Praying in the Spirit

March 25, 2020

And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will. Romans 8:26-27 NLT

These two verses have so much powerful information, we could live on them for a week! The first general statement is comforting and liberating: “The Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness.” We need the Spirit if for no other reason than that. We all are weak in a variety of ways. Think about the situation we are in across the world right now. It is exposing our weaknesses in ways we have been totally unaware of. Crisis exposes what is real and what is not. A meme going around on Facebook says with humor that in about three weeks, COVID-19 will have exposed what color of hair we all really have.😊 The truth gets exposed with regularity—we are weak. But the Holy Spirit is given to us to help with that very truth.

For example, Paul says the Holy Spirit helps us get it right when we pray. Most of us feel inadequate about our prayer lives. We face situations that we don’t have a clue what would resolve them. We need help in relationships and decisions. There are so many areas where we may know what we want, but if we are honest enough, we must admit that we aren’t totally sure that’s what is best. God wants us to pray in agreement with His will. The only way we can do that with certainty is with the help of the Holy Spirit. So when I pray, the Holy Spirit takes my desires and interprets them to the Father on my behalf. And He ALWAYS gets it right. He knows the will of God. What is the will of God? The will of God is EXACTLY what I would choose if I had all the information He has. The Holy Spirit has all that information and so He prays for us.

My two favorite prayers since I began to understand the depth of my weakness in knowing what is best and understanding that the Holy Spirit will pray for me are, “Lord, you know” and “Whatever.” The Holy Spirit takes my incomplete information and my complete surrender and prays for me. In return, God gives me answers that are more than I could ever imagine.

In the situation in which we find ourselves today, the wisest among us don’t really know what to pray, other than that people will turn to Jesus and God’s kingdom would come. So many people are spewing opinions, and they point us in all different directions. But the Holy Spirit can and will sort it out, pray for us according to God’s will, and give us peace that He is working. Our part is to surrender to Him, live in connection with Him, and trust.

• Today when you pray, try to take the entire time just telling God how much you trust Him to do what is right. Try not to tell Him anything to do, just tell Him where you need His clear will to be done. See what new peace might come from trusting the Holy Spirit to get it right.