WEDNESDAY March 27th
Romans 8:26-27
‘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. 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.’
Well, so far Paul has highlighted the involvement of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the believer and as we come to verse 26, he says ‘Likewise’, we pause and look back at what the Spirit has already done or is presently doing and then say ‘Likewise’, in the same way he will help us in our weakness.
The Holy Spirit understands the world in which we are living in, he would have understood what it would have been like for Jesus to enter this world as a babe and to grow up as man, going through the same temptation as we do (yet he was without sin) Hebrews 4:15. It was Jesus who said that he would ask the Father to send the Holy Spirit to come alongside us as a Helper or a Comforter. That is to do amongst other things to ‘help us in our weakness’.
I wonder how often we have been faced with a situation through which we did not know how we were going to manage or cope. Maybe even a situation that has raised itself against us and we just did not know how to rise against it, but somehow, we look back and are amazed at how we manged to get through it or rise above it—the Spirit helped us, supported us and brought us through victorious.
We should never ever forget this aspect of the ministry of the Holy Spirit for and toward each one of us. Maybe we of a Pentecostal persuasion highlight (and rightly so and possibly should be getting back to it) the empowering and infilling of the Holy Spirit with the accompanying gifts to the detriment of forgetting that he also wants to be alongside us to assist us, and not just upon us to anoint us.
He wants to elevate us above our circumstances as well as to energise us in our Christian walk.
But here as Paul continues, he highlights a particular weakness we have and it is in prayer, ‘For we do not know what to pray as we ought’ and continues to remind us that the Holy Spirit comes to help us, and we will continue to look at this in the next devotion. For today, consider honestly those areas which you would consider to be a weakness in your Christian experience and ask the Holy Spirit to draw alongside you to help you overcome them.