The Promise of Prayer (4)

Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Romans 8.26

Hesitant to pray
I’m quite certain every Christian would say that prayer is important. We are commanded to pray, even to pray without ceasing or growing weary (1 Thess. 5.17; Lk. 18.1). We have access to prayer through our Lord Jesus Christ, who is able to bring us into the very presence of God the Father, where we have the promise of audience, that He will hear our prayers.

In prayer we find merciful absolution from sin and grace sufficient to meet all our needs. Prayer is the most characteristic of Christian disciplines, since by it we enter into and sustain communion with the living God.

But for all this, most Christians would confess that their experience of prayer is neither as consistent, as full and fruitful, or as enjoyable as they think it ought to be. Many of us have little confidence in our ability to talk with the Father beyond a few well-intended platitudes or simple formulas. We pray because we think we should, not because in prayer we find the kind of uplifting and sustaining communion with the Lord that thrills us with the joy and pleasure of His presence, as He makes all things new.

We’re not confident of our ability to pray as we should; indeed, we could go further, and admit with the Apostle Paul that “we do not know what we should pray for as we ought,” and so we settle into a life of prayer that tends toward being perfunctory, unsatisfying, and disappointing.

But God the Father understands our weakness. He is sympathetic with our frustration, and He has determined to supply us with amazing and infallible helps to aid us in the practice of prayer. And this work of helping us in prayer begins within us, by the power of God at work in His Spirit.

The indwelling Spirit
The Spirit of God, Who dwells in every believer, is at work to make us willing and able to do what is consistent with the good pleasure of God (Phil. 2.13). He works to convict us of sin, instruct us in righteousness, and urge us along in obedience, lest we fall under the discipline of the Lord (Jn. 16.8-11; Heb. 12.3-11). He sows and tends the seeds of spiritual life and gifts, so that we may grow to be witnesses for Christ and nurturing members of His Body (Gal. 5.22, 23; 1 Cor. 12.7-11; Acts 1.8). He brings us into the presence of God and His glory, and, as we linger there, works to transform us into the image of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 3.12-18).

The Spirit of God is continuously at work within us toward these ends, but we too often fail to seek His filling. We quench His power through neglect or disobedience, and play hooky from His teaching of all the Law and Word of God (Eph. 5.18-21; 1 Thess. 5.19; Ezek. 36.26, 27). The Spirit is able to do in us, and through us, exceedingly abundantly beyond all that we have ever dared to ask or think (Eph. 3.20). And He eagerly engages with us, when we come before the Father in prayer.

We do not know how to pray as we should. But the Spirit does. He has the right agenda. He knows how spiritual growth works best. He knows the mind of Christ and God. He is the power for entering and advancing the Kingdom and righteousness of God. He is there in the moment, at every moment, when we need the grace of God to guide us in words and deeds to fulfill our Kingdom-and-glory calling from the Lord.

When we pray
So when we go to prayer, in spite of our weakness, inconsistency, hesitancy, and ineptitude, He stirs within us to bring us access to and audience with the Father, in ways so mysterious, the Apostle Paul observes, that we can’t even describe them.

As we pray, the Spirit joins with us in prayer. He surrounds our stammering tongues, illuminates our unimaginative minds, and refines our trite clichés with spiritual groanings which cannot be uttered. We cannot utter them, nor can we hear them. They are the Spirit’s groanings – of compassion, longing, urging, clarification, enhancement, and pleading – with which He magnifies our prayers and delivers them through Jesus into the very presence of the Father.

The more we pray – feeble and faltering though such prayers may be – the more time and space we give for the Spirit to work with our prayers. He searches the deep recesses of our souls as we pray, bringing into cognition feelings, hopes, desires, and longings which we cannot even express (1 Cor. 2.10-16; Ps. 139.23, 24). The Spirit of God is the great Translator of things we are unable to articulate in prayer. So we go to prayer, employing whatever words we can, knowing them to be entirely inadequate, but knowing as well that the Spirit knows us better than we know ourselves. And He intercepts our feeble efforts, strengthens and enlarges them with earnest spiritual groanings, and parks them in the presence of our prayer-hearing God.

Let us therefore go often to prayer, and linger there, even if only in silence, while the Spirit, Who works within us, comes to the aid of our prayers with transforming power.

For reflection
1.  What would you most like to see happen to improve your prayer life? Can you achieve this without the assistance of God’s Spirit?

2.  Would you say that your prayers tend to line up with the agenda of the Spirit? Explain.

3.  The Spirit comes to aid in prayer whenever we pray. So, the more we pray, the more of His assistance we can expect. What could you do to increase the amount of time you spend in prayer?

Next steps – Transformation: Begin to increase the amount of time you spend in prayer, focusing as you pray on the Spirit’s agenda for your life.

T. M. Moore

Improve your prayer life. Order a copy of The Poetry of Prayer from our online store, and work through a series of exercises designed to help you make real progress in prayer. Download this week’s study in “The Promise of Prayer” as a free PDF by clicking here.

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.