There is no such thing as a Christian life apart from an understanding of and a participation
in the power of the Holy Spirit. It's possible to use the right language. It's possible to
be busy. It's possible to be involved in ministry. And yet, and yet, it's possible to be involved
in ministry, and yet, and yet to miss the central core of what the Christian life is
all about. We only experience that when the Holy Spirit is empowering us in every involvement
that we have. And that includes our praying. Already we have noted in chapter 8 of Romans
a number of the ministries of the Holy Spirit to believers. Those include, in verse 2, setting
us free from the law of sin and death. He is the Spirit of life. In verse 9, He is the
Spirit of God who dwells in the believer. And if anybody does not have Him in dwelling
Him, He does not belong to Christ. In verse 11, He is the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus
from the dead, and He will raise our bodies from the dead. In verse 13, He is the Spirit
who empowers us in the Christian life as we put to death the deeds of the body. In verse
14, He is the Spirit of God who leads the sons of God. In verse 15, He is the Spirit
of adoption who encourages the sons of God to speak to their Father and call out to Him,
God, Daddy. In verse 16, He is the Spirit who bears witness with our spirit that we
are the children of God. And so these are all the ministries of the Holy Spirit to us.
Today we come to one that is just as significant. It is His work in our praying. And it says
in verse 26 that 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 hearts 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 being called
according to His purpose. Heavenly Father, this is a very uncomfortable day. And on a
day, a humid, hot day like this, it is difficult for us to concentrate on the Word. It is easy
to be distracted. And I pray that You will help us, nonetheless, to be able to focus
our attention upon this Word. And may the Holy Spirit speak to us and apply the Word
to our lives. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
The Holy Spirit has a work to accomplish in our praying. In our text today, there are
three insights that we gain that will help us understand the importance of this work
of the Spirit. The first insight is in verse 26 where it says, we have a weakness in prayer.
It is true that the prayer closet is a battleground. Prayer is a war. We have an enemy who seeks
to stop our every advance in this warfare. The battlefields of prayer include laziness,
the lack of discipline, ignorance of how to pray and what we should pray for, and discouragement
from not getting answers to prayer as quickly as we think we should or in the form that
we think we should. What is the answer to the battle of laziness? It is making prayer
a priority, frankly, because that is what it usually indicates when we fail to pray.
The prayer is not really that important in our daily schedule. Therefore, we need to
discipline ourselves into prayer. What about ignorance of prayer? When we don't know the
basics, we need to go to the Word of God and learn what prayer is all about. One of the
advantages of our directed prayer this morning earlier in the service was that Skip used
the various parts of real prayer. We began with adoration, then confession, petition,
and thanksgiving, ending again with adoration. Those are the steps of praying. We can't
pray successfully if we are ignorant of what prayer is all about. The devil wants to keep
us ignorant. Likewise, he likes to keep us ignorant of the prerequisites of praying.
Did you know it is possible to go through the motions of prayer and not pray because
we haven't met the prerequisites? Let me just mention five of them to you. One prerequisite
for praying is an honest and complete confession of sin. In Psalm 66, 18 it says, If I regard
or if I cherish iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. And so if there is
some sin that I am hanging on to, my prayers will be unheard and ineffective. I have to
begin with an honest and complete confession of sin. Secondly, there needs to be harmony
in the marriage. In 1 Peter 3, 7 it tells me that if my wife and I are having a spat
and we don't get that settled, that my prayers will be hindered. Did you ever think about
that? If your marital relationship is not harmonious, it is advantageous for your prayer
life that you get that straightened out. Because this harmony in that marriage relationship
causes our prayers to be hindered. Thirdly, a prerequisite for effective praying is healthy
motives. In James 4, 3, James says, You ask and do not receive because you ask amiss,
that you may consume it upon your own lusts. In other words, he is saying we ask sometimes
and don't receive because our motives are lousy. The word amiss there means diseased.
