July 22 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"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" (Rom. 8:26).

Devotional

This Holy Spirit serves as a pleader or advocate for the saints. Imagine an anxious and embarrassed client prosecuting some important suit—maybe even battling for his life—in a court of justice. At his side is his counselor, thoroughly acquainted with the nature of his case, and deeply versed in the contours of the law. He is there to instruct his client how to shape his course, with what arguments to support, with what pleas to urge, with what words to clothe his suit. Such is the advocacy and aid of the Spirit in the matter of prayer.

We stand in the presence of the Lord—it may be to deprecate a deserved punishment, or to plead for a needed blessing. "...We do not know what to pray for as we ought..." (Rom. 8:26). How will you order your cause before the Great Judge? With what feelings, with what language, with what arguments will you unburden your heart, unveil your sorrow, confess your sin, and make known your request? How will you overcome your remembrance of past ingratitude, and your conviction of present guilt, and your pressure of deep need, and your overwhelming sense of God's Majesty? How will you wake your heart to feeling; rouse the dull, sluggish emotions of the soul; recall the truant affections; and concentrate your mind upon the holy and solemn engagement? But your Counselor is there! "...The Holy Spirit himself intercedes for us..." (Rom. 8:26). And how does he this?

He stirs up your prayer. Do not think that that spiritual petition, which breathed from your lips and rose as an incense-cloud before the mercy-seat, was other than the working of the Holy Spirit. He stimulated that prayer. He created those desires. He awoke those groanings. The form of your petition may have been ungraceful—your language simple, your sentences broken, your accents shaky. And yet there was an eloquence and a power in that prayer which reached God's heart and moved his arm. It overcame the Angel of the Covenant. And whose eloquence and power was it? The interceding Spirit's.

He also teaches you what to pray for. As many and as urgent as your needs are, you only accurately know them as the Spirit makes them known to you. Alas! what profound ignorance of ourselves must we cherish that we do not even know what to pray for as we ought! But the Spirit reveals your deep necessity, convinces you of your emptiness, poverty, and need, and teaches you what blessings to ask, what evils to deprecate, what mercies to implore.

He also sympathizes with your weakness in prayer by portraying to you the fatherly heart of God. Sealing on your heart a sense of adoption, he emboldens you to approach God with child-like confidence and filial love. He leads you to God as your Father.

Nor must we overlook the skill with which the Spirit enables you to urge in your approaches to God the sinner's great plea—the atoning blood of Jesus. This is no small part of the Divine aid you receive in your weakness. Satan, the accuser of the saints, even follows you to the throne of grace to confront and confound you there. When Joshua stood before the Angel of the Lord, Satan stood at his right hand to resist him (Zech. 3:1). But the Spirit, too, is there! He is there in the character, and to discharge the office, of your Counselor. He instructs you, the accused suppliant, what arguments to use, what pleas to urge, and how to resist the devil. He strengthens the vision of your soul so that you clearly discern the blood upon the mercy-seat within the veil, on which you fix your eye in simple faith.

Oh, it is the delight of the Holy Spirit to take of the things of Jesus—his love, his work, his sympathy, his grace, his power—and show them to your soul prostrate in prayer before the throne of grace.

Come to my poor nature's night,
with your blessed inward light,
Holy Ghost, the Infinite,
Counselor Divine.

(George Rawson, 1807–1889; alt. 2010, LEW)

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.