Garry spoke this morning on the subject of ‘prayers without words’ from Romans 8:25-27. The Holy Spirit helps us to pray at times when we don’t know what we should pray or how to pray. He is our advocate, living in us (John 14:15-23, John 16:5-7), praying through us.
The Holy Spirit is ‘another advocate’ – not meaning a different advocate, so to speak, but one like Jesus. He is not simply with us, but lives wtihin us and teaches us to pray. Prayer is multi-faceted and cna be done through words and songs but also through silence and the tears and groans when we ache through sorrow and pain and anger and do not know how to articulate this. The Holy Spirit brings us before God and all things are made new and wrongs righted in His presence (see 2 Cor 5:2).
We need to pray outloud and in silence; we can pray in tongues as the Holy Spirit enables us. But there are also times when all we can do is groan in prayer, but we can be confident even in those times that through the Holy Spirit God hears, knows and feels our prayers.