We have diseased motives. Instead of asking for something for God's glory, we want it
because we want it for our own use. That hinders prayer. And fourthly, James tells us that
a prerequisite for prayer is faith. That should go without saying, shouldn't it? But we need
to say it. In James 1, he says that if we ask doubting God and allow ourselves to be
wavering like the sea, then we will not receive what we ask from God. Prayer in faith is what
God honors. And finally, a prerequisite for prayer is unity in my relationship with another
believer. If I come to the point of prayer and I remember that I have not forgiven someone
for what he did to me, or if there remains an unresolved conflict or offense between
myself and another believer, then my prayers are not going to be heard. I need to stop
what I'm doing right there and get that offense resolved. Making the apology, extending the
forgiveness, getting the understanding of the offense, whatever it involves, I need
to stop my praying and go get that straightened out and then come back to prayer. Those are
the conditions for prayer. Satan wants to keep us ignorant of those. And then discouragement
is such a problem with many people. Often people, because they do not get the answers
that they wanted when they wanted them, begin to think things like, well, I guess I'm not
good enough. God doesn't hear me when I pray. Or they think something else that discourages
them in coming to the Lord. Satan loves to get us down. He loves to discourage us, making
us think that our prayers are not getting through, when in fact they very well may be,
because we've met the preconditions. You see, Satan knows that if he can make a preemptive
strike in our prayer life, he doesn't have to worry about us. If he can stop us short
of being effective in prayer, then he's not going to worry about our witnessing or about
our teaching a Sunday school class or anything else we may do, because he has stopped us
at the point where we become effective, that is, in our prayer life. So prayer is a war.
It's a battlefield. But that is not what Romans 8 is talking about. The apostle says
here that we have a weakness. And all the things I've talked about so far are not weaknesses.
They're battles. He defines for us exactly what the weakness is. Do you notice it in
verse 26? We do not know how to pray as we should. He does not mean by that that we don't
know the general content of prayer. We ought to. But he's saying that there are times
when we do not know the specifics to pray for, partly because of our humanity. We don't
know all that there is to know about every situation, so we don't know how to pray for
it in its specifics at times. And sometimes we don't know how to pray because we are
ignorant of what the Bible teaches. Here's what I mean by that. Let's suppose that a
person comes to you and says, I want you to pray for my husband. I know that he's being
unfaithful to me. I want you to pray for me and for him. How do you pray for that person?
What are the specifics that you should mention to God on their behalf? If you will study
the Bible, you will find that there are some specific things that you should pray for the
husband and for the wife. And so sometimes we don't know how to pray as we should because
we're ignorant of the Bible, and that's correctable. The fact that we have human weakness and can't
know everything to pray for, that's not correctable. We have a weakness in prayer. We don't know
how to pray as we ought. We don't know what the situation demands at the moment. A missionary
can write us a prayer letter, and if it takes a week to get there, those requests may be
outdated. And even if the request is still valid, we don't know exactly what the need
is at 9.30 that evening over there in the Philippines. We have a weakness in prayer.
We don't know the what to pray for as we should, but that weakness is no excuse for
not praying. And the reason is because of insight number two, and that is that we have
a helper in prayer. And that helper is the Holy Spirit. He says in the same way the Holy
Spirit also helps our weakness. He says the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings
too deep for words. You and I are not left to pray in our weakness by ourselves. Having
weakness, admittedly, God has given to us a helper. Now He says that the helper intercedes
for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. In other words, there are sighs, there are
groans of the Holy Spirit that come from within us that are too deep for words. Have you ever
been to the place of not knowing what to pray? Of course you have. And perhaps you felt frustrated
in that moment because you didn't know how to phrase your request to God. You didn't
know what the right thing to pray for was. At that instant, the Holy Spirit came to help
you in your prayer life. And though you may not have heard a sound or been aware of it,
the Holy Spirit used your prayer burden, that pressure from within you, as an occasion to
lift to God a request on behalf of that need. When it says here that the Spirit helps our
weakness, it uses an interesting word. It means to lend a hand together with someone
else. It means to come to the aid of someone or to take a share in something. It's beautifully
illustrated for us back in Luke 10, where I invite you to turn. On an occasion, Jesus
was traveling and came to the village of Bethany. There he visited with some of his favorite
people, Lazarus, Mary, and Martha. It says that Martha welcomed him into her home, Luke
10, verse 38. She had a sister called Mary who, moreover, was listening to the Lord's
word seated at his feet. So you get the picture. Jesus came into the home. Martha welcomed
him in. Immediately he sat down, and there were disciples and others, and Mary, who sat
there listening to Jesus speak. But Martha was distracted with all her preparations.
