By Audrey Bauman

Romans 8: 26 – 27   (NLT)

“And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. ²⁷ And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will.”

Wow!  What an amazing gift we have with the Holy Spirit living within each of us as Christ followers!

Prayer is something I’ve always struggled with.  I feel like I don’t pray enough.  When I pray, I want to pray for things God wants, but I’m not always sure that’s what I’m really doing.  Mostly I want what suits me best, makes my life easier.  I don’t think that’s necessarily God’s goal for me.   Sometimes I feel like my prayers are so ordinary – you know, like ‘Please bless so-and-so’.  Often I think I pray when things are falling apart, but when things are going along more or less smoothly, I don’t find time to pray.   I suspect that may be true of you as well.

So these verses really encourage me.  The “Spirit helps us in our weakness”.  That makes me thankful for all those times that the Spirit has prompted me to pray for something or someone.  You may have experienced this as well – suddenly a name pops into your head, and you have this feeling that you should pray for that person.  Or sometimes in a busy day, the thought crosses your mind that you need to take a time-out to pray and be quiet before God.  

“We don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words”.  So on those days when you don’t know what to say or what to ask for, the Spirit helps us by telling God what our hearts really long for.   I know that my heart really longs to be aligned with what God wants and His plans, but in reality, I don’t always do what He wants or think the way He thinks. So I’m so very thankful for an intercessor who can help me connect with God.  

The word ‘groanings’ is interesting.  It reminds me of pain and emotional distress.  And I think it describes the long road between our accepting Christ here on earth and our future resurrection when are actually with Christ. It’s a hard journey – often two steps forward and one step backward, as we battle our sinful nature and become more like Christ.  So the fact that the Spirit communicates with God in groanings doesn’t surprise me.  But I’m also thankful that the Spirit does all that hard work for us.

“And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will”.   Here is another reassurance about prayer.  God knows our hearts – way more than we do.  Jeremiah 17:9 talks about how little we know about ourselves.  “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Who can understand it?”   (NASB)  So it’s reassuring that God knows our hearts, and that the Holy Spirit is pleading for us according to God’s will.  So we may be messed up, but the Spirit is pleading with God to help us get in harmony with His plans. 

We can never say thank you enough for that.  The verses like the ones we’ve read today are at the core of who each of us are as Christ followers.  We want our lives to show God’s love to those around us, and encourage them to come close to God too.  But we know that we mess that up a lot.  So knowing that the Holy Spirit lives in us and that He helps us to pray and connect with God is so comforting and encouraging to me. We don’t have to do this all on our own.  The Holy Spirit is working in us and helping each of us to become the person God wants us to be.  That sure deflates any big ego we might have, and it also alleviates our anxiety about living up to God’s standards.  It brings a balance to life that we could never achieve on our own.

And God is promising all of this to you if you have accepted Jesus as your own personal Saviour.  Perhaps sometime today, you could take a few moments to thank God for all He has done and is doing for you.

Our song for today is Spirit of the Living God by Vertical Worship.