Christ’s Spirit Prays In Our Hearts: Illustrated by S.D. Harden
The Holy Spirit Prays For Us
The other night as I was sketching a picture of Jesus praying, I thought of the verse in Romans 8:26 where St. Paul writes that the Holy Spirit prays for each believer, deep within the sacred temple of their being, at the altar of their heart, interceding for their needs according to the will of God.
“In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.” Romans 8:26
As I sketched my symbol for the Spirit of Christ praying to the Father, I wanted to give my Heavenly Intercessor a peaceful expression but also evoke how powerfully focused He is as He prays steadfastly for the individual needs of the one He indwells.
According to scripture the Holy Spirit abides within each child of God. He loves and cares for each believer as if he or she is God’s only child. The Holy Spirit makes each soul He indwells His priority. He is always praying through them to the Father, interceding on their behalf. The child of God is His beloved, precious charge. His love for each is measureless. Here is what St. Paul wrote about the love of Christ for His children:
Ephesians 3:17-18 “And I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts, living within you as you trust in him. May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love; and may you be able to feel and understand, as all God’s children should, how long, how wide, how deep, and how high his love really is; and to experience this love for yourselves, though it is so great that you will never see the end of it or fully know or understand it. And so at last you will be filled up with God himself.”
God’s Spirit will not ever abandon nor forsake His little one. Jesus said, the Holy Spirit would be with us forever.
(John 14:16-17 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth.)
What an amazing promise! What an incredible comfort to know that we who belong to Christ are in-dwelt by His very Spirit who is always interceding for our every need according to God’s will.
He will never leave or forsake us. He will always love each one of us with measureless love, no matter what. That means Nothing you do will ever make God stop loving you. Please believe what His word promises. For God cannot lie.
Hebrews 6:18 “God has given us both his promise and his oath, two things we can completely count on, for it is impossible for God to tell a lie.”
Nothing can separate us from Christ’s love!
Romans 8:38-39 “And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Heavenly Father, comfort us today with the assurance that You will always love us and never leave or forsake us demonstrated through the gift of Your precious Holy Spirit that abides within us. In Jesus name. Thank You. Amen.
A few weeks ago I posted a blog and music video based on Psalm 51:10, the Psalm King David wrote after he’d committed adultery with Bathsheba, gotten her pregnant, and then murdered her husband to cover up his sin.
God sent Nathan the prophet to confront the king and David repented, praying, “Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a loyal spirit within me. Do not banish me from your presence, and don’t take your Holy Spirit from me.” ~ (Psalm 51:10-11)
For those readers who did not have an opportunity to read my original post about this beautiful psalm and how David repented of his sin, I encourage you to take a moment to do so.
I took down my music video a few days after posting it with the promise that I would repost it again for you soon.
I created my original music video for my prayer song “Create in Me a Clean Heart” as a worship aid for a special prayer night at our church. The Lord gave me the song the day of the prayer service!
Our Lord is very generous with His gifts! I had not asked Him for the song; in fact the worship leader and I were planning to do a different music video I had already created. But the Holy Spirit had a different plan so I got busy preparing the song and video the Lord gave me. I had only 3 hours in which to record the song and create the video that day.
I am not a trained videographer. All my training is in art and writing. I never sought to be a musician, a singer, or to create videos. One day a few years ago, I went to the altar at church to pray about some burden I had. The Lord spoke to my heart and asked me if I would sing for Him. “My Suzy, will you sing for Me?”
This request had nothing to do with my issue I was praying about. And besides that, to sing for anyone was the LAST thing I wanted to do, having a terrible phobia of public performance of any sort.
I didn’t want to be disrespectful of the Almighty, but I couldn’t help but think He HAD to be joking. I like to draw cute little dressed up animals. If I were to draw myself as an animal I would be a shy little, timid mole hiding behind her little art desk painting and writing and drawing. Never singing.
“Lord,” I said, to Him, “not to be disrespectful, but I don’t think You are remembering who I am…I can’t sing, I’m an artist.”
He only said, “My Suzy, won’t you sing for Me?”
I peeped around as I knelt at the altar wondering if anyone could see how exasperated I was.
“Lord,” I said, “Have You forgotten how bad a singer I am…so bad that when I sang “Jesus Loves Me” to My child when he was 6 years old he HOWLED?!”
I felt like crying because I had once sung praises to The Lord in my quiet times up until that had happened. Many years had passed and I no longer sang to Jesus because of that incident with my little boy. The enemy used it to make me think I had a terrible voice and I kept silent after that.
When Christian grew up he said, “Mama, I only howled because the dog across the street was howling with the wind that night. I was howling with him. I loved your singing.”
But when I was at the altar that day I didn’t know that.
I only knew that I believed I had a terrible voice and that there was no way I wanted to sing for God because I was so ashamed of my voice ever since that day. “My Suzy, will you sing for Me?” Jesus asked me for the third time.
I knew it was God’s voice. And I could not say no if I loved Him.
Then He said, “My Suzy, will you trust Me?”
