Romans 8:26

Romans 8:26

The Spirit the Help to Prayer.

The highest gift of God is that which is for all alike. We need the Spirit for all the works we have to do. We can speak no true, honest, sound word unless we ask Him to teach us what we shall say and how we shall say it.

I. What are we to do when we feel as if we could not pray? as if that were the greatest difficulty of all? It is the Spirit who helps us, not only to think and to do, but also to pray who draws out our desires towards God, who speaks more for us and in us than we know. It is very wonderful, but yet it must be so. We could not pray if God Himself were not stirring up prayer in us. It is not we who first seek for fellowship with Him; He seeks to have fellowship with us. The children begin to ask for their Father because the Father has been first seeking His children.

II. Is it not a blessed thought that the Spirit is uttering His groans for the deliverance of this world of ours from all its sin and slavery and wretchedness? Should we not rejoice that God knows what is the mind of the Spirit, for it is His own mind? Should we not trust, with all our hearts, that His will should at last be done on earth even as it is in heaven? And do not think that those who have prayed that prayer here on earth pray it less fervently when they leave the earth. Then their tongues are loosed; then they can pray for us and all their friends fighting here below, as God's Spirit would have them pray; then they begin to know that no prayer or groan that has been uttered in the lowliest chamber or in the darkest dungeon shall be in vain. God's Spirit inspired these prayers and groans, and His new heaven and new earth will be the answer to them.

F. D. Maurice, Sermons in Country Churches,p. 80.

References: Romans 8:26. Homilist,vol. vi., p. 410; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iii., p. 12;W. Harris, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiv., p. 320; J. Silcox, Ibid.,vol. xxxii., p. 104; H. W. Beecher, Sermons,9th series, p. 296; D. Moore, Penny Pulpit,No. 3149; M. Rainsford, No Condemnation,p. 122; F. Paget, Anglican Pulpit of Today,p. 447; T. Birkett Dover, A Lent Manual,p. 27; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines,p. 217.