Lord, Teach Me To Pray: The Spirit's School of Prayer
The very next day after my night of “the baptism of tongues” that I shared about in last week’s blog, the Holy Spirit called me to pray between noon and three o’clock. My spirit sensed this tug-like feeling and a desire to pray came, leading me to my bedroom. Every day after that for a year and a half I would pray anywhere from one to three hours, depending on how the Holy Spirit would lead and direct me. I was undoubtedly on a new prayer journey!
Those were days where I would lay on my side and groan, sometimes so deep that there were no words to say. I could feel the depth of the prayer in my innermost being. The Holy Spirit would occasionally instruct me to speak the word out, to prophesy, or to command demons to leave. Alone in my bedroom, with my young children taking naps, I was lost in the Spirit just obeying the Lord. And as I said, this went on for a year and a half, ending every day with me being led to read the whole chapter of Jeremiah 33 from beginning to end.
When I look back now, I realize God was using me in prayer to further His kingdom, but at the time, I had no idea why or what I was doing. After a few months of this type of prayer and deep travail, I talked to one of the ladies in Women’s Aglow and asked her if she had ever had an experience where she groaned, spoke in unknown languages, or felt like she was in labor for a child. She told me it had happened to her once. That made me panic, as I had heard teaching that some women can get deceived and misled, yet having good intentions.
Not telling her I did this every day, I went home and prayed, “Oh, Lord, please don’t let me be crazy! If this isn’t you, let me know now and I’ll quit.” I was desperate to know and desperate to be right before the Lord.
That very same afternoon I decided to stop by the Christian bookstore. Upon entering the shop, I immediately sensed the Holy Spirit directing me down a particular aisle. Just following that leading, I walked right over to a section of books and started looking up and down the shelf. My eyes fell on a book called Praying Hyde, along with a couple other books that I purchased. Going home it felt as though I had discovered treasure.
Consuming every book I bought that same night, the Holy Spirit through that content shared His heart with me regarding my current prayer experiences. I discovered that God had called others to pray like me, and better yet, I was not crazy! You cannot imagine the relief I felt, knowing God does call people to pray and to intercede with groans, utterings, moaning, silent weeping, prophesy, declaration, and more. A few years later intercession became more widely known to the Body of Christ and many more books were published with further explanations of what the Holy Spirit had taught me in my home years earlier.
There is a Scripture in I John 2: 20 that says, “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.” It continues in verse 27 saying, “As for you, the anointing you received from Him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as His anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit, just as it has taught you, remain in Him.” The Holy Spirit had become my private tutor, as I had no one else to teach me at that time in my spiritual walk about a life of intercessory prayer.
I then recognized that I was enrolled in the Holy Spirit’s School of Prayer! Next week I will share more about this topic of intercession.
Dr. Sharon Predovich
