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Bible Question:
What does it mean to pray in the Spirit? I know that God is
spirit and that Christ is the Truth.
Bible Answer:
The expression to "pray in the Spirit" or "praying
in the Spirit" occurs in the Bible in only two places.
Here they are:
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With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the
Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with
all perseverance and petition for all the saints, (NASB)
Eph. 6:18
But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your
most holy faith; praying in the Holy Spirit . . . (NASB)
Jude 20
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The Greek wording is the same in both passages. So what does
it mean?
General Meaning.
In scripture the expression "in the Spirit" occurs
twenty times. A few of the passages are as follows: Matt. 22:43;
Luke 2:27; and Rev. 1:10. In the first passage, King David
was in the Spirit when he wrote scripture. That is the Holy
Spirit controlled what he wrote. In the second passage we are
told that Jesus came to the temple in the Holy Spirit, and
in the last one, the Apostle John received a vision when he
was in the Spirit. In each passage the person was controlled
and influenced by the Spirit to do something.
In The Spirit.
Yet, scripture also tells us that every person who is a Christian
is in the Spirit. That is, the Holy Spirit is either in us
or He is not in us. That is God's message in the following
verse.
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However, you are not in the flesh but
in the Spirit,
if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone
does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong
to Him. . . . (NASB) Romans 8:9
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But every Christian also needs to be in the Spirit in another
sense. He or she needs to be controlled by the Spirit. This
is something that a Christian needs to ask for. It is called "walking
in the Spirit" or "to be filled with the Spirit."
A person who is filled with the Holy Spirit has a pattern of
victory over sin and joy in life. The evidences that a Christian
is filled with the Holy Spirit are given in the chart below.
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