Father Tom McKenna offers the following reflection Getting “In the Spirit”     (Samuel 18; Romans 8)

The story of David and Goliath is set inside a larger narrative about the fall of Saul and the rise of David. And the difference between these two is that one, Saul, had the Spirit of Yahweh and then for a variety of reasons lost touch with it. The other, David, is portrayed in one instance after the other as being given this Spirit of Yahweh (e.g., by Samuel’s anointing), and then moving in and with that Spirit through a number of hair-raising adventures, one of which is this battle with the giant, Goliath. David loudly warns him “I come against you in the name of the Lord of hosts…Today, the Lord shall deliver you into my hand…For the battle is The Lord’s.”

This is an underlying lesson throughout the whole book of Samuel: people must be in living contact with the Spirit of the Lord if they are to do anything of worth for the Lord and the Lord’s people. Further, they have to be highly and intensely aware that they are doing all these things in and with this presence of the Lord working within. Again in David’s words “…it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves, but by the Lords’ own hand.”  The things that count are being done “in the name of the Lord of hosts.”

And so in David’s underdog victory over Goliath, we have a classic hero-tale which wraps around that fundamental fact: the absolute necessity to be working “in the Spirit,” the sine-qua-non prerequisite to be in touch with, filled, enlightened and strengthened by the Spirit of God.

The New Testament champion (perhaps better, press agent!) of this truth is St. Paul. He’s the one who would keep this mantra before us, “In Christ, In The Spirit.” Whatever you do — teach, govern, work, head a household, administrate, prophesy, heal, preach – do it “In the Lord.”

It’s in Romans (8:26) where the Apostle makes an especially pointed application of this code-phrase to the act of praying. “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.”

Paraphrasing Paul: “Wrap your minds and hearts around this fact. When you first set out to pray, it can seem you’re the one doing all the praying. But not so. Someone, way deeper down inside you than even your own self, is already praying there. Don’t worry when you find yourself stumbling for thoughts and sentiments or feeling spiritually inarticulate. At that very moment something more profound is going on. The Spirit, sitting inside your thoughts and beneath your feelings, is praying your prayers. The Spirit of God is praying you.”

I once heard a speaker liken his initial attempts at prayer to his once going out on a first date with an introvert! He felt this terrible pressure to “keep up the conversation,” to fill in the silences. But as he got to know her better a deeper connection got made and the conversations took on more mutuality. And in time the words seemed to just flow. It was as if something deeper was filling the silences, keeping up the conversation.  In his talk on prayer, he went on to testify that something similar happened to him as he began to pray more regularly – something/Somebody was “praying him.”

Whether battling a giant, teaching a truth, managing a project, serving a hungry person or coming before The Lord in prayer, there’s nothing of substance that happens for the Kingdom unless it’s done “in the Spirit.”