"PRAYING IN THE SPIRIT"
He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will. Rom. 8:27, N.I.V.
Have you ever felt something that you just couldn't put into words? Then someone came along and verbalized your sentiments exactly. It was exciting and somehow comforting. Exciting because it gave your experience tangibility, comforting because you were no longer "alone" in it.
How many times we come to God is prayer and cannot find the words to encompass our yearnings and fears! Perhaps we desperately need to make ourselves understood but aren't even sure we totally understand. And so we struggle in prayer, hungry for the assurance not only that God is hearing us, but that His heart and ours are vibrating in unison.
God's great heart is vibrating in unison with ours! He picks up our sentences and finishes them. He gives our inner groanings a vehicle of expression that is unmatched in its comprehensiveness. In every way possible He echoes our own thoughts and feelings affirming our tentative faith in His total commitment to our personhood. He does this for us in the person of His Spirit.
In our text today we read that "the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will." If we see God as so totally exalted above us that He requires a go-between in order to make our prayers fit for His ears, we cannot readily enter into the bonding experience afforded to us through communion with Him. It cannot help underscoring our feelings of inadequacy if we think that our prayers have to be "laundered" or restated by the Holy Spirit before they become viable.
However, when we understand that it is God's posture to "lean forward" as it were, to catch every nuance of meaning as we talk to Him, we realize that the provision of the Spirit is for our sakes, not His. It is His way of helping "us in our present limitations" (Rom. 8:26, Phillips) to know that He knows what we are trying to say--because He can even provide the words! We may know that "He who searches our hearts" does so not to find fault in us but to assure us of the intensity of His desire to enter into total union with us.
"What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us?" (verse 31, N.I.V.).
He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will. Rom. 8:27, N.I.V.
Have you ever felt something that you just couldn't put into words? Then someone came along and verbalized your sentiments exactly. It was exciting and somehow comforting. Exciting because it gave your experience tangibility, comforting because you were no longer "alone" in it.
How many times we come to God is prayer and cannot find the words to encompass our yearnings and fears! Perhaps we desperately need to make ourselves understood but aren't even sure we totally understand. And so we struggle in prayer, hungry for the assurance not only that God is hearing us, but that His heart and ours are vibrating in unison.
God's great heart is vibrating in unison with ours! He picks up our sentences and finishes them. He gives our inner groanings a vehicle of expression that is unmatched in its comprehensiveness. In every way possible He echoes our own thoughts and feelings affirming our tentative faith in His total commitment to our personhood. He does this for us in the person of His Spirit.
In our text today we read that "the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will." If we see God as so totally exalted above us that He requires a go-between in order to make our prayers fit for His ears, we cannot readily enter into the bonding experience afforded to us through communion with Him. It cannot help underscoring our feelings of inadequacy if we think that our prayers have to be "laundered" or restated by the Holy Spirit before they become viable.
However, when we understand that it is God's posture to "lean forward" as it were, to catch every nuance of meaning as we talk to Him, we realize that the provision of the Spirit is for our sakes, not His. It is His way of helping "us in our present limitations" (Rom. 8:26, Phillips) to know that He knows what we are trying to say--because He can even provide the words! We may know that "He who searches our hearts" does so not to find fault in us but to assure us of the intensity of His desire to enter into total union with us.
"What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us?" (verse 31, N.I.V.).
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