Mary Martha was concerned about the meal. Now there are some women like that, and I'm
not unhappy for them at all. I enjoy people who enjoy cooking. She was out in the kitchen
banging the pots and pans around, trying to get the oven warmed up, getting things ready
for the meal that was going to be necessary for this crowd of people who happened to pop
in on them. It says she came to the Lord and said, Lord, do you not care that my sister
has left me to do all the serving alone? Tell her to help me. You parents have heard that,
haven't you, before? Mom, make him help me. Do the work. Well, here Martha, a grown lady,
comes to the Lord and gives a similar complaint. She says, Lord, tell her to help me. Now when
Martha used that word help, she used exactly the same word that Paul uses in Romans 8 of
the Holy Spirit. Now Martha was not saying, Lord, I want to sit in here. You tell Mary
to go in the kitchen and do the work. But what she said was, Lord, tell her to come
in here and help me. Give me a hand so we can work together. Now Jesus kindly rebuked
Martha and told her that Mary actually had chosen the better thing to do. But the point
I want to make is that verb help. Because you see, the Holy Spirit helps us. It does
not mean that you and I should not pray because the Holy Spirit will pray for us. But it means
that as we pray and we come to these times of weakness, that the Holy Spirit is there
to help us, to lend us a hand. And even though we cannot utter in verbal form what the petition
is, the Holy Spirit will nonetheless pray through us and intercede for us with groanings
too deep for words.
Now there are some additional insights that I want to point out to this very special ministry
of the Holy Spirit. Go back to John chapter 16 for a moment and look at verse 23. This
is a favorite prayer promise that a lot of people like to look at. But they often overlook
something that is significant in this verse. Verse 23 of John 16, And in that day you will
ask me no question, truly, truly, says Jesus to his disciples here, if you shall ask the
Father for anything, he will give it to you in my name. Look at verse 26, In that day
you will ask in my name. And I do not say to you that I will request the Father on your
behalf for the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I
came forth from the Father.
And so we have this great promise that we can come and pray in Jesus' name. But do
you notice those first three words in verse 26? Verse 23, In that day. In other words,
Jesus is saying to his disciples, right now you cannot do this. But in that day you can
pray in my name and the Father will hear you. Now what does he mean by in that day? We find
out by going back to John chapter 14. Beginning in verse 16 we have the answer. Jesus again
to his disciples, I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper that he may
be with you forever. Another helper means one just like me. That is, says Jesus, the
Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it does not behold him or know him,
but you know him because he abides with you and will be in you. In other words, Jesus
says there is a change coming. This helper who is just like me, this Spirit of truth
is now with you, but he will be in you. Verse 18, I will not leave you as orphans, I will
come to you. In other words, Jesus says I am going to go away but I am going to come
to you. I will come back. He is coming in the person of the Spirit. After a little while
the world will behold me no more, but you will behold me because I live, you shall live
also. In that day you shall know that I am in my Father and you in me and I in you. So
in that day is used again. What day is Jesus pointing to? Well, he is looking ahead to
the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. He is saying right now my beloved
disciples, you may pray and you may ask me, but in that day I will have gone away and
you will receive on that day another helper, the Spirit of truth. And beginning on that
day you may pray in my name and exercise that authority. You see the point? The Holy Spirit
has been given to us in this age in a very special way to help us in our prayer lives.
