Twelve - The Unrealized Logic of Prayer
Twelve
The Unrealized Logic of Prayer
Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose (Romans 8:26–28).
Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit . . . (Ephesians 6:18).
Praying in the Holy Spirit . . . (Jude 20).
Ephesians 6:18 and Jude 20 are not quite identical with Romans 8:26. In the former, man prays in the atmosphere produced by the Holy Spirit indwelling and surrounding him; in the latter, the Holy Spirit Himself prays in man. The similarity is obvious, but the point of difference is often missed in thinking about prayer. We realize that we are energized by the Holy Spirit for prayer. We know what it is to pray in the atmosphere and the presence of the Holy Spirit. But we do not so often realize that the Holy Spirit Himself prays in us with prayers that we cannot utter.
Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered (Romans 8:26).
The great thought that we do not realize sufficiently is the interchanging action of the Divine Spirit and the human spirit. This interchanging action of the Divine and human at every stage of our religious life is vividly expressed here. The best example of the Divine Spirit working in a human spirit is seen in our Lord Jesus Christ. According to some expositors, we are so infirm that the Spirit of God brushes aside all our infirmities and prays without regard to us. But we find that our Lord recognized the difference between His own Spirit and the Spirit of God, and that His mind was always in subordination to the mind of God. “I can of Myself do nothing.”
The Uncovered Truth of Our Infirmities
Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. . . .
To ask how we are to get our prayers answered is a different point of view from the New Testament. According to the New Testament, prayer is God’s answer to our poverty, not a power we exercise to obtain an answer. We have the idea that prayer is only an exercise of our spiritual life. “Pray without ceasing.” We read that the disciples said to our Lord, “Lord, teach us to pray.” The disciples were good men and well-versed in Jewish praying, yet when they came in contact with Jesus Christ, instead of realizing they could pray well, they came to the conclusion they did not know how to pray at all, and our Lord instructed them in the initial stages of prayer.
Most of us can probably remember a time before we were born again when we were “religious” and could pray fairly well; but after we were born again we became conscious of what Paul mentions here, our utter infirmity—“I do not know how to pray.” We became conscious not only of the power God has given us by His Spirit, but of our own utter infirmity. We hinder our life of devotion when we lose the distinction in thinking between these two. Reliance on the Holy Spirit for prayer is what Paul is bringing out in this verse. It is an unrealized point. We state it glibly enough, but Paul touches the thing we need to remember. He uncovers the truth of our infirmity. The whole source of our strength is receiving, recognizing, and relying on the Holy Spirit.
The Unsyllabled Torment of Our Inability
For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought. . . .
The only platform from which the holiest saint on earth is ever heard is the platform mentioned in Hebrews 10:19, that is, we have “boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus.” There is no other way. When we come into the presence of God, the human side of our praying makes us realize what Paul is trying to teach, that if we are ever going to approach God and pray acceptably, it must be by the “piece of God” in us which He has given us. Some of the qualities of God must be merged into us before our prayers can be fit for His acceptance.
We are all familiar with Luke 11:13, but we do not always remember that our Lord spoke the words in connection with receiving the Holy Spirit for prayer. Paul in Romans 8:26 beats out into gold leaf the nugget that our Lord gives in Luke 11:13. When I realize that I cannot approach God, that I cannot see as God sees, that I am choked up with things my eyes see, my flesh wants, and the empty spaces round my heart want, then Jesus says, “If you, being evil,”—we know that is our infirmity—if you ask God for the Holy Spirit, He will give Him to you (see Matthew 7:11). That is, God will be merged into me, and I can begin to think about real prayer, relying on what God has planted in me for prayer. Otherwise, we could never get near Him. The crush of our infirmities would paralyze the words on our lips. We can only pray acceptably in the Spirit, that is, by the Holy Spirit in us. All the rest is being “cumbered about.”
The disposition of sin is removed in sanctification—there is no doubt about that. But Paul insists that the body is not changed, the body we had and which was ruled by the wrong disposition of sin still remains (see Romans 6:12–19). We have to use that body now and make it a slave to the new disposition, and we have to realize the need to do it more in prayer than in anything else.
The Unutterable Tenderness of the Intercession
But the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.
The spirit of a man, whether it be energized by the Spirit of God or not, is bound to try and express itself in the body, which becomes its soul manifest. If it refuses to express itself in a rational way, it will express itself in an irrational, stupid way. When the Spirit of God energizes the spirit of a man, the man is taken up into the great mystery of the intercession of the Holy Spirit. If the Holy Spirit is allowed to dwell in the human spirit He has energized, He will express the unutterable. Think what that means. It means being quickened by the incoming of the Holy Spirit who comes in to dwell supremely, and the amazing revelation in that He intercedes in us, for us, with a tenderness exactly in accordance with the mind of God.
Have we ever allowed our minds to dwell on this element of prayer? “The sinner out of heart with self is nearest God in prayer.” It is a mistake to interpret prayer on the natural instead of on the spiritual line—to say that prayer is divine because it brings us peace and joy and makes us feel better. This is the mere accident or effect of prayer. There is no real God-given revelation in it. This is the God-given revelation: that when we are born again of the Spirit of God and indwelt by the Holy Spirit, He intercedes for us with a tenderness and an understanding akin to the Lord Jesus Christ and akin to God, that is, He expresses the unutterable for us.
The Unrivaled Power of Prayer
Now He who searches the hearts knoweth what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God (Romans 8:27).
