Spirit Assisted Praying
How the Spirit Helps Us When Words Fail
Text: Romans 8:26-27; Phil 1:19-26
If you could ask any single person to pray for you, who would you want to be praying for you? Is there a saint of God in your life who seems to you to have an unusual ability to get God to hear and answer their prayers? When you are facing a great trial, grave danger, or a critical decision, who do you most want to be praying and interceding on your behalf?
One of the greatest passages in all of Romans is the two verses before us, because they reveal a stunning truth – God is praying to God for me!
God is talking to God about us! Christ is interceding for our protection against Satan’s desire to overwhelm and destroy us with sin (8:34), and the Holy Spirit is interceding for what is best for us according to God’s perfect will for our lives and circumstances (8:26-27).
And if there is anyone I want praying for me, it is these two persons!
And to help us cultivate and maintain the joyful, triumphant endurance God so prizes in us, Paul tells us we must carefully, accurately, and consistently “consider” (logizomai) an important ministry the Holy Spirit carries out on our behalf as we groan with longing for our coming glorification.
And that brings us to a series of questions that these two verses are intended to answer to help us understand God’s larger purposes for us so that we will rest in God’s sovereign plan for us when the path is hard and the way is dark.
I. ____________ is the Holy Spirit doing? Helping us in our ____________.
The word for “help” evokes the image of someone coming alongside a person carrying a crushingly heavy load, bearing the load with them (cf. Psalm 89:21). Paul says that when our weakness threatens to overwhelm us and shake our assurance, the Holy Spirit comes alongside, holds us up, and sustains us!
And the specific help He provides is stated this way: He is interceding for us because of our weakness. Note that the term “weakness” is singular, suggesting that Paul has a very specific kind of weakness in mind here that the Holy Spirit helps us bear.
So that is the first thing we are to reckon – that the help God gives us in our weakness comes in the form of the Holy Spirit praying for us.
II. ____________ is He doing it for? The ____________.
These are the same people who are no longer under any condemnation in 8:1 and who will never be separated from the love of God in 8:37-39.
These are the very people who have received a promise and a pledge of their adoption, along with a guarantee of their future glorification and liberation from the decay and corruption currently afflicting them (8:18-25).
And BECAUSE they have tasted the beauty and power of new life and are experiencing the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, who is progressively moving them from one glory of God to the next, they long for full glorification and groan for it every time they run up against the boundaries of their humanity or encounter the frustrating futility of life under the curse.
He is the first fruits – and once you taste those first fruits in your inner man, you long for the whole harvest throughout your entire being – you yearn for the complete and total restoration of your inner man, as well as the full liberation and redemption of your body!
III. _______ is He doing it? We don’t know “_________” we should pray for.
- Why He does it:
- Our problem is not that we don’t know how to pray or that we are not praying – but that in certain cases, we do not know “the what” that is “necessary” that we should be praying for, especially when we see the dangerous or painful circumstances that we are enduring or about to endure.
- Our problem is not that we don’t know how to pray or that we are not praying – but that in certain cases, we do not know “the what” that is “necessary” that we should be praying for, especially when we see the dangerous or painful circumstances that we are enduring or about to endure.
- When He does it: (under what circumstances)
- When we are facing excruciating groaning associated with our bodies that makes us long to leave this life so that we can receive and enjoy the liberty and freedom of our new, glorified body.
- When we are facing excruciating groaning associated with our bodies that makes us long to leave this life so that we can receive and enjoy the liberty and freedom of our new, glorified body.
IV. ____________ is He doing it? By interceding for us with our ____________.
- By Intercession – talking to God on our behalf
- There are three ways he does this:
- He intercedes for us by joining us in our groaning.
- He brings our longings to the Father on the basis of His intimate relationship with the Father, who searches all hearts and knows the mind of the Spirit intimately, fully, accurately, and thoroughly.
- He brings our groanings into alignment with a good and beneficial standard – the will of God. That is what He uses to shape and measure our hearts’ longings when our bodies are weary, worn, bruised, and battered.
- There are three ways he does this:
- With our unspoken groanings
- These are our own hope-filled groanings, when we struggle to perceive the will of God in a particular situation involving the suffering of our weak bodies, and which the Holy Spirit brings to God on our behalf.
- So the idea is that the Spirit supports us in our weakness when we don’t know what to pray for so that God will be most glorified, Christ will be most magnified, and the gospel will be best served – the Holy Spirit helps us by bringing our groanings to God and by conforming our will to embrace, joyfully and triumphantly, the thing that is most necessary to glorify God, magnify Christ, and advance the gospel.
V. Why is this ____________ – how does this ____________?
God has given His Saints two powerful forms of guidance – one external and one internal. Externally, He has given us the Word of God, which functions like a map. Internally, He has given us the Holy Spirit, who functions as a guide. The Holy Spirit intercedes for us so that God’s will would be done when the precise nature of that will is unknown to us.
There are things we know God wants for us – the part of His will that has been clearly revealed to us. We know exactly what to pray for when it comes to these four things:
- That we would be conformed to the likeness of His Son (8:29).
- That we would be sanctified – set aside and dedicated for His use and purposes (1 Thess 4:3; 5:23; Rom 12:1).
- That His Son would be magnified by our bodies, whether best done by our death or by our sustained life of continued service (1 Cor 10:31). This speaks to the “why” behind your asking God for more life or restored health.
- That our bodies (how we use them, what God does with them) would bring many sons to glory so that His son might be the firstborn among many (Rom 8:29).
But there are other times when we don’t know what to pray for because we don’t know what will actually best accomplish these four goals that God has for our lives!
And God, who fully knows the mind and heart of the Spirit, hears and answers these groanings according to His Will – which is what we should ultimately want as mature and surrendered believers living out Romans 12:1-2!
Conclusion: So what does this look like in real life?
- God will always do the right thing with my body to ensure my sanctification and to display His power.
2 Corinthians 12:7-10 - God will always do the right thing with my life to ensure the good of His church and fruitfulness in ministry.
Phil 1:20-26 - God will always do the right with my life to bring many sons to glory.
Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. “Let this cup pass – the pain and agony that is about to come upon my body – nevertheless, not my will but thine be done!”
- What produced this kind of praying in these three examples? What energized it and what sustained it? The Holy Spirit!
- Are you willing to pray this way? Are you willing to ask the Holy Spirit to ask God to bring about what is necessary so that these three things are accomplished through your body in your life and/or by your death? Only the Holy Spirit can help you pray this way!