00:00 Intro: The Power of Spiritual Prayer

01:43 What It Means to Pray in the Spirit

04:59 The Holy Spirit’s Role in Prayer

08:14 Biblical Examples of Praying in the Spirit

11:22 How I First Learned to Pray in the Spirit

14:08 Removing Distractions to Hear God Clearly

17:37 Unlocking the Secret to Spiritual Sensitivity

21:01 What It Feels Like to Hear His Response

24:16 The Gifts that Come from Spiritual Prayer

27:44 Final Prayer and Holy Spirit Impartation

I remember the moment clear as if it were yesterday when I realized that prayer, real prayer, could not be something I initiated for my own will. It had to begin with surrender, not the kind of surrender that we talk about casually in church, but the kind that costs you something. The kind that breaks your heart open, and lays every ambition, every plan, every piece of your identity down before the throne of God.

That’s where my journey into praying in the Spirit truly began. It wasn’t in a grand revival meeting. It wasn’t when the lights were bright or when people were clapping. It wasn’t when the choir was singing or when miracles happened.

It was in the quiet, in the aloneness, in the aching silence when all I could do was whisper, “Lord, I don’t want anything that isn’t of you.” That whisper, so small, so sincere, was the first note in a symphony of Spirit-filled prayer, but I had to come to the end of myself to hear it.

You see, we talk about wanting to be used by God, about wanting to pray powerful prayers, to move mountains, and to hear His voice; but are we willing to surrender our voice? Are we willing to be still enough, quiet enough, long enough to let Him speak, not just to us, but through us?

I thought I knew how to pray. I did. I had memorized prayers. I had long lists. I had words, beautiful flowing words, but they were my words, and no matter how passionate I was, there was still something missing. My prayers weren’t empty, but they weren’t full either. They had not yet been baptized in the fire of surrender.

The day I truly surrendered was the day I stopped praying to be heard and began praying to hear, and that changes everything. It was no longer about presenting my ideas to God or pleading with Him to bless my plans. It became about laying my entire self down before Him and saying, “I have nothing to give unless You give it. I have nothing to say unless You speak.”

There’s something in the human heart that resists that kind of surrender. It’s frightening. It feels like losing control, and in many ways, it is, but it’s in that wholly giving up that something supernatural happens. The Spirit of God steps in, not to crush you, not to erase you, but to fill you with something far greater than anything you could ever create on your own.

That’s the place where I began to pray in the Spirit. It didn’t come with fireworks. It wasn’t emotional. It was quiet, sacred, so still that I almost missed it, but in that stillness, I knew something had shifted. It was as if Heaven had leaned in to hear not my words, but my heart, and when the Holy Spirit began to move in that place of surrender, my prayers changed.

I wasn’t the one doing the work anymore. I wasn’t searching for the right phrases. I wasn’t trying to sound holy. The words came, but they came from somewhere deeper than my mind. Sometimes there were no words at all, just a weeping, just a groaning, just a knowing that He was praying through me.

The surrender had opened the door for the Spirit to take over. It is impossible to truly pray in the Spirit while holding on to control. The Spirit will not compete with your will. He waits so tenderly, so patiently. He waits for you to step aside, to give up your agenda, to open your hands; and when you do, He comes like the wind, gentle, powerful, irresistible.

People ask me, “How do I begin to hear the voice of God?” I always say that it starts with surrender. Not just once, not just in moments of crisis, but as a daily posture of the heart, because the flesh always wants to rise again. The ego wants to speak again, but the Spirit waits for the surrendered soul, the one who has learned to say, “Not my will, but yours be done.”

It wasn’t a moment of great strength that taught me to pray in the Spirit. It was a moment of weakness, and moment of letting go, and I will never forget it, because in that moment, Heaven opened not with thunder, but with peace, a peace that settled so deep within me, I knew it wasn’t mine. It was His.

