Question:

I was looking through your sermon notes on the Holy Spirit and it said “Q: Do you pray to the Holy Spirit?”. From my understanding of prayer we are to pray to God through Jesus’ name and the Holy spirit, but not necessarily to it. Holy Trinity thing? (I’m a kingdom kid so honestly trinity is not something i’m super familiar with in depth). Thanks!

Answer:

Praying “in Jesus’ name” is a tradition. It is a good tradition. However, nowhere in the Bible does it say we can only pray to the Father or that we have to say at the end of our prayers “in Jesus’ name.” Jesus gave us a model prayer and that prayer did not conclude with “in my name, amen.” I assume that Jesus spoke with his Father and with the Holy Spirit. What Bible rule says that this would not happen? What reasonable argument would lead us to believe that Jesus did not talk to the Holy Spirit? The Father, the Son and the Spirit are three different “persons” withing the godhead and it is unimaginable that we could not talk directly to Jesus or to the Holy Spirit in prayer.

For myself, peronally, I normally pray to the Father–either that or to God in a generic way, not thinking about which of the persons in the godhead I am praying to. But I do pray specifically to Jesus or to the Holy Spirit at times. I can think of no biblical or theological reason we cannot do this. Obviously Jesus can hear our prayers. Romans 8 makes it clear that the Holy Spirit can as well. Would they not want us to share our heart with them? It seems obvious the answer is yes. There is a tendency of Christians to follow traditions without questioning whether they are biblically based. I think this question is an example. of that tendency.

Thanks for asking,

John Oakes