Our Helper In Prayer: Pt. 2 — A ‘Time With God’ Devotion

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Transcript

Good morning. As you get this day started, I’m glad you’re starting it the best way possible, not with me, but as we together open the Bible and say, God, what do you have to say to us for our lives today, because the great thing about the Bible is it’s the means by which God communicates to us.

It’s not just the words on the page that communicate to us even though they are full of great life principles, but the reality is the living God of the universe takes the words on the page, these principles of life and words of truth, and uses them to personally communicate with us in our hearts, and that’s what makes life so exciting, living in personal relationship with God.

What could be better than that? So, ah, let’s go to the Bible this week we’re talking about our helper in prayer that God has given to us, the Holy Spirit.

And I want to go back to the same two verses that we read yesterday and read them again and draw some more insights out of them. Romans chapter 8 in the Bible, verses 26 and 27.

And in the same way, the spirit also helps our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we should. But the spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

And he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the spirit is because he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

Well, sometimes you don’t know what to pray, do you?

And you open your Bible, you go to the Psalms, a place we love to read in the Bible, but you read the prayers of David in the Psalms and the prayers of others that are in the Psalms and you think, ‘oh, those prayers are so beautiful expressions of people’s hearts to God and just their whole heart, their whole emotions are involved. I can’t pray beautiful words like that…’

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And sometimes even if normally your prayer life is really vibrant and alive, you go through a dry period where things don’t seem as meaningful and God doesn’t seem as close and as real to you, and you feel like your prayers aren’t going anywhere, or you can’t even think of what to pray.

Well, the Bible doesn’t just describe the perfect spiritual situation, does it? It talks about real life. Even when you read the Psalms, you see David getting upset at God and frustrated and saying, Where are you, God? Why are my prayers not being answered? And then, as he talks to God so often, God changes his heart, and by the end of the prayer, by the end of that Psalm, his whole attitude has changed, and really this is the lesson we need to learn.

Even when we don’t know what to pray, God has given us His Holy Spirit in our hearts and minds to help us to pray.

And when our prayer times seem dry and we don’t know how to communicate with God, the Holy Spirit is getting involved, and it’s so important, in fact, maybe even more important in those times to keep on praying, to keep on talking to God and listening to Him and allowing Him to do His work in our hearts. The way through a dry period in your prayer life is not to stop praying. That’s just the way into a total desert.

The right way to respond to not knowing how to pray or what to pray is just to pray anyway and trust that the Holy Spirit will intercede for you sometimes with groanings too deep for words when you’re really distraught and distressed. Pray anyway and trust the Holy Spirit to take what’s in your heart that you can’t put into words and communicate it to God the Father.

Then you’ll find life coming back into your prayer life. Don’t ever leave prayer behind. It is the heart of your relationship with God.

I’m John North.

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