Our Helper In Prayer: Pt. 3 — A ‘Time With God’ Devotion

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Transcript

Good morning. As we get into the middle of this week and into the middle of our theme for this week, I just have to say I love this theme of prayer because what more reflects the state of my spiritual life than my communication with God? I don’t think anything is a better barometer of how I’m doing in my relationship with God than that.

And so if I want to grow spiritually, I need to grow in my prayer life, don’t I? And this week we’re talking about what God has given us in our prayer life to help us grow in that area, and that is the Holy Spirit and His role in helping us in prayer.

And we looked in the last couple of days at how the Holy Spirit has been given to us for those times when we don’t know what to pray and we don’t know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit gets involved in our prayers. That doesn’t happen though unless we stop and take time to pray.

So foundational to growing in your prayer life is just taking time to pray whether you know what to pray or not. Opening your Bible with a heart open to God and saying, God, you speak to me and I want to respond to you and I want to talk to you about the issues of my life and what’s going on and then, letting the conversation go from there.

Well, I want to take you to another passage today in the book of 2 Corinthians in the Bible, Chapter 12, starting in verse 7. This is what the apostle Paul says:

Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations from God to me, for this reason to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, to keep me from exalting myself. Paul was in the danger of going to great pride because of what God had revealed to him.

He says concerning this, this thorn in the flesh, this struggle I was having, I begged the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And He – that is God – has said to me, My grace is sufficient for you. For power is perfected in weakness.

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And Paul responds most gladly. Therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore, I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties for Christ’s sake, for when I am weak – Then I’m strong.

Therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses that the power of Christ may dwell in me...for when I am weak – Then I’m strong.

Well, Paul starts out his response to this real difficult experience he’s having, whether it was sickness or some kind of other physical ailment, a thorn in the flesh.

He reacts to that the way we all react to it. God, please get me out of this. I don’t like this. What are you doing? Why would you let this into my life? Please deliver me from this, and that’s how Paul starts out. He begs God three times to take it away.

And then the Holy Spirit gets involved, and God reveals to Paul that actually the suffering he’s going through, the hard times he’s going through, have a spiritual purpose. He hasn’t seen it. Just looking at it on his own, he couldn’t detect any reason God would let him go through that. And then God reveals to him.

I need to keep you humble so I can keep using you. It’s only as you depend on me that you’re useful to me, and the only way you’re going to be able to stay humble is if I leave this physical struggle in your life.

Then my power can work through you, and Paul is so caught up with loving God and being useful to God, fulfilling his purpose in life, that he says, All right then, now that changes my whole perspective. I’ll boast about the struggles I’m going through if that’s going to make me more useful to you, God. Bring it on, whatever it takes.

Well, if you’re going through some big struggle in your life and you’re having trouble understanding it and accepting it.

Come to God and say, God, would you please change my perspective? Would you help me understand that you’re using this in my life, that this struggle is putting me in a circumstance where you can use me perhaps in other people’s lives, or that you are using it to work on me personally in my own inner life, and I trust you.

Invite God the Holy Spirit to do his work in changing your perspective.

I’m John North.

To go deeper in your faith, visit AFCI.com.au.

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