The Holy Spirit Prays For You - The Truth About Prayer

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.

WE HAVE ALREADY TALKED ABOUT THE TRUTH THAT GOD ISN’T SURPRISED WE DON’T KNOW HOW TO PRAY. We can take a deep breath and a sigh of relief. God knows. God understands. We can even affirm that he has given us a high priest in Jesus who brings us before the Father, so we do not stand alone in his presence. Instead, we are covered and carried by Jesus, through whose life, death, and resurrection we receive God’s presence.

And yet, even though I know these truths—even though I can affirm all sorts of good things about prayer—it often feels like I’m alone doing all the work. Prayer is something I do. Maybe you feel that same struggle. Maybe prayer feels more like something you should do but don’t often get around to. Here I think we discover our problem. When prayer is something we think we need to get done, or an activity we generate, we discover quickly that it isn’t something we tend to do. But what if I told you that isn’t what prayer is? What if I told you that prayer is something you enter? Here is the truth about prayer—before you utter a word you are being invited into something already happening for your sake. Even in our struggle to make time to pray, God meets us in our weakness.

In Romans 8:26-27, Paul tells us that the Spirit has been sent into our souls. It is there, Paul proclaims, that “the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (ESV). The Spirit intercedes for you from the depths of your heart. The Spirit sees all the places you struggle. The Spirit knows your deepest pain, brokenness, and despair. The Spirit doesn’t look at these from afar, but the Spirit has descended into these places, and knows them even more than you do. The Spirit is present to you in your deepest places, and the Spirit prays for you there.

We are told something similar about the Son. The Son “always lives to make intercession” for us in the presence of the Father (Hebrews 7:25, ESV). Before we utter a word in prayer, the Spirit is groaning for us from our deepest places, and the Son stands before the Father on our behalf and prays for us. Our own words are caught up in theirs. Our own praying is carried along by their prayers. When we pray, we are entering the intercession of the Son and the Spirit on our behalf, as our prayers rise up to the Father.

How might remembering the Son and Spirit’s intercession change how you pray? If God already has prayed the words you are afraid to, if the Father really knows all we need even before we ask (Matthew 6:8), what keeps you from bringing things to him? What might it look like to just “present yourself” (Romans 6:13) to God, trusting that his prayers are enough?