IT IS A GIFT FROM GOD to us who are weak, for now we are sure God realizes our weakness and inevitably must have decided since the beginning to help our weakness because we are reckoned as His own. How could He have now left us alone in the world with everyone looking to us demanding our testimony? Because the greatest distress a man of God faces when he is called to pray is to stand not knowing what he is praying for.

We beg the Spirit of God to speak in us when we open our mouths, to bear witness to Jesus Christ and testify to the power of His death, the power of His resurrection, and the power of His redemption which he introduced to the world of man to be no more weak but strong through the grace and guidance of the Holy Spirit. For that which is of concern to us is through the familiarity of God’s adoption we should ask the Holy Spirit to help us in our weakness to walk in this life as witnesses to the act Christ did for our sake, praying as God’s chosen and justified children. God’s wealth in glory was inherited by His only Son who gave it to us, who believe in Him, for us to give back to God in its depth and impetus. This depends on the extent of the Holy Spirit’s intercession for us, so as not to appear before God trivial and flighty, but in fullness of the Spirit offering prayers adequate to the Father and to the Son. For all the heavenly creation offers complete service to

God; in consequence how much more should we on our behalf, whom God outpoured His special righteousness and of the abundance of His grace?

When Christ commanded His disciples not to leave Jerusalem until they received the power from above as a Divine promise1 our hearts were thus alerted to God’s gift which He gives in due time to be able to be good witnesses before men no matter the cost to us in effort or loss. Because loss of the world for Christ’s sake is gain2. We aspire to this power that descends on us from heaven and to the abundance of grace the Father offers His children to be good witnesses before men.

It is our good fortune to hear here that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with groanings He does not utter. Consequently with Christ who intercedes for us through His blood3 we find the Spirit also interceding for us with groanings that are not uttered i.e. a language understood by God.

The word “groanings” expresses the strength of the addressed intercession to God the Father. What joy is ours if the Holy Spirit Himself intercedes for us with sincere groanings.

All of this shows the extent of the weakness of our creation that needs a permanent intercession for us to stand before God without blame in love. But thanks be to God who planned the grace we are in since the beginning and before the foundation of the world “that we should be holy without blame before Him in love”4 through the sacrifice Christ fulfilled, and through the adoption God outpoured on us through His Holy Spirit with the abundance of grace.

Prayer

To You O Spirit of God I pray begging to support me in my prayer.

Because You are the greatest Spirit of prayer, while we know not how to pray.

If the intercession of Christ through blood encompass us, then Your intercession is through the Spirit.

Christ redeems and You strengthen. Strengthen us in our weakness.

You emanate from God the Father so as to descend in us through the love of the Father.

We love You O Spirit of God. Do you love us? We hope.

8 July, 2005

¹ Lk 24:49.

² Ph 3:7, 8.

³ Cf Rom 8:34; Heb 7:25.

⁴ Eph 1:4.  

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