You don’t have to pray through anybody else. You come in the name of the Lord Jesus, in the enablement of the indwelling Holy Spirit and you are immediately there for in the presence of the triune God, accepted in the beloved one.
When you get down to pray, are you getting through to God? Is your heart open to the blessed indwelling Holy Spirit so that He can teach you what God actually wants to do with your life?
What is the hope of His calling? It boils down to this. God wants to see something happen as a result of His having called you to Himself. He did this with something in mind.
Interesting that Paul should pray that these people should have an understanding of what God is doing. Why? Well, because your effectiveness in any given situation often depends on whether you know what you’re doing or not.
Routine praying never moved any mountains. Routine, ordinary, habitual, shallow, thoughtless praying never produced any miracles, never healed any broken hearts, never moved anybody closer to God, including the pray-er.
I think it’s a good thing to have a prayer list and to remind yourself of things concerning which you ought to speak with the Lord. We get so burdened with our own matters that sometimes it’s easy to forget others.
All the things that human nature fails at, the Holy Spirit succeeds at. He said you ought to keep on praying, keep on praying, just keep on praying till light breaks through.
Many of us, while we are devoted to Christ, do not consciously depend upon Him and upon the blessed indwelling Holy Spirit day after day and moment by moment.
The work of the Holy Spirit is to remind you. But he can’t remind you of something you never forgot. If you don’t put it in there, He can’t remind you of it. So, part of our job is to hide God’s Word in the memory bank.