We see this further by what the Apostle says in Ephesians 6, verse 18. After explaining
to us how important it is that we put on the whole armor of God, taking up each piece and
putting it in place, he says finally, with all prayer and petition, verse 18, pray at
all times in the Spirit. We are to pray in the Spirit. That is similar to what Jude says
in verse 20 of his little epistle when he says, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves
in the love of God. What does it mean to pray in the Holy Spirit? What it means is that
the Holy Spirit energizes our praying. Just as we depend upon the Holy Spirit to help
us in our witnessing and every other aspect of our Christian living, so we are to be consciously
dependent upon the Holy Spirit as we pray. He is here as our helper. He is here as our
teacher to teach us what it is to pray. I think it also means that he is working to
conform our prayers to the very prayers that Jesus Christ would offer. I think really that's
what it means to pray in Jesus' name. I am asking God what Jesus would ask for. I am
praying in his name, in his place. The Holy Spirit takes your prayers and mine and he
conforms those petitions to the petitions of Jesus Christ. Andrew Murray, a writer for
a different generation but who is still powerful in speaking to us today by his books, says,
The Holy Spirit, descending from Christ to us, draws us up into the great stream of his
ascending prayers. The Spirit prays for us without words, in the depths of a heart where
even the thoughts are at times formless. He takes us up into the wonderful flow of the
life of the triune God, though through the Spirit Christ's prayers become ours and
ours are made his. Isn't that tremendous? What a thought! He goes on to say, Living
in the name of Christ is the secret of praying in the name of Christ, and living in the Spirit
is necessary for praying in the Spirit. Abiding in Christ gives the right and power to ask
for what we desire. The extent of our abiding is equivalent to our power in prayer. In other
words, as I abide in Christ, I have power in prayer. If I am not abiding in Christ,
I have no power in prayer. The Holy Spirit is given to you and to me that he might energize
our prayer. As we abide in Christ and appropriate the power of the Holy Spirit, as we have talked
about in recent weeks, then our prayers are conformed to the prayers of Christ and God
hears them and answers our prayers. You and I have a helper in prayer, and that gives
us confidence in prayer. Verses 27 and 28 talk about that. Our confidence in prayer
is really two-fold. It says, And he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit
is. Many commentators say that it is God the Father, that he is the one who searches the
hearts. Personally, I believe that it is God the Son, that this is the Lord Jesus Christ.
Over in Revelation 2, verse 23, it says, All the church will know that I am he who searches
the minds and hearts. That is a quotation of Jesus Christ. Jesus said, I search the
minds and the hearts. Here it says, He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of
the Spirit is. One reason that I enjoy going to Cub Foods is because the price is there.
Another reason I enjoy going is because I like to watch them draw each of the articles
that I buy over that scanner. Isn't that neat? Automatically, that computer is able
to read that and write up on that piece of paper what I buy and how much it costs so
that I can go back home and review my whole shopping spree and weep as I get to the bottom
to see the total. A scanner is an amazing thing. You know what this verse is telling
me? That in a way, that is what the Lord Jesus Christ does with our hearts. He continually
scans. He searches our hearts. As He does that, the Spirit of God intercedes for us.
He lifts His wishes, His desires, which are the will of God for us so that the Lord Jesus
Christ sees those requests and lifts them in His high priestly ministry to God the Father.
In that way, my prayers and even times when I don't pray and the Holy Spirit lifts
His requests through me with groanings too deep for words, those requests are read by
the Lord Jesus Christ and given to God the Father. I have that encouragement and that
confidence in prayer that the Holy Spirit is interceding for me continually according
to the will of God. I think this also involves a filtering process. Aren't you glad that
God hasn't answered every prayer you've ever prayed? Some of the things we pray are
so dumb. I remember visiting someone in the hospital one time and this person was praying
and he was going in to surgery the next morning. X-rays had indicated there was something there
and the doctor was quite concerned about that shadow, that mass. He wanted to go in and
find it and see what it was. You know what this person prayed? Lord, help the doctor
not to find anything. I thought to myself, now wait a minute, why are you praying that?
You pray that the doctor be blind and not be able to see the mass that's in there?
Lord, I pray the doctor won't find anything. Now I think the Lord knows what the person
means in a case like that. That's not very intelligent prayer really. There are times
when you and I ask things that are not really too smart and the Holy Spirit filters our
praying. That's important. So what gets through to God is the will of God. The Holy Spirit,
because of His ministry in our prayer lives, gives us confidence. Gives us confidence in
prayer. Then it says in verse 29 that the other aspect of our confidence is this, that
because the Holy Spirit is continually bringing requests to God on our behalf, we know that
God causes all things to work together for good. To those who love God, to those who
are the called according to His purpose. In other words, believers. Those last few phrases
describe the true Christian, those who love God, those who are His called according to
His purpose, which we'll talk about at a later time. He says that we who are His people
have this confidence that God causes all things to work together for good. It does not say
here unfortunately that all things will be good for the Christian. There are some things
that are perfectly miserable. We still hurt, we suffer pain, we have heartache, we go through
trials, we have disappointments. There are times that we weep. Sometimes living for Jesus
Christ is right down hard. There are times when every day with Jesus is not sweeter than
the day before. Because of the circumstances that we pass through in this world. This verse
does not say that all things are good, but it says that God takes all of our circumstances
and He brings them out to good. That's the confidence that we have. It's sort of like
a pharmacist. If you were to take some of the ingredients in your medicine all by themselves,
they might hurt you or even kill you. But a pharmacist takes the order of a physician.
