David Diga Hernandez - 6 Ways the Holy Spirit Helps You Pray

Here is how the Holy Spirit helps you to pray. John 14:26 says, «But when the Father sends the Advocate as my representative, that is, the Holy Spirit, he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you». Number one, the Holy Spirit will remind you to pray. The Holy Spirit reminds us of the words of Jesus and Jesus instructed us to pray. Thank God that we have a helper and a friend in the Holy Spirit. In life, we can become so busy. The pace of life can become so rushed that sometimes we forget to acknowledge the presence of God. But as you move throughout your day, you have a helper, someone who will remind you to pray. This is why we must be sensitive to the voice of the Holy Spirit. Have you ever gone about your day when suddenly you fill this drawing into the prayer room, you sense this pull into the word of God? That’s an invitation from the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit reminds you to do those things, which are spiritual. The Holy Spirit will remind you to pray. I often tell Him, «Holy Spirit, please remind me of all those things I need to remember. Please keep at the forefront of my mind all those things that the Word instructs me to do. Please remind me to live in a way that is pleasing to God,» and He’ll do it. The Holy Spirit will remind you to pray, but you have to be listening for His voice. You have to be sensitive to the voice of the Holy Spirit. Be attentive. Be aware that His presence is with you and He will remind you as you go throughout your day. Sometimes, I’ll look back on a certain moment, and I’ll realize the Holy Spirit was trying to speak to me. The Holy Spirit was trying to get me to do something. The Holy Spirit was trying to prevent me from doing something, but sometimes I go so fast, I live so fast-paced that I miss those little moments. Don’t miss those moments. Be attentive to the presence of the Holy Spirit and He will remind you to pray.

Number two, He gives you the desire to pray. This is wonderful because not only does the Holy Spirit give you the reminder to pray, He gives you the desire to pray. He gives you the direction and the desire. Galatians 5:16–18 says, «So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions. But when you are directed by the Spirit, you are not under obligation to the law of Moses». Now, sometimes, when we go to pray, we can be bombarded with lies of the enemy. Maybe there’s a moment where you go to pray and you feel like God doesn’t want to talk to you. You feel like God is rejecting you because maybe you don’t sense His presence right away, or you don’t feel what you want to feel, or you don’t have the experience or the encounter that you want to have. Maybe you start to doubt. Maybe you start to wonder if God is truly accepting you or welcoming you into His presence. Here’s something to remember. The desire to pray is itself an invitation to prayer because when the Holy Spirit puts a desire in you, that’s a spiritual desire, and the Scripture says that all spiritual desires come from the Holy Spirit. Therefore, if there’s anything in you in any moment that desires to pray, that desires to read the Word, ultimately, that’s coming from the Holy Spirit, and God wouldn’t put that desire in you if He didn’t want you to pray. He puts the desire to pray in you because He wants you to pray. You want an encounter with God, you want to experience His presence, you want to walk with Him because He put that desire there by the Holy Ghost.

Therefore, again, I say, «The desire to pray is itself an invitation to prayer». So He reminds you to pray. He gives you the desire to pray. He even gives you the words to pray. Romans 8:26–27 say this, «And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will». There is a purposeful pull of the Holy Spirit on your life. The Holy Spirit prays through you. The Holy Spirit teaches you what to say because the Holy Spirit is praying for you. The Holy Spirit has a prayer life and He intercedes for you. Think about that. There is no one who can pray like the Holy Spirit prays, and the Holy Spirit knows you better than anyone else knows you. So the Holy Spirit who knows you better than anyone else knows you can pray for you like no one else can pray for you. He truly is the mighty intercessor. No one else can intercede for you like the Holy Spirit can intercede for you. And He does so, and when He does so, that produces that desire in you. He pulls you, He inclines you, He bends you toward the will of God. That’s what happens when you pray. You’re submitting to the will of the Spirit and His desires become your desires. His will becomes your will. That’s the union with the Holy Spirit. So He gives you the words to pray, He reminds you to pray, He gives you the desire to pray, and He even gives you the words to pray. What a wonderful helper we have in the Holy Spirit.

Number four, He gives you the strength to continue to pray. Jude 1:20 says, «But you, dear friends, must build each other up in your most holy faith, pray in the power of the Holy Spirit». Pray in the Holy Spirit. To pray in the Holy Spirit doesn’t mean to pray in tongues. Praying in tongues is a form of praying in the Holy Spirit, but to pray in the Holy Spirit is to pray with the guidance of, by the will of, and in the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s to harmonize your prayers with the Holy Spirit’s desires, and He is the one who gives you the power to pray. He gives you the strength to continue in prayer. There’s something about persistent prayer. There’s something about consistency and faithfulness that touches the heart of God. In Matthew 7:7, we are instructed to keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking. Well, who do you think it is that gives you the strength to do that? It’s the Holy Ghost. He’s the one who gives you the power to be faithful, to be consistent, to be energized in your prayer. So He reminds you to pray. He gives you the desire to pray. He gives you the words to pray. He gives you the strength to continue to pray.

