This is the second post in a series on God’s response to our weakness. You can read the previous post here.
If you have an ounce of honesty and self-awareness, you know just how weak you are. Our weakness in the face of God’s immense power and strength can make him appear distant and aloof. Does God care about your weakness? You bet he does! But how? How does the Father, the Son, and the Spirit help us? Let’s begin by looking at how the Spirit helps us in our weakness by looking at just one verse: Romans 8:26.
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. - Rom. 8:26
Put simply, the Holy Spirit helps us through prayer. Prayer is one of the greatest gifts and biggest challenges for any Christian. In our weakness, we can struggle to muster up the words, time, or even desire to speak to God. But this passage gives us a loving invitation and hopeful confidence that God does not demand us to have beautiful, well-written, or lengthy prayers in order to help us. In fact, we could learn how to pray from the weakest of human beings: a newborn.
Think of a parent learning the cry of a newborn. At the beginning, you don’t know if it’s a “I’m hungry” cry or a “I’m tired” cry or a “Hold me” cry or a “Change me” cry or something else. But pretty soon, parents pick up on the subtle nuances. To an outsider, it might sound like shrieky noise, but to a loving parent, that cry stands for a baby’s request for warmth and compassion or for food and sustenance or for a desperate desire for a new diaper. As parents, we learn the cries and groans of our children. We translate it and act accordingly. That’s what the Holy Spirit does in our weak attempts at prayer. Prayer is not a tool for big, strong Christians. It’s a lifeline for the weak and feeble. It’s the language of the weary and heavy laden. In other words, it’s for people like us.
That means that our weakness, instead of a speed bump on the road to joy in God, is the door that God walks through with grace and mercy and help. Weakness is the channel of grace. One author said, “As far as I can see, prayer has been ordained only for the helpless…Prayer and helplessness are inseparable. Only he who is helpless can truly pray.”1 So, you might feel like the weakest Christian in the world. That only means that you’re in the perfect place to pray and to receive help. Your weakness and pain don’t scare God away. They draw him in like a magnet. Our helplessness and weakness trigger the arrival of God’s Spirit to come and help. So when you’re tempted not to pray because you feel too weak, remember then you’re in the best place possible to receive the help you desperately need through prayer.
This means you don’t have to pray pretty, flowery words that would impress anyone else. When Jesus taught on prayer, he compared the prideful prayer of a religious man with the humble entreaty of the publican who simply said, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.” That man went home justified. It’s not the content of your prayers that ultimately matters. It’s not the length of your prayers. It’s the recognition or your weakness and helplessness and your willingness to take it to the Lord in prayer.
Verse 26 closes with another comforting truth. It says that, “the Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” So, the Spirit doesn’t only intercede, but he does so with groanings of his own. We might think that we come to God in prayer with this pathetic little attempt, and the Holy Spirit condescendingly pats us on the head and looks to the Father and says, “What this little thing is trying to say is…” No. The Holy Spirit intercedes with groanings of his own. He comes near to us and truly sees and even feels the pain we’re experiencing. We attempt to pray but can only muster up feeble words and phrases. Then the Spirit comes down to our level. He listens. He groans along with us. And he takes those groans to the Father: groans that are too deep for any human words to capture.
Our weak prayer is translated by the Spirit to the Father, and not an ounce of meaning or nuance or substance falls off. We’ve all been at a place where we want to say something to someone, but we’re afraid that they won’t really understand what we’re trying to say. If that happens with other humans, doesn’t it seem like it would be accentuated with God? Not for a second. The Spirit who dwells within us groans and weeps with us. He takes our weakness and brings it to our all-powerful and all-wise Father to act on our behalf. That’s good news for weaklings.
While this is simple, it’s not easy. No matter how you slice it, prayer is hard. But fortunately, prayer isn’t for those who have their stuff together. It’s not the red telephone on the president’s desk. It’s not something that powerful people use to do important and powerful things. It’s the little buzzer on a hospital bed that the weak and frail use to call in help. Don’t let the difficulty of prayer intimidate you or scare you off. Your weakness, even in prayer, is the very thing that beckons the Spirit of God to come close for help.
Ole Hallesby, Prayer (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1994), 18.