That’s the beginning. That’s the doorway. Before you can pray in the Spirit, give Him everything. Hold nothing back. Let Him lead. Let Him speak. Let Him pray through you. He will. Oh, He will.

That’s how I learned to pray. There was a moment in my life when I realized I could do nothing, nothing without the Holy Spirit, not truly, not anything of lasting value. I had known about Him. Of course, I had read the Scriptures, heard the teachings, even felt His presence, but knowing about the Holy Spirit is not the same as knowing Him, walking beside Him, talking with Him, relying on Him like breath in your lungs, like the beat of your heart. That kind of knowing changes everything.

It didn’t happen all at once. It was a journey, slow and sacred, a journey from religion to relationship, and somewhere along the way, I fell in love, not with a feeling, not with a doctrine, but with a person. The Holy Spirit is a person.

That truth must get deep down into your soul before anything else can take root. He is not a mist or a power or a distant echo from Heaven. He is the third person of the Godhead, and He longs, oh, how He longs to be close to you.

When I talk about learning to pray in the Spirit, I must talk about learning to love the Spirit, because prayer without love is lifeless. It becomes routine, ritual, just more noise in the air, but when you love Him, truly love Him, prayer becomes your very life. Your longing becomes to be with Him, to talk to Him, to hear from Him, and more than anything to please Him.

I remember walking into a room one day and I felt Him there before I ever said a word; just His presence, gentle, so gentle, and yet it filled the room so completely that I could barely breathe. I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to speak. I just wanted to be still and acknowledge that He was there.

That’s how real He becomes when your heart begins to recognize Him. He doesn’t force His way in. He waits for a welcome, and when He is welcomed, He brings Heaven with Him.

People often ask, “How do you know when it’s the Holy Spirit?”

I tell them, “You know Him by the peace, by the stillness, and by the love. There’s a sweetness in His presence that cannot be imitated. You may not always feel Him in goosebumps or see Him in visions, but you will know Him in the depth of your spirit when no human voice can reach. He becomes your closest friend, your guide, your comfort, your teacher. He becomes everything.”

It wasn’t the laying on of hands that taught me to recognize His voice. It was intimacy. It was time. I learned to sense Him in the quiet, in the pauses between words, in the moments when I stopped striving and just sat with Him.

Sometimes I wouldn’t even pray with words. I’d just sit and wait, and that was prayer. That was communion. That was a relationship. You cannot rush intimacy with the Holy Spirit. You can’t manufacture it. You can’t fake it. It grows out of time spent together, and the more time I gave Him, the more I began to hear Him, not with my natural ears, but with the ears of my heart.

He would whisper, and I would know it was Him, not because of volume, but because of the weight. His words carried a weight of love, of truth, of conviction. Always gentle, never condemning. He never came to shame, only to shape.

I cannot describe to you the difference it made when I began to rely on Him for everything; not just for ministry, not just in crisis, but in every small decision.

I would ask, “Holy Spirit, what would you have me say today? Where should I go? Who needs Your touch?” and He would lead. He always leads with such tenderness, and when He leads, He never leads you wrong.

There were times I didn’t understand what He was asking of me, times when His leading didn’t make sense to my natural mind, but I obeyed because I trusted Him, and every time, every single time, I found that He knew better than I did. His ways are higher. His thoughts are clearer. He sees what we cannot see. He knows the heart of the Father, and He reveals it to those who walk with Him.

Oh, how I wish I could take every believer by the hand and say, “Make room for Him. Don’t relegate Him to a moment on Sunday or a corner of your theology. Give Him everything. Talk to Him. Wait for Him. Let Him fill your days with His presence, because once you have truly known the Holy Spirit, nothing else satisfies, no applause, no recognition, no earthly reward compares to the joy of His nearness.

This is the One Who teaches us how to pray. This is the One who speaks what the Father speaks, Who brings Heaven’s heart into our trembling hands. To pray in the Spirit is to pray with Him beside you, within you, flowing through you, not as a guest, but as your dearest companion.

