Let The Children Come | Pastor E. A. Adeboye

7. Pray in the Spirit (Rom. 8:26–28)
These two verses (Rom 8:26–27) are so rich and helpful in our lives in the Spirit.
1. We learn that we are weak when we come to prayer. We often don't know what to pray for in any given situation. The concern is not about the
manner of prayer (the "how"), but rather the content of our prayers—what do we actually pray about?
2. We learn that the Spirit joins to help us when we are struggling to know how to pray by interceding for us with wordless groaning. It is not, as some propose, that we should just pray whatever we want since we don't have any idea how to pray, and that the Spirit fixes them up and prays on our behalf to the Father. Rather, the verb often translated as "helps" has a preposition attached to the front of it, which suggests that it really means "joins to help."
3. The Spirit is searching our hearts and knows that we have a mind-set that is focused on him, even if we do not know exactly what we are supposed to pray.
4. The result is that our prayers are prayed "according to the will of God" because the Holy Spirit is moving us thus to pray and is presenting the prayers that he is guiding us to pray to the Father.
This article is adapted from
Walking in the Spirit by Ken Berding.
Kenneth Berding (PhD, Westminster Theological Seminary) is professor of New Testament at Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, and the director of Bible Fluency. He is the author of numerous books and articles and was previously a church planter in the Middle East. He has written many worship songs and served as a worship pastor in local church ministry. He regularly blogs at The Good Book Blog . Ken is married to Trudi and has four daughters.
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