When I was a younger Christian, 1 Thessalonians 5:17 which says, “Pray without ceasing” used to baffle me until the Lord explained it to me.

I used to wonder how it was possible to pray without ceasing. What would I be saying? The Lord then let me know that the only way I could pray without ceasing was to do so in the Spirit. This implies that God expects every believer to pray in the Spirit all day.

Believe me honestly, you don’t know all you truly need. Even if you argue that you know all that you need at this moment, do you know what will happen in the next two hours? If you don’t know what will happen, then how will you pray about it? That is why you have the Holy Spirit to pray those prayers through you. You ask for what you want with your words; the Holy Spirit will help you ask for what you ought to have when you pray in tongues. Without the Holy Spirit, you cannot pray correctly. Romans 8:26 affirms this:

Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

Ephesians 5:18 says further:

And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.

Alcoholics will tell you that they are always craving more and more alcohol. That is how you should become addicted to praying in the Spirit. The more you pray in the Spirit, the more filled you would be. You would realise that it is difficult to stop praying sometimes. As you pray, you get more and more engulfed in the Spirit and before you know it, everything you do would be influenced by Him. Galatians 5:17 says that the flesh and the Spirit are always at war. The more you pray in the Spirit, the more energized your spirit man would be to win that war against the flesh, so it becomes easy to put it under (1 Corinthians 9:27). You would begin to long for things of the Spirit rather than those of the flesh.
Written by Pastor E.A. Adeboye.