Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ. Amen. “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our
weakness. We do not know what we ought
to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans that words
cannot express. And he who searches our
hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the
saints in accordance with God’s will.”
Dear friends in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I had intended to preach the Gospel parable this morning, but things
happened this last week that made me switch to this Epistle, instead. It
happens, often, in my vocation where I sit with Christians who are wrestling
with hard questions and issues of life. 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? Relationships crumble,
illness threatens, society is quaking under threats from within and without. Those
whom we love the most ache in ways we can’t fix.
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 the
pain and hurt is so deep, 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. Years ago, when I
was really in the pits of despair, a friend asked me if I had prayed about it. I remember staring, silent, until one word
popped out: “How?” Have you felt that? 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. Understand,
here, that I am not talking about choosing to not pray; making excuses for not
praying. Here, I mean, being unable to pray. Thoughts, words all fall silent. 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 battered, bruised and tested by what you
are undergoing. But tested faith isn’t
the same as lost faith. Remember: God promises that a smoldering wick and a bruised
reed will not be destroyed. 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).
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