God really does have an expansive view of prayer! This week I spent some time in Romans 8:26-27, prompting me to return to this subject sooner than I expected.
Paul mentioned that God’s remedy for our weakness in prayer is having the Holy Spirit draw near and help us. The word he used for weakness is the same one as in 2 Corinthians 12:9, when God informed him that “My power is made perfect in weakness.” The original can also be translated, “My power comes to full strength in weakness.” It has been said that transformation is following God to a place of weakness.
I think that our principal weakness in prayer is ignorance of God’s intentions. Also, the fact that Christ often is not the center of our attention as we pray. So, in a sense, my weakness in prayer is my propensity to pray from a position of strength: what I feel that God should do, as I am focused on my needs. We have to rely on God’s provision to pray as we ought (that is, in a way that has God’s approval). If we recognize our inadequacy and enter into partnership with the Spirit, then he can transform our prayer into the prayer that is according to the will of God—a prayer that empowers God to act according to His purpose.
Clearly God means for our prayer to involve the entire trinity. This is astonishing. The Holy Spirit intercedes for us. This intercession happens in the Godhead, to reveal to us the will of the Father and to establish the Son as the center and organizing principal of our lives. Even my very limited understanding of this gives me direction in prayer: in fellowship as I acknowledge the wonder of what God has accomplished and has in store for the future, and in supplication as I harmonize my requests with what I know of God’s will. What a transformation!
Just one more word, something important that I am only starting to see. This is the distinction between the individual and the corporate approach to following Christ. The letter to the Romans, as is true of most of Paul’s letters, was written to a group of Christians who were living in community. So, although I am applying Paul’s remarks about prayer to individual believers, he originally directed them to a body of believers. Certainly, the Lord uses individuals to pray. But prayer as an expression of the life of Christ—whose life cannot be fully expressed in any individual—is wider, deeper and freer in the corporate setting.
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