I knew I had to lay down something. I had to lay down my fear, my pride, and give God my will and allow Him to make me what He wanted me to be.
Singing was the last thing I wanted to do because I never believed I could be good enough.
Though I never trained to be a musician, nor did I ever sing until I became a Christian and then only in my quiet times, yet God has blessed me with many beautiful songs inspired by His word. Whether piano solos or prayer songs, The Lord continues, ever since that day at the altar when I reluctantly said yes, (though I was terrified) He has given me over 350 pieces of music for His glory. I have recorded them all.
My new video includes my worship painting based on Luke 7 that I’ve been working on for the last several months. It was not finished yet when I made the first video. That video made heavy use of a lot of images pulled from the Internet that may have been copyrighted and I did not have time to get permission or check the copyright status of all those images I used.
My new video includes more original content and makes use of some classical works of several great artists from the past and present whose works are in the public domain.
I’ve always believed that God can anoint a rusty old nail if He chooses to use it for His glory. So it does not matter what I have to give Him, as long as I give it by faith in humble obedience to His will, He can bless it and use it to bless others.
My prayer is that this music video will bless and inspire you, and draw you closer to the God who died on the cross for each of us in order to create in us a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within us.
Heavenly Father, Help us know that you do not desire perfection from us in what we give You, just trust & obedience. You will supply all the rest. Create in us clean hearts that serve You & worship You in sincerity & truth. Thank You Lord. In Jesus name. Amen
“Ezekiel’s First Vision” Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794-1872)
My Ezekiel Prayer
Ezekiel was one of the captives of Judah who had been taken to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar. His name means “God Strengthens.”
He was the son of a priest and was himself a priest. But since he was exiled from his homeland, he was jobless, for in Babylon he had no temple to take care of.
Yet God still had a job for Ezekiel to do. Though it was not what he’d trained all his life to do for the Lord, nevertheless, it was what God had created him to do. He called Ezekiel to be His prophet to speak to a nation that had broken faith with Him. The Lord wanted to use Ezekiel to vindicate the “holiness of His great name.”
When Ezekiel was around thirty years old, as he sat with the other captives by the Kebar river, he wrote, “The heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.” (Ezekiel 1:1)
Nuremberg (1702) “Ezekiel’s Vision” Wikipedia Commons
If you are a highly visual person like me and read Ezekiel’s visions you may long for an illustrated bible because they are quite surreal. But even if we have a literal picture of these visions right before us we soon realize that just like a website without the correct password is impossible to enter, so is a vision without the right interpretation.
God has a very good reason for everything He does. He chooses to speak to us in certain ways based on what He is going to do in our lives and how He wants to use us for the work He is calling us to carry out for Him. He chose to speak to Ezekiel in visions. In fact, they play a very prominent role throughout his book.
Typically, visions from God are not meant to be taken literally. They are visual metaphors illustrating spiritual realities. They are a kind of picture language from God sent to tell us something very important or to reflect obliquely future glories that await us to encourage our faith.
When Paul, who had been taken in a vision up into what he called “the third heaven” wrote about spiritual things He said, ”For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12)
If we try to understand Ezekiel’s vision literally we may as well knock our heads together. Jesus said to those who would try to understand spiritual things in a literal way, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.” (John 6:63)
God gave Ezekiel this amazing inaugural vision to prepare him for a very difficult calling. When we read the succeeding chapters of his book we understand just how challenging his work for God would be.
Ezekiel was asked to shut himself inside his house, isolate himself from his community, he would be bound with cords; was afflicted by God so that he could not speak temporarily, he had to lie on one side for 390 days and then the other for 40 more days and cook his food over a dung pile.
How many of us would think it was God’s voice we were hearing if the Lord asked us to cook our food over a pile of feces every day for 390 days? Uh huh..I am confessing right now that I would probably rebuke “that voice“ in Jesus’ name. Alas. I just wonder sometimes how many times a day the Lord gets rebuked in His own name because we just don’t recognize His voice as we should. And I wonder how often He gets exasperated with His own sheep who are supposed to know their Good Shepherd’s voice!
You might think to yourself, “Well, that was in the bible days, God would never ask us to do anything like that in this day and age!”
Don’t ever think that God is any different now than He was in Ezekiel’s day because His word says, “For I am the Lord, I do not change…” (Malachi 3:6)
And Hebrews 13:8 says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”
It often occurs to me after studying the bible that God does not usually ask His servants to do what is convenient, comfortable, or easy. In fact, Jesus said we must be willing to take up our cross and follow Him.
I believe God spoke to Ezekiel in visions, (symbolic language) because He was going to make Ezekiel’s life a living metaphor to communicate His Truth to His people. Everything God asked Ezekiel to do was like a living illustration to His people, a picture of His message to go along with the words the prophet was asked to communicate.
I have studied and prayed over Ezekiel’s vision and made it into a prayer in the hopes that the Lord will use it somehow to transform my life the way He did Ezekiel’s into a person who could fearlessly communicate His truths to our world without complaining about the cost. (And when I do fuss about the cross the Lord has asked me to bear, I pray He will remind me that at least He has never asked me to cook my food over a dung pile and to help me to be thankful!)
