How can I know what to pray for?

John says, "This is the confidence that we have in Him, that, if we ask any thing according to His will, He heareth us; and if we know that He hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him." Now how are we to know the Lord's will from our own fancies and imaginations? By His word. If I go and pray for a thing not founded on the knowledge of the Lord's will as revealed in His word, I cannot have confidence about it. Were He to grant me what I desire, He might very likely only be answering my own foolish, corrupt will. If my flesh is at work, and my soul is not brought into obedience and subjection to the word, I cannot be "praying in the Spirit." The first thing the Spirit would do would be to humble me by the word into a sense of the condition in which my soul is. Supposing, for instance, I am walking carelessly and inconsistently, and yet am beginning to ask, as a very great Christian, for things only suited to the state of such an one; if the Lord were to answer my petition, it would only tend to make me a hypocrite. The first thing the Spirit would do in such a case would be to make, me humble under a sense of my real heed. Prayer in the Spirit is always from a humble sense of need; then be it but a sigh or a groan, it is prayer in the Spirit. If we know our spiritual need, and cry to the Lord under the sense of it, we may always reckon on an answer. If our desires are according to God, they cannot be according to the flesh: The very thing the Lord would ever have us to learn is our real need; and He would have us do this in order that we might draw out of His fulness for its supply.

We want to look at a few particulars. There are certain conditions upon which God answers prayer. We often ask for things which are not expedient for us. If a wrong thing is urgently asked from God, and it is at last given, it always ends in sorrow. "He gave them their request, but sent leanness into their soul" (Ps. 106:15). Our petitions must be in accordance with His will. His will is perfect, and when our prayers are in harmony with that will, in a line with it as it were, we know that we have our petitions. "Very well," you say, "how am I to ascertain what is the will of God? "There are various ways of finding out. Take the promises that God has given — "exceeding great and precious promises." I have never yet counted them, but it might be a profitable occupation for any who wish to do so. Anyhow, every promise that God has given us is a declaration of His will. He means that we should claim and have it. Therefore if you bring your request on the ground of a promise of God you have a sure foothold.

Even where we have no special promise God has given us broad promises, as in this passage, "Ask, and it shall be given unto you." You are all familiar with Paul's words to the Philippians, "My God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus." There is always some indication to be found, and where we know we are asking on the ground of a promise we may he certain our prayer will be answered, for all God's promises are sure and they are all confirmed in Christ Jesus. Even where He gives commands, does not the very fact of His giving them imply that He intends to give the help and strength needed to fulfil them? I do not, of course, refer here to the law, which we know to have been given for another purpose — "that the offence might abound." You can always turn a command into an indication of God's will. Then, too, we have the help of the Holy Spirit, as is seen in Rom. 8:26-27. When He prompts a petition it will come up acceptably before God. We know not what to pray for as we ought, but we have the Spirit to help our infirmities.

Nobody imagines that we pray in order to inform God of what He does not know. Nor do we pray in order to secure His interest or His love. The saint who prays intelligently realises that he is speaking to One who knows his every need far better than he does himself, whose interest in all that concerns His people is unbounded, and whose love could not possibly be greater than it is. The object of prayer is that dependence upon God might be expressed, and that our souls might be brought into touch with Him about what we pray for; that in waiting upon Him we might learn His mind; that utterance might be afforded for desires which the Holy Ghost has wrought within us, and that when the answer comes we might be conscious that it is indeed from God that it comes.

When good Christian men pray contradictory prayers one accounts for it by the fact that so frequently even Christians are woefully deficient in their understanding of the will of God as expressed in Scripture, and so frequently their vision is blurred by the world without or the flesh within, and so communion with God is but little cultivated.

And at the same time in accounting for it thus one has a chastened spirit, conscious how frequently one has oneself prayed equally contradictory prayers in private if not in public. Acquaintance with the Word of God is necessary if we are to pray intelligently. And even then we do not know what we should pray for as we ought (Rom. 8:26). Yet we may make our requests known to God (Phil. 4:6). If united public prayer is made according to God, it will be as instructed by His Word and in the Holy Ghost (Jude 20), and then all will be in harmony and without contradictions.

