Relocating is a small-scale death and resurrection. The life once known is dead and new life has taken its place.

I know this because we recently moved from Wheaton to New England, two very different places. I gave up my familiar morning walk to the elementary school down the block and the weekly drive to my coveted library study spot. My kids gave up friends just down the street and the neighborhood tot lot. The living room picture window that shed light on my bird of paradise potted plant is now gone; a door to my shaded screened-in porch has taken its place. For our family, the old Wheaton life has passed away and New England life has come.

We’re certainly thankful for much, though. Our city, aptly named Providence, is situated on a rocky coastline surrounded by water. Daily, we drive over bridges that cause our children to point and call out, “Look! Water!” We live in a beautiful place. And although “time heals all wounds,” we still occasionally feel the sting of the daily life and friendships we’ve left behind.

Maybe you’ve experienced similar, small-scale deaths. A close friend betrays you and the friendship dissolves. A chronic illness makes its home within you or a loved one. A job is lost, parents separate, a family member stops attending church. These moments make us pause and ponder what has been lost, how the life we used to know will never be the same. These moments force us to grieve and anticipate the growing pains of the new life.

What do we do when life hurts? To whom do we turn when we experience the sting of loss and disorientation? Through the Holy Spirit, we have access to God’s listening ear (Rom 8:15). The psalmist exhorts us, “Pour out your heart before him” (Ps. 62:8). In other words, pray.

Prayer

I grew up in a church where “praying in the Spirit” meant a special kind of prayer, often having to do with speaking in tongues. However, I have not been given the spiritual gift of speaking in tongues. So, when I come to Paul’s exhortation to pray “at all times in the Spirit,” or Jude’s encouragement to pray “in the Holy Spirit,” I sometimes wonder if I’m missing something (Eph. 6:18; Jude 20). Is this type of prayer—which Paul and Jude present as an everyday, necessary part of the Christian life—closed off to me? Is praying in the Spirit exclusive to a special subset of believers?

It appears Paul and Jude would answer emphatically—No! Paul includes his exhortation to pray in the Spirit at the end of his call to the Ephesians to put on the full armor of God, an invitation for everyone who trusts in Christ. Just as every believer has access to God’s spiritual armor, so every believer has access to prayer in the Spirit. This doesn’t seem to distinguish a specific type of prayer, as I once thought—instead, it seems to distinguish a characteristic of prayer. Prayer is accomplished in the Holy Spirit.  

If we are to pray, it might help to define prayer.. When we look in Scripture, we notice, “Prayer is worship that includes all the attitudes of the human spirit in its approach to God. The Christian worships God when he adores, confesses, praises and supplicates him in prayer” (Wiseman, New Bible Dictionary, 1996). The Westminster Confession of Faith helpfully provides the heart posture of prayer: “[Prayer] is to be made in the name of the Son, by the help of His Holy Spirit, according to His will, with understanding, reverence, humility, fervency, faith, love, and perseverance” (WCF 21.3). In other words, prayer is impossible without God’s condescension.

However, that is not the end of it. He must choose to hear, yes, but think of what must be done within our hearts before we utter a single word. Only those who have experienced spiritual death and resurrection in Christ receive the promised Holy Spirit. If we’re to commune with God, we must trust Jesus by faith and become living, walking temples of his Holy Spirit. Only then will he transform us by bending our knees and crafting our prayers. Charles Spurgeon preached simply, “Only the prayer which comes from God can go to God” (Praying in the Holy Ghost, 1866). In other words, take heart: when we have the Holy Spirit within us, we’ve no reason to doubt that God will hear our prayers. 

The Holy Spirit makes our prayer possible, but he also helps us in our prayer. 

Assurance When It’s Lacking

As a mom to four kids, my home is often loud. While two children banter over a game of chess, another runs through the house with muddy shoes. The last and littlest stands by my side, sharing a rather sordid tale about a worm in the backyard. I’m moving too, peeling potatoes, inspecting the homework list, or checking work emails.

But in the mornings—when we’re all a bit sleepy and our gas fireplace warms last night’s chilly air—I look over my home with a cup of warm coffee and feel settled, at peace even.

Recently, I was reading my Bible and praying at the kitchen table and I sensed a similar peace settle over me. It was not because the house was quiet or life felt simple. Far from it! Peace descended because I was in the Word of God and prayer, and it felt like home.

Paul reminds us: “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit” (Eph. 1:13). Through the Holy Spirit, we know that we belong to God. And knowing him encourages us to call upon his name. Remember, Psalm 62:8 encourages us to pour our hearts before God, but it continues, because “God is a refuge for us” (Ps. 62:8). In other words, “we can pour out the concerns of our souls into [God’s] fatherly lap… knowing that he will be our eternal refuge and carry us in his everlasting arms” (Beeke and Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology). The Holy Spirit makes prayer feel like home, a place of comfort and rest, because we’re in the strong arms our eternal refuge—our eternal home.

Words When We’re Wordless

There have been many times I’ve been unsure what to pray. I’ve had to decide between two paths, but both seem equally good. A dearly loved friend is struggling but I’m unsure what would help. A young neighbor who lives with her grandma wants to live with her mom, but it’s an unhealthy situation.

Scripture reminds us that the Holy Spirit helps even when we don’t have the words: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Rom. 8:26). What a comfort that we don’t always have to know the exact right thing to say!

Even when we don’t have the words—or we don’t know the “right” thing to pray—we can go to God in prayer, dependent on the Holy Spirit to help us in our weakness.

Comfort that Endures

Jesus spoke to his disciples often of the day he wouldn’t be with them. What a disappointment! But he also assured them that the Holy Spirit would come: “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26).

The word for the Holy Spirit used here means “advocate, helper, comforter, counselor.” The Holy Spirit would comfort the disciples definitively in Acts, when he was poured out at Pentecost. But the Spirit and his comfort didn’t dry up. Isn’t this true for all of us in Christ, as well (Acts 2:38)? 

Too often, I think of this comfort as a one-time thing. In one prayer, no matter what I’m going through, the Holy Spirit will comfort me, and I won’t feel pain anymore. How disappointing when it doesn’t come true! But the truth of this comfort is better than my wishful thinking. The Holy Spirit is a continual comforter. We can return again and again to the well of his comfort.

What a privilege we have to pray in the Holy Spirit (Jude 20). What a privilege to have the Holy Spirit press God’s assurance, words, and comfort into our hearts. We’ve all experienced small-scale deaths, disappointments, and disorientation. Yet, no matter what comes, we can ask God to grow us in this privilege of praying in the Holy Spirit. Again, with Spurgeon we can say: “Lord, teach us to pray. Put thou the thoughts into our minds, the desires into our hearts, and the very words into our lips, if it be thy will, that so all through it may be praying in the Spirit and not in the flesh” Amen.