I once heard a story about a preacher who, while on a forty-day fast, would read Madame Guyon, a 17th-century French Catholic mystic from 10 am to noon, Pentecostal healing evangelist John G. Lake from 1 pm to 4 pm, and then return to Madame Guyon in the evening. On Sundays, he would preach back and forth between revival and supernatural healing on some Sundays and the delights of loving God in contemplative prayer on others. After feeling a bit confused about his identity — was he a charismatic or a contemplative, a signs and wonders guy or a silent prayer guy? (and probably frustrating his church with the conflicting visions), he finally got to a point of desperation. “God,” he asked. “Who am I?” He felt the Holy Spirit whisper tenderly in response, “Maybe you’re both!”

When I heard this story, something deep within me resonated — maybe I can be both! Many of my formative years were spent in a charismatic tradition — praying for revival, praying for and sometimes seeing divine healing, practicing the gifts of the Spirit, and experiencing the joy of a passionate spirituality. Of course, like any tradition, this can have its shadow side! So much pressure on outward experience can, if we’re not careful, lead to a deficiency in the inner life.

After ten years in this charismatic community, I began to experience panic attacks. I’ve shared more of this story elsewhere, but needless to say, I had to quickly turn to some of the practices of the contemplative tradition — silence, stillness, and Sabbath — just to survive. I don’t want to overstate it, but learning to sit in silence and to truly honor Sabbath, and to cease from my work for a full 24 hours a week saved my soul and my faith.

However, after some time, I began to long again for some of the best of what I experienced in my charismatic community — a passionate spirituality, a love for God that touches the emotions, joy-filled worship, and a committed belief in the nearness of God. I began to reclaim some charismatic practices — praying in tongues, worship that encompasses the body and the emotions, and praying in a way that expects that God will answer — all the while maintaining a foundation of daily silence and stillness and weekly Sabbath, and I personally, through this Spirit-led convergence, have found my faith flourishing for the last couple of years.

It feels like a spirituality that I was made for, where my soul comes alive and my love for God abounds. Just one or the other and I feel imbalanced and deficient! And, as I think about the Jesus I know and love, who in his scars holds seeming dualities of heaven and earth, God and man, together, I can’t help but wonder if learning to embrace a both/and rather than an either/or is part of what it means to follow this crucified and resurrected God-man. (Side reflection: What polarizations have you felt invited to stand courageously in the middle of as you seek to follow Jesus?)

So, with an introduction that’s probably too long and a devotional in and of itself, I turn to a quick reflection on Rees Howells — a Welsh Pentecostal coal miner from the early 1900s. He was deeply impacted by the famous Welsh revival and his story is one deeply marked by responding to God’s invitations to become an intercessor. To make a long story short, the Holy Spirit invites Rees to pray for increasing prayer assignments, from small healings to, by the end of his life, global events.

Listen to Rees’s biographer explain how the Holy Spirit taught Rees how to pray:

The first (of two) thing that Rees Howells has taught me about prayer, and particularly intercessory prayer, is this:

Prayer is Partnership.

God set up the world in such as way that He invites us to co-reign with Him through asking. From putting Adam in the garden and inviting him to name the animals in conversation with God, to Jesus teaching us to pray for God’s will to be done (why doesn’t He just do His will? Why does He ask that we ask Him if not to do it in relationship with Him?), to the day when we will “be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years” (Revelation 20:8), the whole story is one of authority and partnership with God through relational conversation.

God waits to be asked because He wants to do it with us!
 

How different is this from the way that many of us practice intercession? For many of us, if we practice intercession at all, we have our prayer list of things that we want and then we ask God about them. Listen to how 19th-century American preacher Charles Finney describes many people’s (mine often included!) life of intercession:

Now, don’t get me wrong, we should bring anything and everything to the Father in the context of our relationship with Him. But when it comes specifically to the practice of intercession, praying for “Your kingdom come, Your will be done,” there is a way to pray that both Finney and Rees and many of the Pentecostal greats teach us about. It’s what James calls “effective” prayer (5:16), what Jesus refers to when he promises that all of our prayers will be answered (ex. John 15:17), what Finney describes as “prayer which attains the blessing that it seeks” (p. 50), and what Rees Howells experiences over and over with ever-increasing scale when God answers every prayer that Rees prays. (Side reflection: What would you pray for if you had a guarantee that God would answer it?)


And this way of praying is, quite simply, praying in partnership with God.

What is God inviting us to pray for? How might the idea of prayer as partnership, or according to God’s will, reframe our understanding and practice of intercession?

I offer this from the Apostle Paul:



Paul encourages us that we don’t know how to pray, but that the Holy Spirit helps us through groans. He helps us through inner aches, longings, or sighs that find their origin deeper than our own hearts and emotions (though often manifesting in our emotions — I don’t think it’s a clear either/or and that’s often how many of us know that God is speaking).

So, this morning, I’d love to ask: is there a groan in your heart, a burden you’re carrying, that you sense could be from the Holy Spirit? I’d love to invite us to a simple practice of intercession this morning.

I’d love to invite us to:

1. Spend some time taking some deep breaths and thanking God for His presence. Perhaps on your breath in, pray “Come,” and on your breath out, pray “Holy Spirit.”

2. Invite the Holy Spirit to give you his heart. Ask him what is on his heart and mind.
Wait and see if any particular burden, name, or face drops into your heart. This could come through a quick thought, or it could come through a deep emotion, gut feeling, or even tears.

3. Believe in faith that this is a “groan!” Then, either hold the burden with God silently as you pray and breathe in and out or pray verbally as the Holy Spirit leads you to pray.

Jesus, give us your heart! Break our hearts for what breaks yours! Invite us into the glorious privilege of knowing Your heart and partnering with you in intercession!

P.S. I can’t thank you enough for your support in these weekly prayer devotionals. Every time you write me back it is deeply encouraging and helps me to know that I’m praying with a community. Each of these emails comes out of deep things that God is doing in me, and it is a joy to share it with the world. In particular, if the ideas of being both “contemplative” and “charismatic” resonate with you, I would love to hear from you.

P.S.S. I’m gearing up for a four-part Advent series starting right after Thanksgiving that I’m tentatively calling “How Advent Helps Us to See Our Unfulfilled Longings as Invitations to Prayer: Insights on Waiting for God from Psalm 42 and St John of the Cross.” I’m excited to pray through Psalm 42 and the mystics in light of waiting for the advent, or “arrival,” of Jesus, and I think it will encourage anyone who has ever forged a deeper relationship with God in the crucible of inchoate desire. I would love to have anyone who would benefit from this join us, so please always feel free to share my subscription link (ryanpmurphy.beehiiv.com) with friends. Thank you all!