I did not learn to hear His response by striving harder or praying louder. I learned to hear because I learned to love, and when you love Him, you will hear Him. There came a moment when my prayers changed, when I found myself reaching for words and discovering they were no longer enough. I had said all I knew to say. I had cried out from the depths of my heart. Yet something in me longed to go deeper, past language, past thought, into a place that words could not touch.

That is when I began to understand what it meant to pray in the Spirit, not just with emotion or devotion, but with the very breath of God flowing through me, guiding every whisper, every groan, and every silent pause.

It is a mystery, this kind of prayer. You cannot explain it with reason. You cannot teach it from a textbook. It is not something the intellect can grasp. It must be received in the Spirit. It is something that happens when the human soul reaches its limit, and the Holy Spirit begins to carry you into the heart of God Himself.

At first, I didn’t know what was happening. There would be times in prayer when I would feel so overwhelmed , not with sadness or joy necessarily, but with a kind of holy weight, a burden that came from the Spirit. I didn’t have words for it. I couldn’t articulate it, and so I would weep, or I would sit in silence, or sometimes, strange as it may sound, I would feel the need to speak in a language I did not understand, and yet I felt it more real than anything I had ever spoken with my natural tongue.

You must understand this was not something I was taught. It wasn’t something I pursued to feel more spiritual. It was simply the Holy Spirit praying through me when I had nothing left to offer.

Romans tells us that we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. I had read that scripture many times, but now I was living it. I had become a vessel. Nothing more, nothing less, and that is what He wants. He doesn’t want your polished words. He doesn’t want your eloquence. He simply wants a yielded vessel, a heart that says, “Come, Holy Spirit, pray what I cannot speak, what I do not know. Groan what I cannot express.”

When you make room for Him like that, He comes. Oh, how He comes. There were moments when the Spirit of prayer would fall so heavily that time ceased to exist. Hours would pass, and I would feel as though only minutes had gone by, and in that time, the deepest intercessions would pour from my spirit, sometimes in words, sometimes in weeping, sometimes in nothing more than a deep, unexplainable stillness, but I knew Heaven was listening. I knew something eternal was taking place.

You don’t need to understand to experience it. Your mind may try to fight it. It may question, analyze, or resist, but the Spirit doesn’t speak to your mind. He speaks to your spirit, and when He does, there is a knowing that transcends all human understanding. It is not noisy. It is not dramatic, but it is powerful. So powerful that the enemy cannot stand against it.

I have seen the power of Spirit-led prayer change atmospheres. I have watched hard hearts melt in the presence of that kind of intercession, not because of persuasive speech, but because the Spirit of God Himself was praying through human weakness, and when the Spirit prays, things shift. Chains break. Healing flows. Direction becomes clear. Heaven responds.

It’s not about emotionalism. You can cry and still not be praying in the Spirit. You can shout and still be operating in the flesh, but when the Holy Spirit prays through you, you know it because there is fruit. There is peace. There is divine alignment. Sometimes it will feel like travail, like giving birth to something in the Spirit. Other times it will feel like the gentlest whisper, but either way it is sacred. It is holy, and it is effective.

We must move beyond surface prayer. We must move beyond routine. The time is too short. The needs are too great. The Church must awaken to what it means to truly pray, not from the head, but from the spirit, and the beautiful truth is, you don’t need to be a preacher. You don’t need to have a title. All you need is a surrendered heart, and a willing spirit. That’s all, and the Holy Spirit will do the rest.

When I learned to yield completely in prayer, I discovered that He could carry me into places I never imagined, deep places, holy places, places where the burdens of others would rest on my soul until a breakthrough came, places where I didn’t just talk to God … I travailed with Him; I moved with Him; I wept with Him; and I rejoiced with Him when the answer came.

If you want to go deeper in prayer, don’t strive harder. Surrender more. Stop trying to lead the conversation. Let Him lead you. He knows the mind of the Father. He knows what needs to be said, and if you will allow Him, He will pray Heaven’s will through your earthly frame. That is praying in the Spirit.