It would seem very simple to say or to hear, "Continue (constant) in prayer, and watching in the same with thanksgiving." In hearing it, how often our souls would fail in the thought of what we should pray for in such a manner. It is not merely the praying of individuals, as necessity or difficulty arises to themselves. There must always be felt the need of getting something from God, on whom we are depending as the giver, and that need, felt in the soul, making all our requests known to God in prayer and supplication with thanksgiving; i.e. in blessing God for the way made for us to His presence, and the love that has embraced us. But as God acquaints us with His counsels for the Church, the need of the saints is the truth twice set before us in this epistle; so also twice in different degrees in the Ephesians. Surely the value of the prize, and the way to it, would, to the conscious soul, be ever suggestive of entreaty.

The most important teaching of the "Lord's Prayer" for us today is in its structure. In the first three requests God, the Father, is the centre (compare with 5:16, 45, 48): His Name, His kingdom and His will are in the foreground. Only after this do the four requests follow which are related to our needs: our food, our debts, our temptations, our deliverance. Often our prayers are so different to this! How little thought we give to the honour and glory of our Lord and our God, and how much we think about our needs! Let us give more importance to bringing Him honour and worship in our personal as well as in our collective prayers.

Nor has prayer one object only. It is not for himself alone that a Christian, when praying in the Holy Ghost, makes known his requests unto God. It is for all saints that he has to supplicate with perseverance (Eph. 6:18). Prayer will abound according to the measure of liveliness in which the heart of the believer is conversant with the things of Christ. That, on the other hand, will be in proportion to his acquaintance, through the Spirit, with the word of God. It is that word which directs and regulates the sympathies of the inner man. The specialty of any trial which may befall either the Church or an individual member of it, while it interests and commands the sympathies of Christ in His saints, turns to the profit. and blessing of the soul thus exercised, by enlarging its sphere of positive communion with God.

So Paul says, "praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints". It is a good thing to have an enlarged view of the requirements of the Lord's people. There are various magazines or sources of information available, and when we read them we learn what the Lord is doing in other parts of the world, and we see the Lord's servants asking for prayer, just as Paul did here. Paul says, "Pray for me", pray "that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel" (6:19). So these dear servants in many parts of the world today are asking for our prayers. We may not be preachers or expositors, we may not be doing some prominent work for the Lord but what a wonderful thing it is to be a prayer partner, to be a help for those who really require it in the situations that they are facing, dangerous situations, trying situations, not very congenial situations, disappointment too as persons are obviously making progress and then suddenly they fall away. What sadness there is in the hearts of the Lord's servants as they see this. Oh how wonderful it is when we feel there are people who are praying for us, this is a very powerful service. They are praying in the Spirit. I believe that one of the most important things about prayer is to pray intelligently. We should know what we are praying for and we should pray specifically for it. We should not make enlarged prayers that really boiled down we do not know what is being prayed for, but we are to pray for specific things that the Lord has placed upon our hearts and the Holy Spirit supporting it.

How often we put ourselves and our interests first in our prayers. It was not thus that the Lord taught His disciples. He taught them to put God first. To pray that His name might be hallowed, and then to stretch out in their desires to the utmost bounds of the earth, to plead that every evil imagination might be overthrown and every evil work might be judged, and every will might be subdued to God's will, and that the whole earth might be filled with the glory of God. Then, when the heart has reached up to the sacred glory of God's name and broadened out to include every habitation of man, we may ask for our daily needs. And then we shall not ask selfishly but confidently, joyfully, adoringly, with a sense in our souls of the greatness of our Father's name and of the blessedness of His will, subject to which we ourselves have determined to live, for otherwise our prayer that that will might be done on earth would be glaring hypocrisy.

But now look at our verse. The character of the prayer contemplated is this — "in the Spirit." It is to spring not from the flesh and its desires but from the Spirit and His desires. Now the Spirit indwells the saints in order that He may not only teach them but also control their thoughts and desires, moulding them in mind and heart after Christ. The flesh is still in us of course, and very easily we may be governed by it, so that our prayers become but a crying out for just the things which an ordinary unconverted person would cry out for under similar circumstances. Let us search our hearts as to this first point, lest our prayers become powerless by reason of their being but fleshly desires. If our minds are well furnished with the Word of God, which unfolds to us His purposes and ways, and well governed by the Spirit of God, so that the flesh in us is judged, we shall be able to pray in the Spirit. Our prayers then will bear the right character.