He even gives you focus when you pray. We all know that the mind can be so easily distracted. Isn’t it interesting that the moment you go to pray, suddenly you’re bombarded with all the thoughts from throughout the day. You think of all your responsibilities, all your obligations, all your burdens, all your worries and fears. They seem to come crashing down on your mind in that one moment that you go to pray. I call all of that inner chaos, and the truth is, it’s not that the inner chaos showed up when you went to pray. It’s that it was revealed when you went to pray. You just were never quiet enough to hear what was actually going on inside of you. So we, by nature, can be so easily distracted. We, by nature, can be pulled in different directions. Our attention spans are constantly shrinking, they say. I don’t know how true that is, but it sure seems true. The Holy Spirit, then, is our helper because when we go to pray, the enemy starts to attack, mind battles. «God doesn’t hear you. Your sin is keeping you from God. You should be ashamed. You shouldn’t approach God. You’ve been rejected». Or, «He is ignoring you». Or the enemy will come at it from a different angle and not just the enemy all the time. Sometimes, it’s also the flesh, and they can sound quite similar because they’re pretty much on the same team. But you go to pray and you start to think about the bills that need to be paid, the relationships in your life that are strained, all of the different responsibilities, our task list, the things that we need to get done, all of it seems to come right when we are praying. Well, this is where the Holy Spirit can help you. John 16:13–15 say this, «Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come». Watch this now. «He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you. All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you». The Holy Spirit glorifies Jesus. Several years ago, I wrote a book called «Carriers of the Glory,» and one of the points that I made in that book that really was a point that changed my life, which is why I wrote about it, was the fact that the Holy Spirit makes Jesus real. He vivifies the Savior. This isn’t to say that Jesus isn’t real without the Holy Spirit. This is to say that we sometimes miss that reality because we’re not listening to the Holy Spirit. So of course, Jesus is real 24/7, all the time. He doesn’t need our awareness to be real, but in order to become real to us, well, that’s a work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit glorifies Jesus. The Holy Spirit points to Jesus. The Holy Spirit will help to focus your mind on the Lord. That’s why the scripture says in John 4:24 that they who worship God will worship in spirit and in truth, its revelation, and the Holy Spirit that causes you to worship. And what is worship? It’s that fixation on God, that fixing of our attention on Him. Only the Holy Spirit can produce that. Only the Holy Spirit can bring you to the place of worship where everything else begins to fade. And this is what’s so beautiful. Your trials, your troubles, your burdens, your worries, your fears, they may not change when you want them to change, they may not go away immediately like you want them to go away, but you know something beautiful happens. When you begin to allow the Holy Spirit to fix your eyes on Jesus, everything fades into the background. All your troubles, all your concerns, all the pressures begin to fade. This is one of the ways the Holy Spirit has really helped me. Ministry is a wonderful privilege, but it’s also a heavy responsibility. So I, by no means, am trying to be a martyr when I say to you that sometimes the ministry brings immense pressure, and I’m sure there’s something in your life, maybe you’re in ministry and you can identify with that, but even if you’re not in full-time public ministry as is traditionally talked about, I’m sure there’s something in your life that brings you that pressure, that burden, as well. Well, here’s the beautiful thing. When I go to spend time with Jesus and the Holy Spirit helps to bring my attention to Him, everything else fades into the background and Jesus becomes my reality. His faith comes into focus. With the eyes of faith, I look at Him and focus on Him. That’s what the Holy Spirit does. He gives you focus when you pray. That can only come by Him because only He can truly reveal Jesus. We can’t have revelation from some book, though the Holy Spirit can take the revelation from that book and make it real to you. It only comes by the Holy Spirit that kind of focus. We can’t do it. We don’t have it within us to silence all those things because we are practically interrupting ourselves. But the Holy Spirit brings your attention, focuses your mind on the presence of Jesus. He reminds you to pray. He gives you the desire to pray. He gives you the words to pray. He gives you the strength to continue in prayer. He gives you focus when you pray.

And finally, He transforms you when you pray. We say that we don’t live by emotion, but the truth is often we do. How do I know this? Well, sometimes when we go to pray, we don’t feel like we’re encountering God. We don’t feel like we’re experiencing His presence. We don’t feel like anything is changing. We don’t feel like He’s transforming us. But do you realize that it’s impossible to accomplish nothing in prayer? For every moment you are praying, you are transforming. That’s a work of the Holy Spirit. You see, we have our list of flaws, we have our list of to-dos, we have our list of responsibilities, and it can become complex and overwhelming. We may look at ourselves even and say, «Well, I gotta fix this. I’m not like Jesus in that area. I have a character flaw there. There’s something wrong with my mind here. I don’t like this about myself». And we start to nitpick and all the little things in our lives that we probably should correct, but it can become overwhelming and it may feel complex, and tedious, and it becomes burdensome to try to address all those problems. You don’t have to. All you have to do is spend time in the presence of God, and the Holy Spirit will transform you when you pray. Whether you feel like you’re changing or not, whether you feel like things are transforming or not, it’s working. Whether you feel it or not, it’s working. The scripture says in 2 Corinthians 3:17–18, «Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord». What does this mean? It means that when I focus my mind on Him, when I’m attentive to Him in prayer, that things in me begin to change and I become more like Jesus. You don’t even have to do that work. So think about the complete work that He does from beginning to end. What a wonderful helper He truly is, for He reminds you to pray. And then when He reminds you to pray, he doesn’t leave you to your own devices. He reminds you to pray and then He gives you the desire to pray. And then if you don’t know what to pray when you’re praying, He’ll give you the words to pray. And if you grow weary in prayer, He’ll give you the strength to continue in prayer. And if you become distracted while you’re continuing in prayer, He’ll give you the focus when you pray. And as you focus on Him and you’re doing that simple act of following the leading of the Holy Spirit, He also transforms you when you pray. Thank you, Holy Spirit, for what you do for us. Wow, the power of simplicity. So what do we need to do? Surrender to the Holy Ghost and let Him do what only He can do.