July 26, 2026
The Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with groanings too deep for words. And God, who searches hearts, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.
One of the most common fears or frustration spoken to me are the words: “Pastor, I don’t know how to pray.” Other requests are, “pray for me?” Where I might ask, “what should we pray for?” Some pray at set times or places, others silently or laying in bed. It comes in many notions of not knowing what to ask of God or say to God or how to even begin to come up with the phrase or words or articulation of some praise, a word of gratitude, or a request.
If you had the chance to make your direct appeal, what would it be? If the fairy godmother appeared at the foot of your bed before you went to sleep, what would you ask for?
When God asks Solomon what he wants, the king asks for wisdom. In the first Scripture lesson read for today, King Solomon does not ask for wealth or long life but asks God for the wisdom to discern between good and evil, for the understanding to live out both justice and mercy as a ruler of God’s people. God was pleased with Solomon’s request, and Solomon goes down in history as the wise king.
Many days perhaps we can go it on our own, summon the self-reliance to pursue an agenda. And then there are those moments. Churches were packed after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. After the Boston marathon bombing, newspapers across the country had images of hands in the air and Americans falling to their knees. I’ve been there at the hospital waiting room, at the casket, on the other end of the phone call.
With sighs too deep for words. There are times when words fail with all the right dogma and theological assertions; we just don’t know how to pray, when emotions are tender and raw, when we feel alone or afraid or sad, and we don’t know how to pray. Moments of overwhelm, when it’s all just too much. We feel we ought to pray, want to pray but can’t, or don’t even know what to pray for anymore or where to begin or doubt its effectiveness.
The daily news just gets worse; incompetent leadership causes untold pain and suffering, divisions increasing, rising inflation, unnecessary violence, aging bodies, parents worried for their children as a new school year begins. Overwhelm. How do we begin to pray?
There are times when the only thing we can summon within us are our sighs and groans for something more, something different. You know they are there, just below the surface. You can feel them in the chest or in the throat. You know they’re there, these sighs and groans, these feelings that sit there just below the surface, deeper than words, too painful or scary to say, to verbalize, but we feel them. Our sighs are good enough, more than enough.
Sometimes our spirits come together in a line of poetry, a souring dissonance of a musical chord, or in the silence.
There are times when our thoughts and words align us more into a will that God is calling. There are times our sighs and groans are holy, and when we offer them up to the Lord. We can trust God knows, hears our hearts the powerful grunts and inaudible sighs because the Spirit is at work in them, at work deep in us, interceding on our behalf, sharing with us and giving expression to what is deeper than words. Even the Spirit cannot find the words to pray for us, or maybe the Spirit doesn’t need words. We can try to run from the pain, ignore the reality, or push it away, but in the Spirit, suffering is patient.
Is our death evidence of God’s inability to keep a promise? “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (v. 37). Nothing “in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Nothing? Nothing.
We can rest in the Lord, and we can fall, even collapse into God’s sure embrace, release the worries and cares and concerns and anxieties that fill our lives and remember that there’s nothing that can separate us from God’s love.
The phrase “life is messy” is true, and bringing the kingdom of God appears to be a little messy too. Each of the parables in today’s Gospel is about getting dirty: seeds planted, treasure buried, doughy hands, fishing, clamming. How can we see God even through all the mess? How does God’s power make that little seed grow, the pearl buried in the ocean, the yeast rising into a loaf? In a culture where yeast represented corruption and impurity, where mustard was an invasive weed, Jesus describes abundance from the smallest of things in miraculous transformations.
God makes all things work together for good with those who love him.
In Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is a Moravian bakery, the Winkler Bakery, that has been operating since 1807. Those who work the bakery say that if you put raw dough in the rafters, after a day it will suddenly begin to rise because the yeast in the very structure of the space permeates everything! Will not our lives rise like that dough and cause others to rise because we’re so infused with the yeast of God’s grace and love?
The Triune God is wholly, unremittingly, and irrevocably for us and loves us with a boundless and overwhelming love. God, who in Christ took on human fragility and weakness, meets our weakness again in the prayers of the Spirit (8:26–27) and the work of Jesus (8:34). God’s love is swhown in the death and resurrection of Christ, e in God’s victory over sin and death as we rest securely in the embrace of that love (8:39).
We can collapse into the arms of our good shepherd (Jn. 10:11-18), who holds us with a love that will never let us go. Held in that love, we are free to give our sigh knowing the Spirit is always there, sighing with us.
I close with the poetic lines of “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go” by George Matheson:
O love that will not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.
O Light that follows all my way,
I yield my flick’ring torch to thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.
O Joy that seekest me thru’ pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow thru’ the rain
And feel the promise is not vain
That morn shall tearless be.
O cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.