God's Will, Part 19
Notes
Transcript
Handout
It is God’s will to help us in our weakness. This is an encouraging truth of God’s purpose for us. Tonight we will explore how the Trinity helps us in our weaknesses and what is meant by weakness. We will also explore the purpose of prayer when God knows us intimately, and how the Spirit, knowing the Trinity intimately, is effective to carry out God’s will in our lives.
Romans 8:26 .
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.
What does the help of the Spirit look like?
In the immediate context, it means he comes alongside us through intercession, empowering us to carry out God’s will in our lives .
The Greek word “συναντιλαμβάνομαι” (sunantilambanomai) means to come alongside, to bear with one’s burdens. He is coming alongside us in our groanings and bearing them with us for the purpose of conforming us to the image of Jesus.
We also see the Spirit’s help in leading us in all truth in John 16:13
13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.
We also see the Spirit’s help in the exposure of sin, righteousness and judgement in John 16:7-11.
I am continually reminded of our dependence on the Holy Spirit’s help in our lives. This reality first sunk in almost 20 years ago with the phrase, “The Holy Spirit is the key to the Christian life.”
How do you guys think we are to utilize his help in our lives?
I think an awareness of and surrender to the Holy Spirit’s help makes his help more effective.
John Stott wrote: “The Holy Spirit identifies with the groans of believers and he intercedes with unspoken groanings, the Spirit and believers groaning together.”
We are not alone in our weakness. The Holy Spirit joins us there.
What is meant by our weakness?
It is talking of our finitude, our creatureliness, and even perhaps our proclivity to sin - the reality of us living broken in a broken world.
God’s will is for the Holy Spirit to bear that burden of brokenness with us. What an encouragement that is.
Have you ever struggled with how to pray?
I have. Part of my struggle in prayer is my own motivations.
What our your motivations in prayer?
When I am struggling to pray, my motivations are focused on motivating God to bring about a certain set of results. A recent example would be Wylma Jump’s accident. I want God to heal her. That is part of my motivation in praying for her. What happens if he chooses to bring her home to glory? Will I then lose motivation to pray because I did not get the result I wanted?
I have to work on changing the motivation for prayer. I pray in order to share the burden with the Trinity, to recognize that God is working even when it does not go the way I want it to.
The Spirit is also covering my own ineptitude in prayer, for he himself is interceding in the situation as well with empathetic groanings too deep for words. His intercession is the most effective since he knows us intimately and the will of God intimately.
Romans 8:27 .
27 And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
Who searches the hearts?
God searches our hearts. It makes me thinks of Psalm 139:23-24 and Jeremiah 17:9-10.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!
24 And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!
9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
10 “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”
God know what is in our hearts and he is in the process of transforming our hearts, for he says in Ezekiel 36:26
26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
Why do we pray?
We pray to join God in the journey he is leading us on.
What happens when we pray poorly?
The Holy Spirit has us covered in our weakness, and is bring about God’s will, often in spite of us.
What is one way you will engage the Holy Spirit this week?
For me, I will try to focus on the empathy that he is showing me and the work he is doing in the midst of the struggle, rather than on the struggle itself.