Artist: Jim Padgett: “Ezekiel’s Vision”
My Ezekiel Prayer
(Inspired by Ezekiel’s Vision & Matthew Henry’s Interpretation)
Heavenly Father, I pray for divine wisdom and understanding,
To excel in strength and boldness like that of a lion, even as the angels who serve You and who are never afraid;
I ask that You help me to excel in diligence and patience like an ox, and to be unwearied in the discharge of the work You give me to do for You, even as those angels are who serve In Your holy court.
I ask for quick and piercing insight, like that of an eagle’s sight, to soar high even as the angels who serve You soar, spiritually close to You, quick to hear Your voice in my heart, quick to respond obediently to do all You ask of me without complaining; and always thankful, always humble.
I ask for willing hands and feet to do Your will, to walk Your paths wherever You call me to go, whatever You ask me to do.
Help me go straight forward like Your angels who serve in Your holy courts, with one heart, one soul, one mind, one purpose: to love You with ALL MY HEART, ALL MY SOUL, ALL MY MIND, ALL MY BEING.
Lord, like Your angels, let me turn not back, nor aside from serving You. Help me keep my eyes focused firmly on You. Let me not turn from my work to trifle with what is not Your will for me.
Help me go wherever Your Holy Spirit would have me go, to accomplish whatever You have chosen for me to do.
Oh dearest Heavenly Father, Lord Jesus, Holy Spirit, though I am no angel, please fill my heart with a burning zeal to serve You as those angels at Your court must have. Fill my heart with a burning love, a holy passion that grows only more intense for You like a flame that is eternal and grows deeper and higher and hotter day by day.
Let my love for You be like the eternal flame in the lamps of the temple of old Jerusalem; may it never wane, may it never die, but grow stronger and brighter each moment day by day by the power of Your Holy Spirit, in Jesus name, thank You, I love You, Lord,
Psalm 23 is known as The Shepherd Psalm. It’s one of my favorite Psalms in the Bible.
Jesus Christ is our Good Shepherd. He said, “My sheep respond to my voice, and I know who they are. They follow me, and I give them eternal life. They will never be lost, and no one will tear them away from me.” ~ John 10:27,28
Sometimes our Good Shepherd may ask us to go down a path we may be afraid to follow. Yet God’s word assures us that Christ always leads us in paths of righteousness. (Psalm 23:3).
The dictionary defines the word “righteousness” as “justice, decency, honesty, blamelessness, virtue, and morality.”
The NIV bible translates Psalm 23:3: “He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.”
The way I understand it, God won’t ever guide us to do something that is contrary to His word.
In my painting above, I have illustrated the idea of our Good Shepherd inviting His child to go with Him on a journey. He looks gently into her eyes and she gazes back at Him as He holds her hand suggesting that they are good friends.
Detail: “The Good Shepherd”
Jesus said, “You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.” (John 15:14) Jesus loves His child deeply. Because He is the Good Shepherd as well as her Creator, He knows what is best for her. He encourages her to do what He knows is the right path for her.
Yet the child hesitates to go with Her Master. There is that tiny sense that she does not fully trust the Good Shepherd.
She stands just behind him in the painting. Her feet seem paralyzed and rooted into the sand like some sort of petrified tree as her Shepherd lovingly assures her that He will always be with her throughout the journey and that His rod and staff will comfort her.
Detail: “The Good Shepherd”
Though she has given one of her hands to her Lord in partial submission to His will, she holds the other behind her back, symbolizing her reluctance to step out in faith with Him on their journey and her inner fears. Yet He lovingly smiles at her. He knows every weakness, every fear. He neither judges, nor condemns her.
How often do we, when presented with new unsettling challenges to our faith, or a new dark journey in life, question the wisdom of God? How often do we hold back from fully trusting our Lord when He asks us to follow Him down a new unfamiliar path?
Like the little child in the painting, we have given Jesus one of our hands, but we reluctantly hold the other behind our back and stand with our feet rooted in the ground when He asks us to please trust Him though we may not understand the way He is asking us to follow Him.
Jesus once told His disciples on the cusp of His crucifixion:“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear.” ~John 16:12
He then said that the Holy Spirit would come to them and lead them into all truth.
Our Lord asks us to walk by faith, to trust Him and to listen for His voice every day, one day at a time, with our hands in the hands of our Good Shepherd.
Just as the little child in this painting is walking with her Shepherd, so we must walk. And though like her we are often afraid, despite our fears, like her we must keep our hand in our Shepherd’s hand and our eyes on Him, abiding in Him in our hearts daily if we are to hear His voice.
“But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” ~John 16:13
*Lord Jesus please help me give You both my hands in total surrender when You ask me to journey with You down the road You have prepared for me before the foundation of this world. Help me not doubt but believe all of your promises to me and live by faith. In Thy holy name I ask. Amen.
A copy of this painting is reproduced on my greeting card called, “The Good Shepherd.”
Peaceangel Song 
You must be logged in to post a comment.