It sounds strange to say that our suffering can somehow be beneficial to us. Some would say it even sounds un-Christian. How can cancer be beneficial? How can the loss of a job be beneficial? How can a broken marriage be beneficial? How can public humiliation be beneficial? How can tears at midnight be beneficial?
Our text explains it this way. Our suffering reveals our weakness. It strips away the mask of self-sufficiency and reveals our utter helplessness. It forces us to confront our own inabilities. It makes us say, “I’m not as strong as I thought I was. I’m not invincible." Verse 26 says the Spirit “helps” us in our weakness. The word translated “help” means “to come to the aid of someone in desperate need." You are in the stands watching a race and you see a runner faltering in the final turn. He stumbles and is about to fall. Seeing that he is not going to make it, you rush from the stands, come to his side, put your arm around him, and say, “Brother, I see that you aren’t going to make it. Let me help you to the finish line." That’s what the Holy Spirit does for us. He sees when we are in trouble and he comes to our aid.
How does he do it? Paul tells us that the Spirit “intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express." The Holy Spirit prays for us. The Spirit who is himself the third member of the Trinity prays to the Father (the first member of the Trinity) in the name of the Son (the second member of the Trinity) for us in our moment of weakness. It is God praying to God on behalf of God’s children! What an amazing thought this is.
Have you ever been in a situation so desperate that you couldn’t pray? Have you ever been so emotionally exhausted that you tried to pray but the words wouldn’t come out? Have you ever been so frightened that all you could do was cry out, “Oh God"?
It’s happened to me a few times. That leads me to make this observation: The more you care about something, the harder it is to pray for it. The reason we can pray so easily for others is that we’re not that deeply invested in them. It’s easy to pray for people you don’t know because it doesn’t matter that much whether or not your prayers are answered. The more you care, the harder it is to pray. When it comes to those things in your life that really matter–your husband, your wife, your children–those things are hard to pray for because they are close to your heart.
Paul is telling us that in your weakness, when you feel desperate about the things that truly matter to you, and you don’t know what to say, and all you can do is cry out “Oh God!” the message is, “Don’t worry. That’s enough because there is someone inside you who is praying for you.”
We know that Jesus is in heaven praying for us. But Paul goes a step beyond that. When you come to the moment of complete exhaustion and can no longer frame the words, you don’t have to worry. The Holy Spirit will pray for you. In your weakness he is strong. When you cannot speak, he speaks for you.
When we lean against the wall of desperation, crying out to God, when we whisper, “God, I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to pray about this,” the Holy Spirit comes alongside and says, “Don’t worry. I’ll pray for you.” And he does.
As we pray from our weak and limited perspective, the Holy Spirit “corrects” our prayers, so to speak, so that God’s will is always done even in our most wrong-headed prayers. Since the Holy Spirit knows what God’s will is, and since he searches our hearts (see verse 27), he is able to pray for us in ways that always correspond with God’s will. One sign that this is actually happening is that we pray for one thing and God does the opposite.
Does that mean our prayers are in vain? Not at all. Does it mean we shouldn’t pray? Not at all. It simply reveals our inherent human weakness and the limitation of our perspective on life. We see the part, the Holy Spirit sees the whole. We see one little piece, the Holy Spirit sees the big picture. We pray according to the little bit that we see, the Holy Spirit prays according to his perfect knowledge.
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