Groans of Prayer - Romans 8:26-27

“Groans of Prayer”

Romans 8:26-27

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen.  

What do you do when the world is crashing in on you, on your loved ones, on your neighbors, on our nation, on the world? We know something about this, don’t we? Unemployment looms, illness threatens, society is quaking under threats from within and without. Teachers, parents, and students are all wondering what the fall will bring. Doctors, nurses, scientists and civil leaders are all wondering when this pandemic will ease. We feel it at home, at work, and all places in-between as finances are stretched tight, “make do” becomes the mantra, and patience wears thin.

In times like these, you often hear Christians encourage one another with the wise counsel to turn to the Lord in prayer.

                              Are we weak and heavy laden, cumbered with a load of care?
                              Precious Savior, still our refuge - take it to the Lord in prayer.                             
                              Do thy friends despise, forsake thee?  Take it to the Lord in prayer. 
                              In His arms He’ll take and shield thee, thou wilt find a solace there. (LSB, 770:3)

It’s good advice.  It’s Biblical advice because God Himself invites, encourages, and enables us to pray to Him in all times and places.  And for most of us, so often in our Christian lives, they are words of comfort and hope as we turn, in prayer, to our Triune God who made us, redeemed us, and makes us His. 

But what about those times when the world seems to fall on our shoulders and there is no conceivable way out.  When the needs are SO great, or the situation is just so complex, or our own confusion is so strong that we literally have no words that can express how we feel.  I’ve been there, many times – you probably have been there, too. A friend asks what’s wrong and all we can do is cry.  A spouse wants to know what’s bothering us and all we can do is open, close, open, close our mouth and shrug.  The world is spinning, we can feel every thump of the heart throughout the body, and the mind goes blank.  The mouth – which at other times we can’t seem to silence – suddenly falls mute.  There is no word to express the pain, anger, frustration, or hurt right now – all there is left is a groan. 

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a groan can be worth a thousand paragraphs.  The well-intentioned phrase, “Take it to the Lord in prayer” finally inspires a single word to pop out.  “How?”  How can we pray when we just can’t pray?  How can we pray for God’s grace if the words won’t come?  How can we pray the cry of the church, “Lord – Have mercy?” when our heart, mind, and mouth are like cold stone?  Even reading the Psalms, or Portals of Prayer, or a hymn seems impossible as you find yourself reading the same line over and over and over. How can we pray if we can’t even express to ourselves what is happening, let alone tell another person – even God?  How can we pray when we just can’t pray? 

When something this terrifying, shocking, complex or confusing happens to us reducing our prayer language from beautifully tuned phrases and sentences to deep-chested groans, what is happening? 

As Children of God, we live in “in-between” existence.  Today – right now – you and I stand as saints in God’s eyes, having been forgiven and made His through the victory of Christ on Easter morning.  The Scriptures have been fulfilled in Christ, and we have been given the promise of the resurrection of the body and the life which is to come.  But that is the promise of what is to come.  Right now, we are waiting for the consummation of Christ’s victory over sin, satan, and the world to take place when the full enjoyment and knowledge of God’s love will be made manifest.  Right now we, as saints, live in a world where there is great sin and struggle.  Some days, that world crashes against the life of faith – the Germans call this anfechtung – and the juxtaposition of one over and against the other doesn’t make sense. Sometimes this happens in ways that are so violent and so shocking that it literally leaves us speechless, and it reduces our prayers to groans.

When that happens, the Holy Spirit is there to intercede for you.  Just as the Holy Spirit gives you faith which believes in Christ as your Savior, so also the Spirit gives words and fullness of meaning to our groans.  I want you to know that when you are unable to pray or you don’t know what to pray, it’s not necessarily that your faith has been shattered by what has happened. Your faith might be sorely tested by what you are undergoing.  But tested faith isn’t the same as lost faith. Baptismal, Spirit-enlivened faith remains: you are God’s children, loved and precious in His sight.  You know that out of that love, God sent His Son into the world to live, suffer, and die in your place, securing your eternal victory in His resurrection on Easter Morning.  You know that you have been saved by Spirit-given faith in Christ, and as a result, you have the confidence of Mary and Martha that on the Last Day, you will rise from the dead to live eternally with Christ.  You believe that as the waters of Baptism were poured over your heads, you were given the blessed names of “Saint” and “Child of God.”  The Spirit, who instilled saving faith into your hearts, continues to live in you and enables you to confess the Christian faith.  The Spirit allows you to believe with hope (!!!) that there is much greater things to come than this world of tears; that one day, Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead; to reunite soul and body, and to take you – His faithful – to live eternally with Him in heaven.

That gives you surety, confidence, hope, courage, and strength as you walk through the valley of the shadow in this “in-between” existence.  When those days, events, and sorrows knock the very breath of prayer out of you, leaving you to groan in agony, the Holy Spirit continues to abide in and with you, instilling faith into your heart, allowing you to confess Christ as Lord, keeping your hearts and minds through faith unto life everlasting. And, when the words and thoughts and prayers don’t come – can’t come - the Holy Spirit fills turns our groans into the faith-filled prayer of the Church: “Lord, have mercy!  Christ, have mercy!  Lord, have mercy!”  As we groan in our needs and in our agony and in our sense of helplessness, the Holy Spirit takes our longings and true needs and turns them into beautiful petitions to the Father.

In that glorious mystery of the Trinity, the Father hears those Spirit-carried petitions for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ, who stands as your intercessor, the High Priest. There is someone who truly understands that which we don’t even fully understand, being able to put into prayers that which we can only groan!  But what is even better is that the Father hears the Spirit’s perfect prayer for us.  Our heavenly Father searches our hearts and He knows what our true needs are, even if we can’t identify or wrongly identify what we truly need.  And you can be certain that God’s Spirit will intercede for you in the best way, “according to the will of God,” as Paul says.  All of this because Christ Jesus has made you into God’s child, His beloved saint, through faith in His work for you.

For those times when you don’t even know what to pray, the words of this morning’s Epistle serve as great comfort and joy to troubled Christians.   For even when we don’t know what to pray for, we have an intercessor who prays on our behalf, perfectly presenting our petitions to the Heavenly Father for us. In our helplessness, our gracious triune God steps in to give us what we need.  In Christ, God’s Son, we are holy and have the right to prayer.  Through the Holy Spirit’s intercession, just the right prayers are offered for us, even when we can’t pray for ourselves.  And our loving Father will hear, and grant us the things we truly need, even when we don’t know what to pray.  In Jesus’ Name.  Amen.

Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more that all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever!  Amen! (Eph. 3:20).