Out of the swamp

Romans 8.26-30

The Spirit helps us to get around to praying.

The sin of procrastination is never more embarrassingly laid bare than in our failure to pray. The Spirit helps us by convicting us and driving us towards prayer. He shuts up the wrong options to us. He slams doors shut. He steals away miserable, preoccupying trinkets. He exposes our poverty in godliness to us. He drains away our shallow pride until we see it for the muddy pit that it really is. I once nearly broke my neck by diving headfirst into what I thought was a lake but turned out to be a shallow swamp brimful of sediment. God challenged Israel about the danger of shallow pools:

For my people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
broken cisterns that can hold no water. (Jeremiah 2.13)

The Spirit helps us by revealing how shallow and polluted our independent efforts are. He leads us away from our nasty little swamps to the springs of living water. He helps us to repent of the enormous evil whereby we overlook God, the source of everything good and try elsewhere. Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. (James 1.16,17). The Spirit helps us to realise that we MUST pray. He wisely administers God’s discipline in our lives so we wake up from our ignorance and cry out to God. Jesus says: ‘I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you’. (Revelation 3.1-3). The Spirit wakes us up to pray. Who will complain about the man who rushes into his bedroom to wake him and get him out of a house on fire? Who will roll over and say ‘Go away’? The Spirit is that man. He stirs us up to leave our burning house and seek safety in Christ. We may be in dire trouble and yet be so spiritually drowsy that we fail to pray. Jesus said to his disciples, “Sit here, while I go over there and pray.” And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.” And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, “So, could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.” And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. So, leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again. Matthew 26.36-44

The Spirit helps us to get around to praying – without his help we will always drift away from prayer. And he especially helps us when he puts our individual sticks together and stirs up a roaring fire. Personal prayer is vital – it is the ubiquitous air you breathe in and out - but a blaze of power, joy and hope is especially kindled when we pray together.