There’s something sacred about silence, not the silence of an empty room or the hush of a quiet morning, but the kind of silence that settles deep in your soul when you’ve been with God, that stillness that isn’t empty. It’s full, full of His presence, full of His voice, and full of His peace.

That is where I want to hear Him, not in the whirlwind, not in the thunder, but in the still small voice. So many people are waiting for God to speak with drama, waiting for the heavens to open with fire and glory, expecting His voice to come like lightning, but I found His voice in the quiet, and I had to learn how to listen. It’s not easy in a world filled with noise.

Everywhere we turn, something is shouting for our attention, our fears, our desires, our responsibilities, but the Spirit waits until you’ve quieted all of that, until the only thing left is hunger, not for answers, but for Him.

I can remember times in prayer when I would plead with God, asking, begging, crying out, and still nothing, just silence, and for a long time, I thought that meant He wasn’t answering. I thought maybe I had done something wrong. Maybe He was distant. Maybe I wasn’t spiritual enough, but then one day in that silence, I felt something shift inside of me. I realized He was there, not absent, but present, closer than ever.

That silence wasn’t empty. It was Him drawing me into stillness, so that I could hear what couldn’t be said with words. The voice of the Holy Spirit is not loud. It’s not forceful. It doesn’t compete. It doesn’t interrupt. It waits. He waits for us to be still enough to recognize Him.

Oh, once you recognize that voice, once you know that whisper deep within you, you will never forget it. It will be more real to you than any sound you’ve ever heard. Sometimes it comes as a thought that doesn’t feel like your own. Sometimes it’s a deep sense of knowing, something you didn’t reason your way into. Other times it comes through Scripture where a verse lights up in your spirit and you know beyond the shadow of a doubt that He is speaking directly to you, not in general, not in theory, but to you right where you are.

But here is the truth. You cannot hear Him clearly until you stop striving to be heard yourself. You cannot truly receive until you release your need to control the conversation. Prayer isn’t just us speaking. It’s also us listening, and for many of us, that’s the part we’ve forgotten.

I had to learn to wait in His presence without an agenda, not asking for anything, not trying to impress Him with beautiful phrases, just waiting, just being, and just loving Him, and it was in that stillness that I began to hear Him speak, not always in the way I expected, but always in the way that changed me.

His voice brings peace. Even when it convicts, even when it challenges, it is never harsh, and never condemning. It may pierce, but it pierces with love. It may be correct, but it always draws you closer. That’s how you know it’s Him. He speaks with the weight of eternity and the gentleness of a friend.

There were moments in my life when I stood at a crossroads, not knowing which way to turn, afraid to make the wrong decision, and I would go into prayer expecting direction, hoping for a sign, and many times the sign never came, not in the way I expected, but I would wait, and in that waiting, His peace would come, and that peace was the answer. It was His voice saying, “This is the way. Walk ye in it.” Not through the noise, but through the stillness.

People often ask me, “How can I be sure it’s God speaking?” and I always say, “Get to know His presence,” because the more time you spend with Him, the more familiar His voice becomes. You learn to discern between your thoughts and His whisper. You learn to separate your emotions from His direction, and over time, you begin to recognize when it’s Him because He always sounds like love. He always leads with truth, and He never contradicts His Word.

You cannot force Him to speak, but you can create space for Him to be heard, and when He does speak, it may be simple. It may be just one word, but that one word can change your entire life.

I’ve had moments when a single phrase in the quiet of prayer gave me the courage to move forward, the wisdom to wait, or the strength to let go. Just one word from Him carries more power than a thousand from anyone else.

If you want to hear Him, don’t chase noise. Don’t chase signs. Chase stillness. Make room for Him, not just in your day, but in your heart. Turn down the volume of the world. Lay aside your need to be busy … and wait. He speaks in a quiet voice. He responds to the listening heart, and when you finally hear Him, you’ll know you heard the voice of Heaven.

