Thoughts for Life: #71 The Spirit Longs to Share His Burden

Dr. Wesley L. Duewel: The Spirit longs to share His burden, compassion, and travail of soul with you.

God has ordained that the power to change things, to restrain evil, to calm human hatred, and to heal the world's wounds is released by the prayer of His people. You and I are expected to be priests to the hurting world. But how can we fulfill this role? (The Victorious Surrender- Google image)

It has to begin with our hearts. We must feel before we can heal. We must see before we can prevail. One of the chief roles of the Holy Spirit in relation to the world's need is to place prayer burden on our hearts.

How much do you share and carry on your heart the burden of our world? You are failing your people, city, nation, and world unless you are a priest of God carrying their burden on your heart.

We are not just saved to be happy. We are saved to bless. What greater way can we bless than through our prayers? In what other way can we bless so many?

God is a God who blesses, but much of that blessing can be mediated and manifested only through your intercession.

The Holy Spirit longs to help your eyes to see, your heart to feel, and your prayers to carry a burden of prevailing prayer for people and for society.

How can Christians be carefree in a hurting world and think they have the heart of Christ? How can Christians be tearless in a broken world and think that they are representing Jesus? How can you and I be so often free of prayer burden and still be prayer partners with Jesus?

Open your heart to the hurting, the brokenness, the tragedy all about you and across our world. Open your heart to the Spirit to burden you. Learn to rejoice with those who rejoice and to weep with those who weep (Rom. 12:15).

Ask the Spirit to teach you burden-bearing through prayer. You can make a difference in many lives if you let the Spirit burden you for intercession. What greater joy could you give to your triune God then to share their burden for our world?

The story has often been told about a visitor who came to see Robert Murray McCheyne's church and pulpit after his death. The sexton took him to the pastor's office and, pointing to McCheyne's chair, said, "Sit there. Now put your elbows on the table."

The visitor obeyed. "Now put your face in your hands." Again, the visitor complied. "Now let the tears flow. That was the way Mr. McCheyne used to do."

He then led the visitor to McCheyne's pulpit, where he had blessed the people by his ministry. "Put your elbows on the pulpit," said the old sexton. The visitor complied. "Put your face in your hands." Again, the visitor obeyed.

"Now let the tears flow. That was the way Mr. McCheyne used to do." Ah, that was the secret of his ministry. He carried the burden of his people and of his nation and of God's cause upon his heart.

Let the Holy Spirit burden you.

Used by permission of the author and Duewel Literature Trust, Inc., Greenwood, Indiana (With italics added)

Mighty Prevailing Prayer

#71 The Spirit Longs to Share His Burden

by Dr. Wesley L. Duewel

(pp. 119-120) Zondervan

A popular post:

Heavenly Prayer Language

Glenn Arekion asks us, “So what exactly does it mean to pray in the spirit?

There are those who do not believe in ‘glossolalia’ – that is "speaking with other tongues," and they disdain this phenomenon.

They say that praying in the spirit is prayer that is led and guided by the Holy Spirit . . . "

Let's pray-

Young man praying

Father, we are available to be used by the Holy Spirit, and our desire is to be fruitful in accomplishing Your will for us.
We ask that You reveal Your burden that we need to be involved with in our own prayer closets.
Remind us that we can make a difference in others' lives by allowing Your Spirit to burden us for intercession for them.
Increase our joy through praying for folks who desperately need us to pray for them. We ask this in the Name of Jesus. Amen.

Today's Bible verses-

Is. 43:19 (KJV) "Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert."

Ps. 86:11, 12 (KJV) "Teach me thy way, O LORD; I will walk in thy truth: unite my heart to fear thy name. (v. 12) I will praise thee, O Lord my God, with all my heart; and I will glorify thy name for evermore."

Today's quote-

Oswald Chambers- "It is not the baptism of the Holy Ghost which changes men, but the power of the ascended Christ coming into men's lives by the Holy Ghost that changes them. we too often divorce what the New Testament never divorces. The baptism of the Holy Ghost is not an experience apart from Jesus Christ: it is the evidence of the ascended Christ." (From Devotions for MORNING and EVENING with OSWALD CHAMBERS, 1994, p. 304)