What does it mean to “pray in the Spirit”? For decades, no-one asked me this question. But lately, I’ve been asked it a number of times. Praying in the Spirit is a privilege God wants us to understand.

It’s a biblical experience. “Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.” Ephesians 6:18. This heavenly direction is the climax of Paul’s instruction about putting on the full armour of God. The apostle Jude confirms the instruction: “You, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit.” Jude 20.

Praying in the Spirit is clearly important. It should be done on all occasions. It caps our ability to withstand evil. And it’s crucial if we want to be established in faith.

I have come to believe that praying in the Spirit is at the core of Christian experience. A book could be written on the subject, and still only the surface would be scratched. Here, we can offer only a few lines of direction for your personal study.

First, to pray in the Spirit means to pray in Christ. “In Christ” is the chief way in which the apostle Paul describes the Christian walk. There are more than 240 references in the New Testament to the experience of being in Christ. This subject is at the centre of special revelations Paul received in the Arabian desert—“inexpressible things, things that a man is not permitted to tell”. To Paul was given the “much more” that Jesus realised his disciples could not bear at the time —but which the Spirit would soon reveal. John 16:12, 13.

When I pray consciously in Christ, the Spirit interprets to me the actual mind of God. Through God’s own Spirit, my mind is caught up into God’s mind. God’s will and God’s thoughts progressively become my will and my thoughts. This is the miracle of praying in the Spirit. It is not a cause for pride, but a cause for deep humility.

The experience would be preposterous if it were not described and promised in scripture. It’s a glorious dynamic, a mystery largely inexpressible in human language—as Paul confessed. To understand more fully, study these chapters: Galatians 1, 1 Corinthians 2, 2 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 3, and Colossians 1.

Second, to pray in the Spirit is to pray with the Spirit’s specific direction and power. “The Spirit helps in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to God’s will.” Romans 8:26, 27.

It is astonishing that scripture names not only Christ, but also his Spirit as our intercessor. It is not that we have two intercessors, but rather that what Christ accomplished by his blood on the Cross, he now works out in our experience through his Spirit. The Cross is the historical reality; the Spirit is the dynamic application.

Christ longs to take the benefits of his sacrifice on the Cross and apply them deeply in your everyday life. He does this by the intercession of his Spirit. His Spirit is his personal presence that works within you when you pray, searching your human mind and heart and connecting you with the divine mind and heart.

The question is, are you inviting Christ to work deep within you when you pray? Are you asking Christ to search out the deep things of your life and interpret to you the deep things of his life? When your answer is Yes, you are consciously praying in Christ and in his Spirit.

Third, to pray in the Spirit means to make seeking God the primary discipline of your life—without compromise. How few there appear to be who do this, and how I wish I had more effectively put this into practice in my own life to this point.

In Ephesians 3, Paul describes how he kneels before the Father, pleading that church members will have the power of God’s Spirit in their innermost being. He longs for Christians to quit being surface level, and to become deep-level. The apostle wants us to be thoroughly in Christ, rooted and established in his love. He wants us to probe the full dimensions of God’s mercy, and in so doing get rid of our spiritual vacuum and become “filled to the measure of all the fulness of God”.

Paul declares that when we are thoroughly in Christ, God will do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power at work within us.

Note the expressions. “Immeasurably more,” “askimagine,” and “his power at work within us”. In practical terms, these translate into praying in the Spirit—with all kinds of prayers and requests, every day and on all occasions. May this be your experience beginning today, and for the rest of your life.

This article first appeared in modified form in Mid-America Outlook, December 2007. Copyright © 2009 by Ed Gallagher (South Pacific edition). / Scripture quotations taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission.