Our Ultimate Partner in Prayer

(From “A Stained-Glass Window“.)

This is the manuscript from my sermon last Sunday morning, though there’s going to be a ton of variance between this text and the actual sermon itself since this was just a guide. So here it is. Someday I might refine it and make its prose a little more poetical and smoother. This is anything but perfect, and please keep in mind it was written to be spoken, not read. I didn’t have the time to make it reader-friendly, but please do enjoy. It’s entitled “Our Ultimate Partner in Prayer”, from Romans 8:26-28ff.

About a year ago, Robbie Parks, Pastor Vince and I were down in Portland on a Saturday for a conference. It was lunchtime and we headed out into the city to find something to eat. The conference was at a seminary I had attended for a year, so Pastor asked me if I knew of a good place nearby where we could get lunch. I laughed and said, “When I was down here, I was so poor that on school days all I ate was Top Ramen for lunch and Top Ramen for dinner, and even that was too much for my budget.” I can laugh about it now, but that was actually true at the time. It was a rough time, particularly financially. I was working three jobs: I had a job with Sherwin-Williams, a job at the Corban College library, and I was also tutoring some Corban students in biblical Greek, and still ended up in the red every month by a huge margin. Finances were not working – church involvement was not working – just about nothing was working down there.

That was a rough situation. Nothing worked out well for me when I lived down there and was going to graduate school. I had a hard time knowing what to say to God and what to pray for when I approached God in prayer. I felt that He had led me there to study for ministry and to work on my masters degree, but nothing was working. At the same time I wanted to move home, but that would mean leaving my education. Eventually God opened a door for me to move back here and then more recently He’s opened more and more doors for me to get more involved in ministry, start my education again at Northwest Baptist Seminary, and even work here at the church now. The situation and circumstances I faced during that year of extreme struggle proved to be extremely effective in building character, helping me develop some good habits, and overall preparation for facing the challenges I have now and will face in the future.

When I was down in Portland, I found myself overwhelmed and frustrated and emotionally battered, not knowing how to pray or what God’s will was for my life. We all face different seasons of life or sudden circumstances where we find ourselves speechless in prayer, looking up and whispering, “Help me, Lord!” Whether the struggle or frustration be the result of busyness, financial problems, health issues, shattered relationships, or whatever else, we can often become worrisome, distraught, or just feeling ache, and pain and groans. When we approach God in prayer we often don’t know where to begin because our hearts are so heavy and our minds so supersaturated with worry, fear, anger, anxiety, or perhaps the guilt of our sin.

These are the times of life when we may feel alone, hopeless, and helpless as we approach God in prayer, feeling speechless, not knowing how to pray or what to say. What I want us all to understand and take home from the God’s Word this morning is this: The Holy Spirit is praying for us, shouldering our burdens in prayer, even when we don’t know how we should pray or what to say.

If you have your Bible with you or want to use one in the pew in front of you, go ahead and open up to the book of Romans. This morning we’ll be in Paul’s letter to the Romans and in the eight chapter of this letter. Through the letter so far, Paul has spent a great deal of ink and space discussing the accountability that every single person has to God. Everyone is accountable for his or her own sin and without excuse. But in chapter five he describes how God demonstrated His love towards us in an action in that Christ died for us while we were still sinners. God took the initiative, and so over the course of the next couple chapters Paul describes Christ’s work has set us, as believers, free from the penalty and power of sin, free from bondage to the law, and we’ve been secure in the eternal life He has given us. At this point in chapter eight, among some other topics Paul discusses the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer.
This morning we’ll find ourselves near the end of the eighth chapter of Romans. Please follow along with me as I read aloud our text for this morning, starting in verse twenty-six.

In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the heart knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

As I mentioned, I want us to understand that the Holy Spirit is praying for us, shouldering our burdens in prayer, even when we don’t know how we should pray or what to say. There are several aspects of this truth that I want to highlight. The first is this:
The Holy Spirit counsels and partners with us in prayer even when we don’t know how we ought to pray. Let’s take a look at verse twenty-six again. Paul says, “In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”

There are several questions we could ask here. What is our weakness? How does the Spirit help us in that weakness and what does it mean that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us? And it says that the Spirit helps us “in the same way”, and we must ask, “in the same way” as what?
So, what is our weakness? Paul clearly states that the Spirit helps us in our weakness and directly thereafter state what that weakness is: We do not know how to pray as we should. Sometimes we find ourselves in situations where we don’t know what to say or how we ought to pray. Therein lies the weakness we often experience; we often do not know what to pray or how to pray, especially when we face frustration, pain, heartache, suffering, and just the feeling of being completely overwhelmed in heart and thoughts.

And so Paul teaches here that we have a weakness and this weakness is that we do not know how to pray as we should. But what would lead him to say start talking about times in which we don’t know how to pray or what to say? We only read verses twenty-six through twenty-eight – let’s back up a little bit to verse eighteen.

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.

Here in these verses Paul describes how our suffering during this time, during our life here on earth, is not worthy of comparison to the wonderful glory of being in the presence of God some day. He then describes how we, and all of creation, eagerly groan for the end result of our redemption – when we are freed from the presence of sin and are in the presence of God and all His glory. Until then, we live on this earth in these bodies and we pray to God as we suffer in various ways, but we do so in weakness, sometimes not knowing how to pray.

In our weakness, the Holy Spirit helps us and prays with groanings too deep for words. He helps us, but the word “help” as it is rendered in most English translations is a little inadequate. The word Paul uses is a huge word, a very descriptive word, and it would signify someone coming alongside another person to take part of a heavy load and help him bear it. When we find ourselves in various kinds of suffering, frustration or pain, or even if we don’t, the Holy Spirit counsels and partners with us in our prayers and helps us carry the load. He helps shoulder our burdens in prayer by praying for us in a way that we cannot.

Paul states this in verse that the Holy Spirit helps us by “interceding” for us. It would be appropriate to ask, “What exactly does it mean to intercede?” He intercedes – stepping in between God and us – and prays on our behalf. He pleads our case. He comes alongside us and helps us to shoulder the burdens on our hearts and minds by pleading our case to God.
Jumping back down to verse twenty-six, Paul says the following: “In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” I think we need to take a quick look at “in the same way” and these “groanings”. This is not the first time we’ll see “groanings” mentioned in this chapter, and in fact it’s the third time. It’s used in verses twenty-two, twenty-three and also here in verse twenty-six.

…the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body…the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

It seems to me that this groaning is not a grumbling or a worrying or some unclear communication from the Holy Spirit – He can communicate with God the Father perfectly. I’ll put it this way: A real burden-bearer groans with you. Perhaps an illustration will help.
My senior year of college my roommate broke his leg, snapped both his tibia and fibula right about the ankle. I was with him for some of his doctor visits, and I remember when we went to have his leg cast they didn’t get the bone completely straight, so right after the cast was set they had to cut a wedge out of the cast and then reset the bone by reangling the lower half of the cast. The drugs weren’t working. There was lots of screaming. I was there with him to help him through it, and though I wasn’t the one in pain, I was groaning, too. This is not a perfect picture of what is happening, but try to think of it that way.