There comes a moment in every walk with God when you must make a choice, a moment when all the theology, all the knowledge, even all the emotion is not enough to carry you through. It is in that moment that trust is born, not the kind of trust that waivers with feelings or circumstances, but the deep quiet trust that says, “I believe You even when I don’t understand You.” That is the kind of trust the Holy Spirit taught me, not because life was easy, not because I always saw immediate answers, but because He was always faithful, and always near.

There were seasons when I would pour out my heart in prayer, expecting an immediate response, and what I received instead was a quiet stillness. There were times I prayed in the Spirit and felt nothing shift, at least not right away, and in those times, doubt would try to creep in. Are You listening? Did You hear me at all?

But even when I couldn’t feel Him, I chose to trust that He was working because I had come to know His nature, and when you know His nature, you can trust His silence as much as His voice. Trust is not always built in the miraculous. Sometimes it is built into the mundane. It’s built when you show up again and again in the secret place, not because you feel something, but because you know He is worthy.

It’s built when you’ve prayed and fasted and stood your ground, and still the breakthrough hasn’t come, but you keep standing. You keep believing. You keep leaning on Him because there’s no one else who can hold you the way He does.

I learned to trust the Holy Spirit when everything else in me wanted to panic, when fear tried to take over, when confusion knocked at the door, when the natural mind said, “This doesn’t make sense.” That’s when the Spirit whispered, Trust Me,” and oh, it’s not always easy. Trust doesn’t come without a price. It means laying down your right to understand. It means surrendering your timeline. It means believing in His character even when the circumstances contradict the promise.

I remember once being in a place of complete surrender, not because I was brave, but because I was desperate. Everything in my life was shifting and had no answers. All I could do was fall on my face and say, “Holy Spirit, I don’t know what you’re doing, but I know You, and that’s enough.

That became the foundation of my faith. Not answers, no explanations, just Him. Just His presence, just His love. You see, the Holy Spirit doesn’t always lead us the way we expect. Sometimes He leads us through the wilderness before we ever see the promise. Sometimes He takes us through the valley before we reach the mountain, and in those moments, it’s easy to question, but if you will keep your eyes on Him, if you will trust Him beyond what you can see, you will find that every step, even the painful ones, is ordered with purpose.

I’ve learned that trust isn’t passive. It’s not just waiting. It’s waiting with expectancy. It’s standing with confidence. It’s declaring His goodness in the face of the unknown, and that kind of trust changes everything. It steadies your heart. It anchors your soul. It keeps you from being tossed by every wave of emotion or fear, because once you’ve truly trusted the Spirit, you know, you know that He will never fail you.

There were times when His direction didn’t make sense in the natural. Times when I had to walk away from something comfortable, from something that seemed good simply because He said, “Let it go,” and everything in me resisted, but the moment I obeyed, peace came, not because I understood it, but because I trusted Him, and in time, I would see why He led me that way. In time, the pieces would come together, but even before the explanation came, the piece was there, because I had chosen to believe that He is always good, and isn’t that what trust is … believing in His goodness when you don’t yet see the outcome? … Believing in His love when the pain feels overwhelming; believing in His voice when the world is shouting otherwise.

The Spirit doesn’t demand that you figure it all out. He simply asks that you follow, that you lean in, that you rest in the assurance that He will never mislead you, and I wish I could tell you that trust removes all discomfort, that once you trust the Spirit, everything becomes easy, but it doesn’t.

Sometimes trust will take you right into the fire, right into the lion’s den, but here’s the miracle … It’s in that fire that you’ll discover He’s standing beside you. It’s in the den that you’ll find He shuts the mouths of your enemies. It’s in the hardest places that His presence becomes the sweetest, and once you’ve walked through those places with Him, your trust becomes unshakable because you’ve seen what He can do. More than that, you’ve seen Who He is, and once you know Him like that, you can trust Him with anything.

