Praying Always (Part 2): D.P. Williams on Communion with God in the Life of Prayer


Christians are called to a life of prayer. And, D.P. Williams explains, that life of prayer is a life of ‘deeper communion with God.’ Yet, we cannot climb up to communion with God, but can only be welcomed in by God’s grace to us in Jesus and by His Spirit. So, the life of prayer is not our accomplishment, but God’s gift. 

We know that this life of prayer is God’s call to us as Christians. And we know that He alone can give this gift. Therefore, we should pray for prayer! We should cry out ‘for the Holy Spirit to come into your spirit to live the life of prayer and Divine fellowship.’ (Yet, in order to cry to the Lord for this, we must first come to the realisation that it isn’t something we can achieve for ourselves, and so ‘be absolutely broken’.) 

Public prayer in the prayer meeting relies upon the reality of this hidden life of prayer. It’s not wordiness or length or exuberance that makes public prayer real. If those are the things were looking to, then ‘that is not real prayer at all; if we do that, we are only deceiving ourselves, and it will lead to hypocrisy.’ Christians need to know how to pray to the Lord (and not to an audience of our fellow Christians) when we meet together to pray. To do this will flow out from the hidden life of prayer. 

Pastor Dan says that God’s desire for us is: 

That we spend time with Him in prayer behind the scene and that every child of God should be a vessel for the Holy Ghost to intercede, and to pray inwardly, and to liberate the inner man into deeper communion with God in the life of prayer, until you lose your words, not because you have not got words, but because your words are lost in the end in groans and sobs unto Him.

He goes on to explain that God yearns for us to ‘be possessed inwardly with the Divine movings of the Holy Spirit’ in the life of prayer. So, the life of prayer isn’t about our work or our accomplishment, but rather, it’s about the work of the Holy Spirit within us, as the Spirit helps us pray and intercedes through us (Rom. 8:26-27). 

Through Jesus and by the Spirit, the Father invites us into this life of prayer. In Jesus and by the Spirit we can receive this precious gift of ‘deeper communion with God in the life of prayer.’

(For part one of this series, click here.)