I thank God that when Jesus Christ ascended into Heaven that he did not leave without first giving us the promise of the Holy Spirit. I need the Holy Spirit to be my prayer partner. There are several ways the Holy Spirit helps me in my prayer life. The first thing He does is help me see my needs. When we pray to God, we should be asking Him for things. It is a simple enough statement, but so many times we get wrapped up in life, and neglect to ask things of our Heavenly Father. The Bible says we don’t have what we need because we haven’t asked God for it. The Holy Spirit helps me in this aspect by showing me what I need. Again, God is so faithful to supply every need, he promises over and over in the Bible, so if we don’t know what we need, we only have to ask God to show us and He will through the Holy Spirit.

Once the Holy Spirit has helped us to learn what we need from God, he helps us get what we need. I did not say get what we want, now if we have the mind of God, what we want should be what we need, because God wants us to have what we need. So now I have my directory of needs, and I go in prayer to God. What is happening is that the Holy Spirit is going with me to God so I can make my needs know to Him. It is very similar to a child going with his parent to a restaurant. When a child gets to a certain age he may want to order for himself, so the waiter comes to take his order. Now the child knows what he wants, he has even discussed it with his parent before entering the restaurant, but when the waiter comes, the child orders things that were not discussed, things that, while not always harmful, are not what the parent had in mind for the child. The parent will help the child by telling the waiter exactly what the child wanted, according to the discussion they had earlier. So the Holy Spirit goes with us when we go to God, and when we ask for something that is not good for us, or is not in the will of God for us, the Holy Spirit will intercede and tell God, that’s not really what we need. He will then explain to God the things we did need and ask God to provide them for us. That is why we have so called unanswered prayers, because the Holy Spirit acted on our behalf to let God know that even though we prayed for a certain thing, it was not God’s will for our life.

There is another aspect the Holy Spirit helps us with. When we forget to ask things He intercedes for us by asking God for it on our behalf. Using the same example as before we see a different situation: Now the child knows what he wants, but halfway through he forgets to order his main course. Again the parent will help the child by telling the waiter exactly what the child wanted. So the Holy Spirit goes with us when we go to God, and when we forget to ask for something we need, the Holy Spirit tells God exactly what we needed. That’s why certain things happen and we think how wonderful God is for bringing that into my life, it is just what I needed. Well the truth of the matter is that God brought that into your life because the Holy Spirit asked for it on your behalf. That is the reason it is so important to be submitted to the Holy Spirit. He knows what we need, and He knows who to get it from, and He knows how to get it. If we will all spend more time submitting to the Holy Spirit, and less time doing our own will we will truly find what power can be bestowed upon us by God through the Holy Spirit.