Even when I couldn’t trace His hand, I learned to trust His heart. There is a kind of communication with the Holy Spirit that goes beyond anything you can explain, beyond doctrine, beyond experience, even beyond prayer itself. It is a life surrendered so completely that your very breath begins to echo His, a fellowship so deep that every step you take, every word you speak is guided, not just influenced, but guided by Him.

This is where I found the greatest joy, not in the moments on the platform, not even in the miracles, though I cherish every one, but in the quiet knowing that I was walking with Him minute by minute, heart-to-heart.

You see, He doesn’t just want to visit you; He wants to abide with you. He wants to live in you, not just on Sundays, not just when you feel spiritual, but every day in the ordinary, in the unnoticed, in the places where nobody else sees.

That’s the fellowship of the Spirit. That’s what I came to understand. It’s not something you turn on and off. It becomes who you are. It becomes the way you live. I can’t tell you the exact day or hour it happened. There was no dramatic flash of light. It was gradual, like a sunrise creeping across the horizon, soft and steady, until suddenly everything was bathed in the light of His presence.

I began to sense Him in everything … in the stillness before the day began, in the faces of strangers, in the way my heart would stir during worship or fall silent during prayer. I knew that I knew He was with me, and from that awareness came sensitivity, sensitivity to His nudges, His whispers, and His leading.

There would be moments when I would open my mouth to speak and feel Him gently say, “No, not now,” and I would pause. Other times, I would walk into a room and immediately know He wanted me to pray for someone, someone I had never met, someone I didn’t know anything about, but I could feel the weight of Heaven’s compassion resting on my heart.

That’s what it means to live in communion with the Spirit. It’s not that loud. It’s not forced. It’s a dance of obedience and intimacy, and I must tell you, it requires constant surrender. You can’t be led by the Spirit and still cling to your own agenda. You can’t walk with Him closely if your hands are still holding tightly to your plans. There’s a dying that must happen, a dying to self, to pride, to ambition, and to fear.

Yet, oh what you gain in return! There is no cost too great, no sacrifice too deep when compared to the treasure of living every day with Him. It’s not about doing for Him. It’s about being with Him. When you live like that, your prayers change. Your desires change. Your very life begins to reflect His love, His mercy, His purity. You don’t have to announce His presence. People start to feel it. They sense something different, not because of you, but because of the One Who lives in you and flows through you.

That’s the true power of the Spirit, not in performance, but in presence. I remember walking through a crowd once and a woman grabbed my hand. She said nothing, but I looked in her eyes and knew that she had felt Him, not me, not emotion, but the Holy Spirit, and all I had done was stay in step with Him.

That’s the invitation to be a vessel He can move through, a dwelling place He’s at home in, and when that happens, you become an extension of His heart on the earth. There’s no formula for it. There’s no shortcut. You cannot fake this kind of relationship. It only comes from time spent with Him, from hearts laid bare in His presence, from a daily choosing to say, “Not my will but Yours,” and slowly, day by day, He shapes you, molds you, breathes through you until His thoughts become your thoughts, His burdens become your burdens, His love becomes your love, not because you tried harder, but because you yielded more, and when you live like that, there is no greater fulfillment.

No applause of men, no achievement, no earthly success can compare to the joy of knowing, truly knowing that you are in step with the Spirit of the living God. It gives you courage when you would otherwise shrink back. It gives you peace amid chaos. It gives you the boldness to speak truth even when it costs you. It anchors you in purpose. It marks you with eternity.

I’ve seen miracles. I’ve seen lives transformed. … But the greatest miracle of all is this: that God by His Spirit would choose to dwell in us, to walk with us, to call us His own, and all He asks is that we make room, that we welcome Him not just into our churches, but into our hearts, into our homes, into the most hidden corners of our lives, that we don’t just visit Him, but live with Him.

If you will do that, if you will live in constant communion with the Holy Spirit, you will never walk alone.

"Tongues 20 min./day", K Kuhlman

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