An Influx of God's Spirit

In our prayer small group this week, we heard Richard Rohr say that God answers every prayer with the gift of the Holy Spirit. This does not necessarily mean that our prayers for specific petitions will be answered immediately in the way that we ask. He says “the evidence is not that God is a problem solver, that God rushes in to do whatever we ask God to do.” “With an influx of Spirit, God answers the prayer.”

In Hebrew and Greek, the words for breath and Spirit are the same. In Hebrew, it is ruah; in Greek, pneuma. With an influx of God’s breath, God’s Spirit, God answers our prayers. Just as we do not see the wind, but only what it touches, we do not see the answer. It is in the waiting that we will find the answer. In sitting with the prayer, the question, we will hear the answer. It might be five minutes, five weeks, five months, or…

As we lifted the concerns of hearts, we then sat in silence. I held my prayers in the cupped palms of my hands, just sitting in the silence, sensing the flow of my breath. I became aware that God’s breath was flowing in me and through me, through every wave and in every particle of my being. For the moment, that is answer enough.

May my every breath become a prayer that is in concert with God’s Spirit.

Luke 11:13

“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”