Imagine you are sitting at lunch with a friend. Your waiter has just brought your food, you take a bite and then look up across the table at your friend and say “Would you join me for lunch today?” Your friend may end up calling for help, thinking you’re suffering from a mental issue as you continue begging them to be with you.

How much of your prayer life sounds like this: “God, be with me;” “Lord, go before me;” “Spirit, please guide me and fill me;” “Jesus, give me wisdom;”? While I have prayed those well-intentioned prayers myself many times over, I believe some of those phrases stem from a misunderstanding of who we are in Christ.

Romans 6 talks about how when we are united with Jesus, our spirit is united with Him eternally. Oftentimes, we think eternal life means from here on out, but eternal means past, present, and future. So think about this: our spirit experiences not only everything that is to come with Jesus, but everything that already happened to Him—namely His death and resurrection. This brings a whole new light to Romans 6:5: “For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection.” During the celebration of Easter, we often shout, “He is risen! He is risen, indeed!” As a reminder to ourselves, what we should be shouting is “He is risen! And I am risen with Him!” Let this be a reminder of the victory we carry within ourselves wherever we go.

Now, again, I believe our well-intentioned prayers of asking God to be with us are not necessarily bad within themselves, but I think that when we express ourselves in that way over and over again, we have a tendency to forget that God is always with us. God has already gone before us. God is guiding us. God has already given us wisdom. How do we know this? Well, very simply as the old children’s song goes, "the Bible tells me so."

Second Peter 1:2-3 says, “Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence” (NASB, emphasis added). What a beautiful promise! When we receive Jesus as Lord, we automatically receive His Spirit and thereby inherit everything that we could ever need. As we walk through life abiding in Jesus, we can be sure that residing within our Spirit is every bit of guidance, wisdom, power, authority, companionship, strength, and compassion (and on and on and on) that we could ever feel the need to ask for.

 So, with this knowledge, how do we continue on in the victorious life? Here are a few practical steps to help along the journey:

 Know God’s truth and hide it in your heart.

Read Scripture and make Scripture cards that you can stick in your pocket or your purse as reminders of God’s promises for each situation you come up against. When you are tempted to doubt the Spirit of God inside of you, pull out your Scripture cards and simply pray those truths over yourself.

2. When you pray, instead of asking God to be with you or to go before you, thank Him that He is with you and He already has gone before you.

This simple change in your prayer life will make you so much more aware of the power of God working within you. Know the truth that you are filled with the Spirit and with the authority of the Almighty God, and then show the world what that looks like in the way you live.

3. Ultimately, seek the heart of God and then do whatever you want.

That’s right. It’s about time we start trusting the Holy Spirit within us to guide us. I believe the Enemy wants to keep us in a place of inaction while we believe we are “taking our time to hear a clear answer from God”. There may be times that God has clearly told you to just be still and wait, but if not, just trust the Holy Spirit within you to make decisions and just live boldly. If you make a wrong decision, the Lord in His beautiful sovereignty will show you and give you a course correction.

And now, as Ephesians 3:18-19 says, I pray that you “may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.” You are filled with the Spirit of the Living God. May you live in that victory day by day, moment by moment.

Natalie Wylie

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