Charles Spurgeon: Praying in the Holy Spirit: Fervency

Monday, 15 October 2007 by Paul Dubuc.

When I was looking around for a devotional topic for last week’s Prayer at Six meeting, I came across the evening devotional for that date (October 8th) in Charles Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening. The 20th verse of the book of Jude exhorts us to “pray in the Holy Spirit.” In this devotional reading, Spurgeon gives his rendition of what this means. First, he characterizes prayer as a two-way relationship with God when he says that, “Only the prayer which comes from God can go to God.” Prayer is a conversation with God, not a monologue. Prayers that are entirely self-motivated have little effect. He then goes on to describe five qualities of praying in the Spirit. We considered the first one at this evening’s meeting: “Praying in the Holy Spirit is praying in fervency. Cold prayers ask the Lord not to hear them. Those who do not plead with fervency, plead not at all. As well speak of lukewarm fire as of lukewarm prayer—it is essential that it be red hot.” This got me to thinking about what fervency means for prayer. Read the rest of this entry »

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