The Apostle Paul wrote to the churches in Rome, “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words” (Romans 8.26) – or in the words of the Good News Bible, “The Spirit… comes to help us, weak as we are. For we do not know how we ought to pray; the Spirit himself pleads with God for us in groans that words cannot express”. Eugene Paterson in his paraphrase wrote: “If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans” (The Message).
The Greek word Paul uses here for “helps us” (sunantilambetai) is found only once elsewhere in the New Testament and that is in the story of Mary and Martha, in which we read that Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me” (Luke 10.40). This Greek word has the meaning of coming to the aid of somebody, of lending a hand, or of being involved with whatever the problem may be. As Colin Kruse commented:
While the Spirit undoubtedly helps believers generally in their weakness, the particular weakness in which the Spirit helps them is their not knowing ‘what to pray for’.
At first sight this may seem surprising, for elsewhere Paul gives many examples of what people ought to pray (see 1 Corinthians 14.13; Philippians 1.9; Colossians 1.9 and 4.3; 1 Thessalonians 5.25; 2 Thessalonians1.11 and 3.1). However there are times when Paul was aware when he and others did not know what to pray for. When this is the case, Paul assured us that the Spirit helps us.
Here we see that when we pray, we are not alone. In the words of Friedrich Heiler, “Prayer is not man’s work or discovery or achievement, but God’s work in man”. “That very Spirit”, wrote Paul, “intercedes with sighs too deep for words”; or as the GNB puts it “pleads with God for us in groans that words cannot express”. What are these “sighs” or “groans”? Some have suggested that Paul is referring to speaking in tongues. As Frank Macchia commented “In tongues we groan for a liberty in the Spirit that is not yet fulfilled”. However, as many scholars have pointed out, the problem with this suggestion is that ‘tongues’ are a form of praise, whereas the prayer in question here in Romans 8.26 is that of intercession. Tom Wright, an Anglican scholar, interpreted this as the corporate “groaning of the church in the midst of a groaning world”. To put it another way, the Spirit and we sigh at the calamitous state of the world, with its hunger, disease, wars and oppression, in ways which are too deep and too vast to be easily expressed in plain words. Or as James Denney wrote, these sighs “baffle words”.
In the following verse, Paul went on: “And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8.27). Even when we do know what to ask for, we cannot always be sure whether it is in line with God’s purposes. As Peter O’Brien noted:
That is a very important qualification, especially for those who think that faith always gets its request from God. God is clearly sovereign over our prayers and knows when to say no to them. In fact, from the perspective of true faith, God’s ‘no’ is actually a ‘yes’, for it is an affirmation of his love in giving us what we need rather than what we want.
Richard Foster, a great American spiritual writer, said:
The Spirit reshapes, refines and reinterprets our feeble, ego-driven prayers… When we stumble over our words the Spirit straightens out the syntax. When we pray with muddy motives, the Spirit purifies the stream. When we see through a glass darkly, the Spirit adjusts and focusses what we are asking until it corresponds to the will of God.
In my own experiences, there are times when we just don’t know what it is right to pray for. For instance, when I have visited desperately sick people, I have sometimes not known whether to pray for healing or whether to pray that God will take them to himself. All I can do is to entrust such people to God’s loving care. Similarly, when I pray for the people of Ukraine, I find it difficult to know how to pray for an end to all the fighting. All I can do is to ask the Spirit to help me and allow him to intercede for the people of Ukraine “according to the will of God”.
Thank God for sending his Spirit to help us in our weakness to pray!