A few years ago I experienced a time in my life where there was a substantial amount of groaning. I suddenly got very sick, and while they found the initial cause the symptoms didn’t go away even after I was treated. When I got home for the summer I saw my doctor and a couple specialists. I had CT scans, an endoscopy, blood tests, x-rays, and other tests. They prescribed me medications. Yet none of this testing or treatment did anything. After about a year the symptoms got better, but I still live with it and sometimes it’s worth than other times. During that whole time of testing and procedures with the various doctors, I found difficulty in praying about the matter. I didn’t know what to pray for when I prayed to God. I asked for endurance and patience, and I definitely prayed for healing, but I didn’t know what I should say or ask. Honestly, there was a part of me that wanted it to be cancer or anything serious – just something – so that we could label it, diagnose it, and treat it. I got sick of hearing after every test, “Everything looks normal,” because I wasn’t normal and I hurt. During that time period there was dozens of times I fell to my knees, nearly speechless, looking up and praying, “Help me, God,” because I did not know how to pray or what to say given the matter. Thank God for the fact that the Holy Spirit was with me, groaning along with me, and praying in a way I could not.

So not only does the Holy Spirit pray for us in groanings too deep for words in times when we feel weak and speechless, but He does so knowing us completely and intimately.
The Holy Spirit prays for us having searched and known our hearts and minds. In verse twenty-six we saw that the Holy Spirit prays for us in our weakness in that we are inadequate, not knowing what or how to pray at times; verse twenty-seven reveals to us – on the other hand – at least one reason the Holy Spirit is so adequately equipped to pray for us. Paul says this: “…and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”

The Holy Spirit prays for us having searched and known our hearts and minds. God is sovereign and knows all things and He has control over the various circumstances within which we find ourselves. It is truly amazing and comforting to come to grips with the truth that God knows absolutely everything about everything. Not only is he completely and exhaustively familiar with the sun, moon, stars and cosmos, not only is he fully knowledgeable in microscopic organisms, protons, atoms and quarks, but He also knows everything about you and about me. It’s an incredible thought – It’s breathtaking, really. When we consider these things our thoughts may be similar to David’s in Psalm 139. You don’t need to turn there – I’ll just read the first few lines of his song. He opens this song with these words:

O LORD, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up – you understand my thoughts from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it all. You have enclosed me behind and before, and laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me – it is too high, I cannot attain to it!

David would go on to reflect on the splendor of God’s creative power and knowledge, describing how God knew David even while and before he was being formed within his mother’s womb. God knew. Being sovereign and knowing us completely makes the Holy Spirit far better equipped to pray on our behalf when – for one reason or another – we don’t know how to pray. When we suffer, when we’re in pain, when we’re frustrated, but also at every other time, God knows what’s going on. He’s not surprised by what’s happened. We have a God who knows and holds the future, and when we reach times of desperation, He is there and He knows the situation as well as what’s going on in our hearts and minds. So when we can’t even begin to put words to the torment in our minds, we have one who helps us in our weakness! When we don’t know how to pray, the Holy Spirit is there, praying for us with groanings too deep for words! When we find ourselves speechless, He is speaking to God for us because He knows our hearts and minds even better than we ourselves do and He prays for us – with a great goal in mind!

The Spirit prays for us in our desperate hours of weakness and He does so knowing the ache of our hearts and minds, but what about the aim and direction of His prayer? To what end does He pray?

The Holy Spirit prays for God’s will to be done in our lives. Paul, in verse twenty-six, describes the Spirit’s action in praying for us in our weakness of not knowing what to pray or how to pray during certain times of life. In the next verse he went on to discuss the Spirit’s knowledge of our heart and mind, the very inward parts of us that no one knows better than us, yet God – the Holy Spirit – knows us deep down in our core, even more than we ourselves know it. The latter half of verse twenty-seven and verses twenty-eight describe what the Holy Spirit prays for God to do in our lives when He prays on our behalf. Please look with me at the end of verse twenty-seven leading into verse twenty eight:

…He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that God causes all things to work for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose.

The Holy Spirit prays for God’s will to be done in our lives – He prays “according to the will of God.” God’s will is that all things would work together for our good. What’s important here is that we understand what is meant by “good”. Many times and far too often this verse is lassoed and wrangled out of context to mean something completely foreign to Paul’s intention.
What does he mean that God will work “all things together for good?” Does he mean that the concluding phrase at the end of each story in the pages of our lives will read, “And they lived happily ever after,” or does he mean something else? Does he mean that a good resolution will always come about and that in the end we’ll all be happier, healthier, wiser, richer, and more content? That we’ll be more “well off” than before the situation ever took place? Does he mean that God has promised to give us good health and great wealth so long as we trust in Him and that God will work all of our painful life experiences together, so that in the end, life is peachy? No. What is this “good” that Paul says God will bring about as a result of what He allows us to face in this life? If we let Paul speak the Word of God plainly by reading his flow of thought, we have a clear answer.

God uses circumstances and situations of life to mold and shape us for good, that is, to look more like his son, Jesus Christ. We love to quote verse twenty-eight: “And we know that God causes all things to work for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose.” What about verses twenty-nine and thirty? What’s Paul getting at? Look at verses twenty-eight and following:

And we know that God causes all things to work for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.

Being Christians, God has foreknown us and adopted us and brought us into His family, having rescued us from darkness and death. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ God has given us new life – the Christian life – and since we have been called and predestined into this new life we have also been predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son. What does that mean? It doesn’t mean that over time we’ll look more like Him physically, but it does mean that the calling of the Christian life to is live like Christ lived by thinking how Christ thought, and we do so by allowing Scripture and the Holy Spirit to work on our hearts and renew our minds. Eventually, either by death or Christ’s return, we’ll see Him face to face and we will be glorified and receive new glorified bodies. While we have been saved from the penalty of sin and are being saved from its power, we will ultimately be saved from the presence of sin as well. One day we will be changed as we encounter the living God in person and ultimately become glorified and ultimately conformed to the image of His Son, Jesus.
Until that day the circumstances we face can play a big role in causing us to mature and experience spiritual growth. Every once in a while I catch myself wishing that certain things had never happened in my life or that I hadn’t made certain dumb choices, yet at the same time I probably wouldn’t have learned what I learned nor grown in the way I have if God hadn’t used those circumstances to change and mold me. Do you know what I mean? You regret or wish yet at the same time you really don’t. God uses such circumstances in a way we could have never expected – for good! He uses them to change and grow us in many ways. We can be confident that the Holy Spirit is praying that God would do this in our lives, that God would take all of the various situations in our lives to draw us to Him, to build character and endurance, to allow the fruits of the Spirit to become developed in our hearts so that we will more and more ever increasingly begin to think and also therefore act like God’s Son, Jesus Christ.

Sometimes when we first encounter a situation in our lives we do so wondering how in the world God might work through it for “good”.

Many years ago when I was in my last year of high school. We were having a youth activity here in the building. Towards the end of the event I got a call on my cell phone, so I answered it as I walked up the stairs to the foyer out behind you. It was my dad, and he was calling to let me know that…it was over. He called to tell me that he was leaving and that he and my mom were separating. It was a short call. I remember hanging up and walking through those two wooden doors out front, crouching down on one of the rocks by the sidewalk, hugging my knees and looking up at the sky. It was dark, and I prayed. But I didn’t know what to pray. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to go home, I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to be alone, yet I didn’t want to be with or see anybody either. That was one of those, “Help, God,” moments. Actually, that was one of those “Help me, God” years. Some say divorce is easier for the kids when they’re older, but it’s not true. Did God work all those things together in that situation for good? If by good we mean that everything turned out “peachy” and that all lived their lives “happily ever after”, that’s not what happened. Resolution was not the case. But God did work all things together for good, just not the good we might often think about. The good that He works is the good end of us becoming more like Christ, and I can tell you that all those involved experienced a lot of sharpening as a result, a lot of growth, and a lot of good came from the pain. I know I grew through it. I know I would not be the man I am today were it not for God working good through situations in my life such as that and crafting character through such pain.

I’ve heard of a man who has put it this way and I agree wholeheartedly: “God does not waste pain.” He doesn’t! He will use these instances in our lives to mold and shape us to make us more like Christ. The call of the Christian is to walk worthy and, as John says in His first letter, the one who has fellowship with God needs to walk – to live – in the same way that Jesus walked. God knows we won’t be perfect on this side of glory, but He does expect us to be growing. So the Spirit’s prayers on our behalf are prayers that God would work out all things in our life for our good to make us more like His Son. This should be of great encouragement to us in our times of weakness when we fall speechless to God in prayer, not knowing how we ought to pray.

In conclusion I would have us remember that the Holy Spirit’s partnership in our prayers ought to comfort and encourage us. Even when we don’t know where to begin, the Holy Spirit knows our heart, thoughts and mind and can pray in ways we can’t begin to verbalize and He does so more than adequately because He knows our hearts and minds. He prays with the end goal in mind that God will use all of the circumstances that hurt, overwhelm and frustrate us to mold and shape us to be more like Christ.

The goal is sanctification. This ought to bring comfort and encouragement to us because God is using each of the seemingly horrible and awful circumstances of our lives to bring about good, refining us more and more into the image of Christ, causing us to grow and be more like Him. In the end, when the sky rolls back like a scroll we will ultimately be like Him and we will see Him as He is. In view of our eternal life in the presence of God’s glory to come, our temporary suffering becomes unworthy of comparison. This should bring us joy!

Following this discussion of how the Holy Spirit prays for God’s will to be done in our lives and how God will ultimately glorify all those who belong to Him, Paul continues to talk about this new life that we have as a result of God’s action. Earlier in the letter Paul discussed how God demonstrated His love for us through the death of Christ. Christ’s loving sacrifice, death, burial and resurrection are what paved the way for our salvation. This paved the way not only in the beginning when we became Christians, and not just this time during life on earth as we are continuing to grow, but also ultimately as we reach heaven and glory. The way is paved, the way is sealed, and the love of Christ is guarantees that. Paul closes this section of thought with these words in verses thirty-five and following:

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? … But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord!

One day we will be like Him, one day we will rejoice in the presence of God’s glory, but until then we groan, and all creation groans as we wait in great unashamed hope for that day. Until that day, God has promised to mold and make us, and along the way we will encounter trials, temptations, frustrations, pain, but also joy, happiness, contentment – the whole spectrum. And through all of these things, the love of Christ remains. Our relationship with God and salvation are secure and firmly established. And when we pray, God is there listening to us, but not to us alone.

The Holy Spirit counsels and partners with us in prayer even when we don’t know how we ought to pray. He prays for us having searched and known our hearts and minds, praying for God’s will to be done in our lives and that all of these situations that frustrate and hurt us will be used by God to mold and shape us to be more like Christ.

We can take comfort in the fact that the Holy Spirit, who knows us completely, prays with and for us in all our prayers, especially in our most desperate hours when we don’t know how to pray to God or what to even say. Maybe you’re here and hurting – really struggling because of something at home or something at school, or work, or regarding your relationships or anything else, and you don’t know what to do. Perhaps you pray but don’t really know what to say or how to approach God with the burdens of your heart and mind. Take comfort knowing that the Holy Spirit groans along with you as He helps shoulder those burdens – He prays in a way that we oftentimes can’t, and He prays that God would work through your particular situation in a tremendous way, to bring glory to God and to make you more like His Son.

Why not take the time to pray and ask the Holy Spirit to help you? And I would encourage you to talk to another believer, to let them know what’s going on in your heart so that they might pray for you as well. When we attempt to pray apart from the Spirit’s power and equipping, and when we attempt to spend time devoted to God’s Word, when we attempt to do anything spiritual in this new life we have in Christ, by definition we can’t neglect the Spirit’s working! We must trust, rely and expect His empowering, His partnership and guidance or we will be entering a barren and fruitless activity, a wilderness of boredom, and a despairing endeavor. Don’t forget the Spirit and how He can help and guide you. Let’s pray.