He takes the ingredients off the shelf, some of which are dangerous, and he blends them
together and mixes them in the right proportion so that you have not poison but medicine to
your life. My friend God takes the circumstances of your life and like a master pharmacist,
He blends and mixes together all of the circumstances and brings it out for good, not for ill.
You can trust Him. A beautiful illustration of this is Joseph, isn't it? Genesis 50
and 20 is the Romans 8 and 28 of the Old Testament. Joseph was cruelly mistreated by his own brothers.
And when it came time that they understood who Joseph was as a prince in Egypt, they
were fearful for he could do with them at that point as he pleased. Especially after
their father died were they frightened because that was his perfect opportunity to get even
with them. And so in Genesis 50 they come to him trembling and quaking and fearful.
And you know what Joseph says to them? They expect the worst. And he says, all that you
did to me, you intended for evil. And they did. But God has brought it out for good.
There are some of you today that are in tough circumstances. The situation you face, you
don't even know how to pray about it. May I encourage you today for the fact that you
have a helper within you and though you may not know what to pray for, He does, and as
you bow in prayer and that burden just rests on your heart and you're silent, not knowing
what to say, God the Holy Spirit is lifting prayer requests to God the Father according
to the will of God for you. And because of that will you please be confident that God
is working in your circumstances? No longer resist and rebel and get mad and angry at
God. I tell you there are some people so mad at God. A missionary friend of mine related
a story that illustrates this touchingly. He was in Japan and a fellow missionary who
had given up the luxuries of America such as they are and had gone to Japan with his
little family, lost a child. The little child died despite the fervent pleading of this
family with the Lord. At the cemetery this little body was being buried and this missionary
said, this is the will of God for me and my family. We rejoice and choose to give Him
that glory in it. There's a man who believes Romans 8.28, who though he weeps and though
his heart breaks is able to say, God is going to bring this out for good. Will you believe
that? Let me leave you with three brief applications to our lesson in the Word of God today. Number
one, establish a daily priority of prayer in your life. Theoretically you may have that,
but have you been keeping it? Have you been practicing it? Or have you gone to the battlefield
and lost the battle in prayer? Listen, you make prayer a priority this week, will you?
Establish a time when you and God will meet together. Let me encourage you as a part of
this to study prayer. Get Andrew Murray and E.M. Bounds and the scores of other authors
who have written about prayer and read them. That will help you understand prayer, but
you don't want to learn to pray until you begin exercising it. Discipline yourself in
prayer. Don't be lazy. Don't give up either. Don't get discouraged. Establish a daily priority
of prayer. Number two, begin depending upon your helper to make prayer effective. Realize
that you aren't left alone to pray. Depend upon the Holy Spirit. Ask Him to help you
to pray effectively. Take time to listen quietly as He may impress upon your heart some petition,
some what to pray for, some whom to pray for. And then search the Word as a part of that
too. And finally, relax in God's sovereign work and loving purpose in your life. Instead
of resisting and rebelling against God and your circumstances, will you today, like that
missionary, be willing to say, Lord, I am in pain, I am in grief, I am uncomfortable,
but today I thank you that you are working in my circumstances and I give you glory and
thanks in it. Will you relax? Will you rest upon God's sovereignty? Will you be assured
of His loving purpose? Heavenly Father, how I pray that you will make us effective prayers.
It's much easier to talk about prayer or to read about it than it is to pray. All of
us know that. And our need today is more in the area of practice than anywhere else. I
pray that there will be some of your children here who will this week establish or reestablish
prayers a priority every day. I pray that all of us may learn what it is to depend upon
the helper you've given us in our weakness. And I pray that we may have confidence in
prayer, knowing that as the sun searches our hearts continuously, that the Spirit is lifting
up petitions on our behalf according to the will of God so that all of our circumstances
are being worked out for good. Thank you for that blessed truth. In Jesus' name, amen.