Prayer Is Spiritual

If you’ve been following this podcast for a while you’ll know that I’ve been encouraging you to just talk to God kind of like you would any other person. But let’s be honest. That’s not as easy as I’ve made it out to be.

And that’s because God is not just any other person. For one thing, God is Spirit and we are flesh and blood. That means we do a lot of the talking but we don’t get to see God or hear him respond to our questions the way that we would any other person. Often it feels like we’re having a one-way conversation.

And that can make it hard for us to know how to pray or what to say. And frankly, we often get it wrong. We’re not praying the way that we should or praying saying things in a way that honors God as our Father, let alone our Lord. But you know what? Even here there’s grace.

Listen to what Paul says in Romans 8: 26—Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

Isn’t that amazing? We should know how to pray. We should know what to say. We shouldn’t have a problem with this. But even though we do, God steps in to make up for what we couldn’t get right. He sends his Spirit into our hearts to pray with us and for us.

Even though prayer can sometimes feel awkward and even though we often feel like we’re not getting it right, we can lean on God’s Spirit to help us pray. That should give us the confidence and the boldness to pray freely. But it should also keep us humble before him, depending on him in our weakness.

Pray with me. Father, thank you for giving us the Spirit who teaches us to pray—who prays for us when we don’t know how! Lord, we know that we should know these things. We should be spiritual people. We should be experts in praying! But we still fumble our words, get distracted, and don’t know what to say. Forgive us. And teach us to pray by leading us by your Spirit. Help us to have confidence not in ourselves but in him. And may our offerings of prayer to you be pleasing in your sight. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.