Real Hope: Back to Basics - PrayerНамуна

Reaching

The last few years have been particularly challenging for many. I have found myself overwhelmed by the complexities of the numerous issues we’re facing right now – issues that directly affect my worldview. I’m less certain about more things than ever. This passage in vv. 18–30 is an encouragement in the face of suffering, but it’s in v. 26 that we’re reminded we don’t walk alone but in partnership with the Spirit of God who ‘intercedes’ for us. Interceding means to ‘intervene on another’s behalf, which is profoundly releasing. We don’t have to know what to say or how to say it before we come to God in prayer, we just need to come. Just as we are.

Often, I want to make myself presentable to God before I enter His presence in prayer, to formulate my thoughts and words. But, this is opposite to what God is asking of us. He just wants us to come to Him exactly as we are, in our confusion, doubt or pain. He doesn’t need us to worry about having the right words.

I’m thankful we don’t need to have all the answers before we pray – sometimes we know this to be true in theory but still find putting it into practice difficult. CS Lewis writes, ‘We say that we believe God to be omniscient, yet a great deal of prayer seems to consist of giving him information.’ Let’s not forget that God knows all things, there is nothing we can say to Him that He doesn’t already know, including how we ACTUALLY are, not how we say we are. The act of prayer is not the act of informing God of a situation that He already knows about, it’s reaching out to the God of the universe in relationship and connection, no matter how we are doing.

Written by LUCY WEIL