Oh, how often we stumble along in life unsatisfied and uncertain because we are trying to perfect in the flesh that which we began in the spirit! How often our spiritual lives seem stale and powerless because instead of getting in the spirit and connecting with the Holy Ghost, we simply gravitate toward the things we’ve done in the past.
We pray the same prayers the same way. We make the same confessions. We keep on singing the same old song.
“But sister Lynne,” you might say, “don’t we need to study the same scriptures again and again? Don’t we need to keep making the same good confessions of faith?”
Yes, but we need to do it in fellowship with the Holy Spirit! We need to follow Him continually and let Him breathe fresh life into everything we do.
One person who truly understood that was my dear father in the faith, brother Kenneth E. Hagin. I remember once many years ago, I heard him talk about how as a 16-year-old boy, he believed the Word and made confessions of faith over a period of months and God raised him up from his deathbed. Afterward, I overheard several people ask him things like, “How many times did you make those confessions?” It seemed they wanted some standard prescription or formula they could follow to guarantee their results.
Brother Hagin didn’t give them one, of course, because he didn’t have one. He didn’t live by formulas, he lived by the leading of the Holy Spirit. When he made a confession of faith, he wasn’t just parroting scriptures. He was saying the specific words from the Bible that the Holy Spirit had quickened and spoken to him.
He was repeating with his mouth what he’d heard in his heart—and that makes all the difference.
Scripture Reading: 2 Corinthians 13:14
On the chilly March night in 1972 when Lynne Hammond took her first step into a life of Spirit-led prayer, she had no idea what was about to happen. All she knew was the hunger in her heart for God wouldn’t let her sleep. In the few short months she’d been born again, her desire to fellowship with Him had grown so strong she could hardly contain it. “Help me, God!” she cried. “I want to know you. I want to be able to talk to you. Please, teach me to pray!”
Suddenly, a heavenly presence flooded the room. Lynne sensed waves of spiritual fire sweeping over her and a beautiful language began to flow like a river from within her. Although she’d never heard of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, she knew instantly, without a doubt—this was God!
What began that night soon blossomed into a life of prayer that ultimately became a ministry of prayer when, in 1980, Lynne and her husband, Mac, founded Living Word Christian Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Under Lynne’s leadership, the prayer ministry at Living Word has become an internationally recognized model for developing effective pray-ers in the local church.
A teacher and an author, Lynne publishes a newsletter called Prayer Notes, has written numerous books, and currently serves as the national prayer director for Daughters for Zion. Her passion for inspiring and leading others into the life of Spirit-led prayer continues to take her around the world to minister to believers whose heart cry, like hers, is “Lord, teach me to pray!”