Romans 8:26-27 (ESV) Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. ²⁷  And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

These two verses form one of the most important passages on prayer in the whole New Testament. Paul is saying that, because of our weakness, we do not know what to pray for, but the prayers we ought to offer are offered (interpreted) for us by the Holy Spirit.

Paul wants to encourage us, especially when we feel our own weakness, because the Holy Spirit is praying for us. Even though we do not know how to pray as we should, we should be encouraged to keep praying.

Douglas Moo (The Epistle to the Romans [Eerdmans], p. 526) summarizes Paul’s thought in these verses: “Paul is saying … that our failure to know God’s will and consequent inability to petition God specifically and assuredly is met by God’s Spirit, who himself expresses to God those intercessory petitions that perfectly match the will of God. When we do not know what to pray for—yes, even when we pray for things that are not best for us—we need not despair, for we can depend on the Spirit’s ministry of perfect intercession “on our behalf.”

1. H. Dodd defines prayer in this way: “Prayer is the divine in us appealing to the Divine above us.”

The Holy Spirit helps our infirmities. It is true that He helps us in all our infirmities, but the point of the present passage deals only with prayer.

The Spirit is not going to force us to pray. It is our responsibility to pray: to take the time to get alone and pray. When we do this the Spirit begins to act both upon us and for us.

The Stoic taught that the duty of every man was acceptance. If he accepted the things that God sent him, he knew peace. If he struggled against them, he was uselessly battering his head against the purpose of God.

Knowing that the Holy Spirit tenderly prays for us in our weakness should encourage us to pray.

A sense of our weakness will drive us to pray.

Paul did not set himself on a pedestal as an example of spiritual strength. Rather, he included himself with us as one who was weak.

Sometimes a small pronoun in the Bible can make a lot of difference. Paul did not write, “… the Spirit also helps your weakness,” but rather, “the Spirit also helps our weakness.”

A main reason that we do not pray as frequently or as fervently as we should might be that “we do not recognize/acknowledge how weak we really are.”

If we knew ourselves to be weak, we would constantly be coming to the Lord and crying out for His strength.

Jesus did not say, “Without Me, you can get along with all of the everyday stuff. But when you get hit with something really big, call on Me.”

Rather, He said (John 15:5), “… apart from Me, you can do nothing.”

We tend to look at the spiritual giants in the Bible and think, “Wow, they were so strong!” Look at Elijah! What a guy! He called down fire on his sacrifice and then slaughtered 400 prophets of Baal. Twice he called down fire to consume a commander and fifty armed men who were sent to arrest him. Don’t mess with Elijah!

And yet James (5:17) tells us, “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed ….” Elijah was weak, just like we are. But he prayed to the God who is strong.

Consider Moses. He stood up to the most powerful monarch in the world (Pharoah) by calling down miraculous plagues on him and his kingdom. He parted the Red Sea so that the Israelites could pass through on dry ground and then he brought the sea back over the heads of the pursuing Egyptian army.

He brought water from a rock in the barren desert. At his word, the ground opened up and swallowed alive those who challenged his leadership. He seemed to be a rock of spiritual strength!

And yet in the mournful Psalm 90, he laments the frailty and shortness of life. The psalm ends with his pathetic plea (Ps. 90:17), “Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us; and confirm for us the work of our hands; yes, confirm the work of our hands.”

I’ve often thought, “If Moses needed to beg God to confirm his labors, how much more do I!” Moses was aware of his own weakness, which is why he prayed.

Look at the Jesus. He alone lived a sinless life on this wicked earth. He boldly confronted the religious leaders without fearing their threats. He overturned their money tables and pronounced woes on their hypocrisy.

If anyone seemed to be strong, it was Jesus. And yet He said (John 5:19), “The Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing.”

In His humanity, Jesus knew that He must depend on the Father for all things. He is a model for us of praying at all times and for all things (Luke 18:1). Our weakness should cause us to cry out to God in prayer.

Hudson Taylor: “All God’s giants have been weak men who did great things for God because they reckoned on God being with them.”

The next time you’re about to explode, run to Jesus. Every time you feel your weakness and inability, call out to Jesus.

Our weakness extends to our prayer lives.

Part of the weakness that Paul refers to is weakness in prayer: “for we do not know how to pray as we should.”

He is not talking about the method or technique of praying, but rather the content.

Paul wrestled with the same thing in Philippians 1:22-24, where he couldn’t decide whether to pray that the Lord would take him home, which was Paul’s desire, or preserve his life for further ministry.

Moses entreated the Lord to let him enter the Promised Land, but that was not God’s will (Deut. 3:25-26).

Elijah, man of prayer that he was, asked the Lord to take his life (1 Kings 19:4).

Jesus, in His humanity, prayed that if possible, the Father might allow Him to escape from the cross, if it would be God’s will (Matt. 26:36-46).

The point is, we’re all weak in many areas, including prayer. We often don’t know how to pray as we should. But, thankfully, God doesn’t leave us to ourselves:

We saw in our study of the Holy Spirit a few weeks back on Wednesday, that the Holy Spirit is a person, the third member of the Godhead.

