck out to me the most — I never considered prayer as part of a counseling session!

Since spoken prayer is so important in counseling, the teacher urged us to pray before we prayed. The advice was to “pray in the Spirit.” As we bowed our heads, we were told to take a few moments of silence to ask the Spirit to guide our words. Then, we’d launch into speaking the prayer aloud. Something remarkable happened when I did this. The Spirit clearly worked in the prayer!

The Spirit Intercedes

This isn’t just a trick for pastors though. Everyone can access the power of the Spirit in prayer. When we don’t have the words to say, the Spirit intercedes on our behalf. What does the Spirit interceding look like? It might be that you are pointed to a particular passage of…