The Spirit Prays For Us

The Spirit prays for us.

We do not know what to pray, nor necessarily to pray for that which we do not know what to pray for.

Neither did we know how to pray, nor even how to pray for what we do not know to pray for, but our Lord has taught us.

He did not merely teach us how to pray, but he has trained us in his own Spirit.

It is the Spirit himself who groans with us, who sweats with dark drops of desperation in his ongoing labor for our spirits. He is not unknown, unheard or unanswered. Unhindered in his passion he belts out his signs and groans along with us—yet it is in these groans where we find ourselves. And in this action we find ourselves included into the Trinity: In the election of the Father as he has in his Word provided the means for this result, in the work of the Son in who’s wounds we are now found, and in the Spirit as he is even now in us preserving our space in the Sacred.

The Spirit prays for us.

This labor is not in vain or despair but in eager expectation which is our own in him. The Father knows his saints by his own willful interceding on behalf of them in the Spirit whom he himself knows. And in our own experience, all things allowed are being used like tools, no matter how painfully wicked, repulsive, tragic, or evil, to now work good in our lives. These events and actions, despite their once malicious intent, have in Christ been wrested away from the powers that work them. In the Spirit’s continuous intercession within His unity, he magnificently transforms these vilest of situations to work for us. Painful no doubt, yet nothing compared to future glory, the Spirit continues to work the will of God and will see it through to its end.

The Spirit prays for us.

And what does He pray? What do you pray for and how often do you pray for it? If you being sinful and corrupt in mind and motive pray earnestly for such good things as peace, faith, justice, and love, does not the Spirit pray for the same things with greater passion? He being there from the beginning, hovering over the waters, being breathed out from God into your lungs, in the cool of the day driving away the winds, waters, and tempest, in the cool of the tomb, and even at your baptism, does he now not know what to pray for? Does he not pray for the Lord’s will with more earnest groans and deeper sighs than humanity? He does, and he does it well.

With the world in chaos and disarray—with all of creation groaning for redemption, we ourselves groan with heavy hearts because we do not know what to pray for.

With death and violent injustice circumscribing our experience, we look to the Lord’s instruction on how to pray— Our Father . . .

And The Spirit does not merely mimic us, but he trains us to finish it — . . . Deliver us from Evil

The Spirit prays for us.