The Holy Spirit is not an impersonal force. He helps us in our weakness by praying for us, which an impersonal force cannot do.

God is one God who exists eternally as three distinct persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Deut. 6:4; James 2:19; Matt. 28:19).

The fact that the Spirit prays for us shows that He is distinct from the Father, to whom He prays.

Also, the Father knows perfectly the mind of the Spirit and the Spirit prays perfectly in accord with the will of the Father.

The Holy Spirit indwells everyone who belongs to Jesus Christ (Rom. 8:9). And so His ministry of prayer comes from within us, while Jesus’ ministry of intercession (8:34) takes place at the right hand of the Father.

The Holy Spirit helps us.

The word used for “helps” occurs only here and in one other place in the New Testament. The meaning is, someone is carrying a heavy load and another person comes alongside to take the other end and bear the burden with him.

The other use of “help” is in Luke 10:40, where Jesus is in the home of Mary and Martha. Mary was sitting at Jesus’ feet, but Martha was distracted with all her preparations. Finally, she burst out, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving alone? Then tell her to help me.” She wanted her sister to help bear the burden of preparing and serving the meal.

The word implies that the Holy Spirit doesn’t do everything, while we sit back and do nothing.

Rather, we are to keep praying and, if appropriate, keep working or obeying or whatever the Bible may tell us to do about our situation.

But as we pray, the Spirit says, “Let Me grab the other end. Let me help you by picking up your burden and taking it before the Father’s throne.

“I know what to pray for when you don’t.” The Holy Spirit helps us by interceding for us on an emotional level. “The Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”

What does this mean? We don’t have anything to compare it with, since this is the only reference to such a thing in Scripture.

As you can predict, there are differing views of what this phrase means.

My understanding is that the Spirit’s groaning on our behalf is an anthropomorphism, which is to attribute human emotions to God.

Paul pictures the Holy Spirit taking up our needs at the deepest emotional level and conveys our hurts and cares to the Father’s throne, all in line with the will of God. This should encourage us to pour out our hearts before Him (Ps. 62:8).

The Holy Spirit helps us by interceding for us according to the will of God.

If the Father understands all human hearts, then He must know the unspoken groans of the Holy Spirit on our behalf. The Spirit takes our deepest feelings and unexpressed needs to the Father, who understands everything perfectly. Nothing leaves God scratching His head, wondering what our real needs are. Pour out your heart honestly to Him.

The Holy Spirit’s prayers for us are always according to God’s will and thus are always answered.

The last phrase of 8:27 seems to say that the Holy Spirit makes corrections for any misdirected prayers that we make by praying for us according to the will of God.

The last phrase of 8:27 seems to say that the Holy Spirit makes corrections (“interprets”) any misdirected prayers that we make by praying for us according to the will of God.

Part of our weakness in prayer is that we’re not able to know God’s sovereign will, in the sense of His decree, until after it has happened.

But there is a mystery here that we cannot fully understand.

Samson’s parents rightly exhorted him not to marry a Philistine woman. But they did not know that God wanted to use Samson’s wrong desires to bring judgment on the Philistines (Judges 14:1-4).

Jeremiah was right to pray that God would spare His people from the Babylonians for His name’s sake. But God’s sovereign will in that situation was to judge them (Jer. 14:19-15:2).

Satan demanded permission to sift Peter like wheat by tempting him to deny Christ. If I had heard that demand, I would have prayed that God would keep Peter from sinning.

But Jesus, who knew the will of God perfectly, did not pray that Peter would not sin, but rather that his faith would not totally fail and that after he was restored, he would strengthen his brothers (Luke 22:31-32).

The believer never need faint in times of suffering and trial because he knows that God is at work in the world (Rom. 8:28), and that He has a perfect plan (Rom. 8:29).

Best of all, God’s plan is going to succeed! (more next week)

There are two very obvious reasons why we cannot pray as we ought. First, we cannot pray aright because we cannot foresee the future.

We cannot see a year or even an hour ahead; and we may well pray, therefore, to be saved from things which are for our good and we may pray for things which would be to our ultimate harm.

In the last analysis the perfect prayer is simply, “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit. Not my will, but Thine be done.”

Second, we cannot pray because in any given situation we do not know what is best for us.

We are often in the position of a child who wants something which would be bound only to hurt him; and God is often in the position of a parent who has to refuse his child’s request or compel him to do something he does not want to do, because he knows what is to the child’s good far better than the child himself.

We cannot know our own real need; we cannot with our finite minds grasp God’s plan; in the last analysis all that we can bring to God is an inarticulate sigh which the Spirit will translate to God for us.

So while there are difficult details in these verses, the bottom line is pretty clear: We should be encouraged to pray.

If you are praying unknowingly for something that is not His will, you can trust that the Spirit will take your prayers and line them up with God’s perfect will.

He has ordained prayer as the means through which we cooperate with Him in bringing about His sovereign will.