July 21 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness" (Rom. 8:26).

Devotional

The word here rendered "helps" properly means "to take part with." It implies, not merely sympathy with, but a personal participation in our weakness. The Spirit helps our weaknesses by sharing them with us.

Now take the general weaknesses of the believer—weaknesses which, unaided by another, superior power must crush and overwhelm—and trace the help thus afforded by the Spirit. We are taught to adore the love of the Father, from whom each stream of mercy has its rise. We delight to dwell upon the love of the Son, through whose channel all redemption-blessing flows. But shall we overlook the love of the Holy Spirit? Shall we forget his comforts, his grace, his assistance?

Forbid it, oh eternal and blessed Spirit! Your essential Deity, your personal existence, your tender love, your divine power, your effectual grace, your sovereign mercy, your infinite patience, your keen sympathy—all demand our deepest love and awake our loftiest praise.

But how does the Spirit express this sympathy? Seeing the soul bound with a weakness, all his compassion is awakened. Approaching, he takes hold of the burden. Constrained by a love that no thought can conceive, moved by a tenderness that no tongue can describe, he advances and puts the power of his Godhead beneath the pressure—and thus he helps our weakness.

Do you doubt this? We summon you as a witness to its truth. Why are you not a ruin and a wreck? Why has your weakness not long since dethroned reason, and annihilated faith, and extinguished hope, and darkened all your future under a pall of despair? Why have you ridden serene and secure upon the crest of the breaker, smiling calmly upon the dark and yawning surges dashing and foaming around you? When your heart has been overwhelmed, why have you found relief in a sigh, in a tear, in an uplifted glance, in one thought of God?

Oh, it has been because the Holy Spirit, silent and invisible, was near to you, sympathizing, helping, bearing your weaknesses. It has been because he placed the power of his Deity around you. And when you have staggered and turned pale, when you have well near given up all for lost, resigning yourself to the broodings of despair, the Holy Spirit has approached, all-loving and powerful. He has helped you by sharing your weakness. He has sealed some appropriate and precious promise upon your heart. He has presented some clear and soothing view of Christ to your eye. He has breathed some gentle whisper of love into your ear.

And you have been helped. The pressure on you has been lightened. Your grief has been soothed. Your frailty has been strengthened. And you have risen superior to the weakness that bowed you to the dust.

Oh, it was the Spirit who helped you! Even though you have grieved and wounded him, even though you have slighted him a thousand times over, even though you have returned the unkindest requital for the tenderest love—yet when your weakness bowed you to the earth and the sword entered your soul, he drew near, forgetting all your base ingratitude, and administered wine to your dejected spirit and oil to your bleeding wound. He placed beneath you the encircling arms of his everlasting love.

To thee, O Comforter Divine
for all thy grace and pow'r benign,
sing we ALLELUIA!

(Frances R. Havergal, 1872)

Be sure to read the Preface by Octavius Winslow and A Note from the Editor by Larry E. Wilson.

Larry Wilson is an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In addition to having served as the General Secretary of the Committee on Christian Education of the OPC (2000–2004) and having written a number of articles and booklets (such as God's Words for Worship and Why Does the OPC Baptize Infants) for New Horizons and elsewhere, he has pastored OPC churches in Minnesota, Indiana, and Ohio. We are grateful to him for his editing of Morning Thoughts, the OPC Daily Devotional for 2011.