The Unimagined Interest of God. “Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is. . . .” The Holy Spirit, when He comes into the hidden sphere of our life, applies the Atonement to us in the unconscious as well as in the conscious realm. He works out in us the understanding of sin that God has; and only when we grasp the unrivaled power of the Spirit in us can we understand the meaning of 1 John 1:7, “the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.” This does not refer to conscious sin only, but to the sin that only the Holy Spirit in us realizes, and God searches our hearts to find out what the intercession of His Spirit is.
There are tremendous thoughts expressed in God’s Book, and unless we have learned to rely on the Holy Spirit we shall say, “Oh, I shall never understand that.” But the Holy Spirit in us understands it, and as we recognize and rely on Him, He will work it out, whether we consciously understand or not. The point for us to remember is that we must get to the place of thinking spiritually. Never depend on your personal experiences of salvation, sanctification, or the baptism of the Holy Spirit. These experiences are simply doorways into a life. We have to realize this great revealed thought underneath, that the Holy Spirit is working out in us the mind of God even as He worked out the mind of God in Christ Jesus.
The Undiscovered Intercession before God. “Because He makes intercession for the saints. . . .” Who does? The Holy Spirit in us. And God searches our hearts, not to know what our conscious prayers are, but to find out what the prayer of the Holy Spirit is behind all our conscious praying. “And the sound of the wings of the cherubim was heard even in the outer court, like the voice of Almighty God when he speaks” (Ezekiel 10:5). And slowly and surely God discerns in the life of the individual saint what He discerned always in His Son, who said, “I came down from heaven not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me” (see John 4:34). As we rely on the Holy Spirit we learn to brood along the line of His expression of the unutterable in us.
The Unsurpassed Identification with God. “According to the will of God.” Look back over your own history with God in prayer, and you will find that the glib days of prayers are done. When we draw on the human side of our experience only, our prayers become amazingly flippant and familiar, and we ourselves become amazingly hard and metallic. But if we rely on the Holy Spirit, we shall find that our prayers become more and more inarticulate, and when they are inarticulate, reverence grows deeper and deeper, and undue familiarity has the effect of a sudden blow on the face.
There is something hopelessly incongruous in a flippant statement before God. We can always measure our growth in grace by what Paul is stating here. Am I growing slowly to lisp the very prayers of God? Is God gratified (if I may use the phrase) in seeing that His Spirit is having His way at last in a life, and turning that life into what will glorify His Son?
The Unrecognized Providence of Prayer
And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28).
At first glance this verse seems to have nothing to do with the previous verses, but it has an amazingly close connection with them.
The Undefiled Shrine of Consciousness. “And we know that. . . to those who love God. . . .” Do you remember how Paul never wearied of saying, “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?” Recall what Jesus Christ said about the historic temple, which is the symbol of the body. He ruthlessly turned out those who sold and bought in the temple, and said, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of thieves’” (Matthew 21:13). Let us apply that to ourselves. We have to remember that our conscious life, though only a tiny bit of our personality, is to be regarded by us as a shrine of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will look after the unconscious part we do not know, but we must guard the conscious part for which we are responsible as a shrine of the Holy Spirit. If we recognize this as we should, we shall be careful to keep our body undefiled for Him.
The Undetected Sacredness of Circumstances. “All things work together for good. . . .” The circumstances of a saint’s life are ordained by God, and not by happy-go-lucky chance. There is no such thing as chance in the life of a saint, and we shall find that God, by His providence, brings our bodies into circumstances that we cannot understand a bit, but the Spirit of God understands. He is bringing us into places and among people and under conditions in order that the intercession of the Holy Spirit in us may take a particular line.
Do not, therefore, suddenly put your hand in front of the circumstances and say, “No, I am going to be my own amateur providence. I am going to watch this and guard that.” “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; and lean not on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5). The point to remember is that all our circumstances are in the hand of God.
The Spirit imparts a solemnity to our circumstances and makes us understand something of the travail of Jesus Christ. It is not that we enter into the agony of intercession, it is that we intercede for the people He has placed around us; we present their cases before Him and give the Holy Spirit a chance to intercede for them. We bring the particular people and circumstances before God’s throne, and the Holy Spirit in us has a chance to intercede for them. That is how God is going to sweep the whole world by His saints.
Are we making the Holy Spirit’s work difficult by being indefinite, or by trying to do His work for Him? We must be the human side of the intercession, and the human side is the circumstances we are in, the people with whom we are in contact. We have to use our common sense in keeping our conscious life and our circumstances as a shrine of the Holy Spirit, and as we bring the different ones before God, the Holy Spirit presents them before the Throne all the time. The Holy Spirit does the interceding, but we must do our part. We must do the human side while He does the Divine. So never think it strange concerning the circumstances you are in.
The Undeviating Security of His Calling. “To them who are the called according to His purpose.” To talk about our intercession for another as the means of doing what the Bible says, “The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much” (James 5:16), sounds utterly ridiculous until our thinking is renewed through the Atonement and the indwelling Holy Spirit. Then it is an amazing revelation of the marvelous love and condescension of God, that in Christ Jesus and by the reception of the Holy Spirit, He can take us—sin-broken, sin-diseased, wrong creatures—and remake us entirely until we are really the ones in whom the Holy Spirit intercedes as we do our part.
Are we making it easy for the Holy Spirit to work out God’s will in us, or are we continually putting Him on one side by the empty requests of our natural hearts, Christians though we be? Are we bringing ourselves into such obedience that our every thought and imagination is brought into captivity to the Lord Jesus Christ, and is the Holy Spirit having an easy way through us more and more?
Remember, your intercession can never be mine, and my intercessions can never be yours, but the Holy Spirit makes intercession for us, without which intercession someone will be impoverished. Let us remember the depth and height and solemnity of our calling as saints.