Romans – The Play Part 7 – Hurting Prayer: Romans 8, Groaning, and the Holy Spirit’s Intercession

I want to give you a tip out of my own life: I can’t pray. Friend, I am past words. There’s no hope for me in words. I haven’t got the intelligence to say anything to the Lord that would be redemptive at this moment, but I have the good sense to do something. I have never called up and said I can’t make it. I’m sure that sometime in my life, I probably, if I thought really hard, did pull a big one right before a meeting when I was supposed to speak. I bet it happened somewhere out there. I’m trying to be funny. Are you taking me seriously?

Dear saints. Dear child of God. It happens more times than it doesn’t happen. Now, that may not be true, but I have the good sense to know that I’m shut off from any good feelings about myself. I’m shut off from everything. I’m talking to you just as honestly and as really and down-to-earth as I can. I have the good sense to do something. And that’s to go sit down in a chair and hurt in the presence of God.

And that’s what I do. And that’s what this passage is about. To groan with groanings that cannot find human expression. To just sit down and hurt.

Does it have to be outward? Listen, your groaning, saint, you’re hurting. I don’t know what word you want to use, but you’re hurting. Did you ever consider that that might be a prayer? Whether you consider it or not, make it a prayer. Make it something that is redemptive. Make it something that is holy. Take your darkest moment of pain, and let it be an unwordable prayer to a God who saved you, justified you, sanctified you, made you one with Christ, hid you in the Holy Spirit, put the Holy Spirit in you, destroyed the law, fulfilled the law, did away with good deeds, baptized you into Christ, delivered you from the Christian standard, and put a Holy Spirit in you, and adopted you as a son, made you biologically a child of His, who has done away with the very problem you have—this indwelling sin, this flesh, and so forth.

You can’t remember that the inheritance of the body is coming up, and that the Holy Spirit is witnessing to you, because yesterday, as sure as today, you threw a tizzy. Yesterday, He led you by His Spirit and will again tomorrow. But there is something you can do in this dark moment, and that’s to sit down in the presence of God and hurt. I tell you, there are times you can’t pray, and there’s no need to kid yourself. And you can’t read the Bible. And you can’t do anything religious or Christian, but you can take your hurt and let it be what it is—a groaning of the Holy Spirit, for the day of your redemption.

Sit there and let him pray. Saints, there are prayers that don’t belong to this realm. Have you considered that words belong to this realm? That words belong to you and to me, that they are a human invention? And have you ever considered that not one of them has ever expressed what you really felt or thought? That a word, at best, is a symbol of something going on inside of you that has never once conveyed what’s going on?

Praise the Lord. Well, there is an unseen realm where all things are real, and all things are true, and somebody’s got their head on their shoulders, and somebody knows what’s going on. And you can’t know, and you can’t express, but you can hurt, and you can feel pain, and you can sit in the presence of the Lord and allow the Holy Spirit within you, through things that aren’t words, to contact your Father and speak to Him. He has never spoken to the Father in words. Words belong to us. Something’s going on in the heavenlies, in you, that belongs to Him – inutterable things.

There is the moment in every Christian life when words are utterly inadequate, but the Holy Spirit’s way of communicating with God is more than adequate. And He will not accuse you in that moment:

“Oh, Father, I’ve got terrible news. Gene just did it again.”

No. I don’t know what He prays. I don’t know what He says.

“Father, redeem his body.
Father, redeem his body.
Father, bring forth the new creation.
Father, comfort him.”

Father, whatever the Holy Spirit says, I don’t know, but I know this: He searches my heart. He searches my spirit. He doesn’t search my flesh. He doesn’t search my soul. He inventories my spirit and prays things that words don’t express.