A few days after Pentecost the disciples were in an agony of prayer, “and when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.” This incident destroys every theory which denies prayer as the condition of the coming and re-coming of the Holy Spirit after Pentecost, and confirms the view that Pentecost as the result of a long struggle of prayer is illustrative and confirmatory that God’s great and most precious gifts and conditioned on asking, seeking, knocking, prayer, ardent, importunate prayer. The same truth comes to the front very prominently in Philip’s revival at Samaria. Though filled with joy by believing in Christ, and though received into the Church by water baptism, they did not receive the Holy Spirit till Peter and John went down there and prayed with and for them. Paul’s praying was God’s proof to Ananias that Paul was in a state which conditioned him to receive the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not only our Teacher, our Inspirer and our Revealer, in prayer, but the power of our praying in measure and force is measured by the Spirit’s power working in us, as the will and work of God, according to God’s good pleasure. In the third chapter of Ephesians, after the marvelous prayer of Paul for the Church, he seemed to be apprehensive that they would think he had gone beyond the ability of God in his large asking. And so he closes his appeal for them with the words, that God was able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. The power of God to do for us was measured by the power of God in us. “According to,” says the Apostle, that is, after the measure of, “the power that worketh in us.” The projecting power of praying outwardly was the projecting power of God in us. The feeble operation of God in us brings feeble praying. The mightiest operation of God in us brings the mightiest praying. The secret of prayerlessness is the absence of the work of the Holy Spirit in us. The secret of feeble praying everywhere is the lack of God’s Spirit in His mightiness. The ability of God to answer and work through our prayers is measured by the Divine energy that God has been enabled to put in us by the Holy Spirit. The projecting power of praying is the measure of the Holy Spirit in us. So the statement of James in the fifth chapter of his Epistle is to this effect: “The fervent effectual prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” The prayer inwrought in the heart by the almighty energy of the Holy Spirit works mightily in its results just as Elijah’s prayer did.