Every Christian, wherever they are, whoever they’re with, has the Spirit of God with them. Even if you’re not concentrating on prayer, He’s there, often just chatting away with God through you anyway. Even if your mind’s a million miles away, even if you’re thinking of a pink elephant, the Spirit prays at a level under your conscious thought. Even if you’re not aware. Even in the times when you’re not trying. The Bible calls this the Spirit praying ‘for us through wordless groans.’ It happens when ‘we do not know what we ought to pray for.’
There are times when we’re praying about something, and we feel it so deeply that we can’t express ourselves in words. Right then, the Holy Spirit enters the picture and identifies with us. But He does more than just feel for us, He takes our pain and deepest longings and interprets them to God. What does this tell us about prayer? That the Holy Spirit connects with your prayers when they come from your heart and not just your lips. And what else? That all the stuff in our hearts and heads that we never connect with our prayers – all the deep stuff – the Spirit takes to God for us too. The anxieties, the nightmares, the secret hopes, the half-formed plans. When our prayers are shallow, the Spirit is so kind that He lets the real stuff matter, too.
What now?
Ask God ‘where can I make my prayers more like the Spirit’s?’ He’ll line up your words with what the Spirit is praying through you. At first there might not be many words. It might look something like when Jesus healed the deaf man, and he ‘looked up to heaven…with a deep sigh’ (Mark 7:34 NIV).
