Perhaps you have heard me say the following words before: “Pray as you can, not as you can’t.”[1] I have referred to that statement in many situations at the church: Sunday School, Bible Study. I have shared them in grief support, and in any other situation where the person that I am speaking with feels a need of the Lord.
To me those words, “Pray as you can, not as you can’t,” comfort me. When I come before the Lord, and do not have the words, I can remember that just opening my heart to God, in a practice like prayer, is enough. God comes to each of us—words are not often required.
On its own, these statements about prayer are not terribly Pauline. They might also seem out of place when we read today’s text. For everyone here, and everyone who watches this service in their home, knows something about the moment where words do not come as we need them.
Each of us has experienced moments of uncertainty when we might not feel as bad as Job, but we do feel weak. We feel lost in a sea of uncertainty, and as your hand reaches out to God, it can feel like grasping at the air rather than grasping hold of the sure foundation of God.
Thankfully in today’s text, Paul offers the church a way to proceed.
Move 1- Weak
When I think about how I feel, or how fragile I feel in these moments, the best descriptor that I can come up with is: I feel weak. I know that God is with me, and I know that God is with you, but there is a strong sense of weakness that feels unescapable in these moments.
Our faith is not any less grounded in the person of Jesus, but a growing, foreboding, sense of weakness is present right alongside of the testimony of faith. They seem to almost walk hand in hand.
Do you think Paul ever felt weak?
While some of his background is unclear to us, we do know that one of Paul’s primary Biblical heroes was Elijah. From his earliest years as a boy, Paul spent time in synagogue with his family in their hometown of Tarsus.[2] There in the synagogue Paul’s family regularly heard and shared the stories of their Jewish faith. Of course, in the synagogue the leaders spoke about the patriarch: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Just as we tell our children the stories of our faith, Paul’s upbringing was filled with these stories as well that grounded him in the Lord.
And so, as more and more of the stories of God’s presence in the life of the Hebrew people were shared, they built upon the previous ones—until we come to Elijah.
He is a foundational character in Paul’s theological life. A man who witnessed great victories in the life of the Jewish people. As much as Isaac was the promised child of Abraham, the boy who was delivered at the last second before the knife took his life, Elijah on Mount Carmel, and Elijah standing before the sound of silence in the cave, were known and shared as well.
And as we know, Elijah was not always the strongest figure in the Hebrew people’s history. Like you and me, Elijah had the stories of the faith and the revelation of God to fall back on, and yet he ran from the queen and hide.
As we all experience, times present themselves when weakness is not the way we want to live.
Standing before the Lord in the mouth of the cave was not an act of faith, but one of retreat. Of running away. Alongside of the testimony of God’s victory and provision was a sure and certain sense of human weakness.
So as Paul thinks through the history of the Israelites and remembers the lessons that he heard and studied as a young man, he begins with this single concept that could feel out of place. Weakness in verse 26.
As he uses this idea, Paul infers that any kind of lack of strength that we are confronted with, physical, spiritual, communal, theological, they all fit under the umbrella of weakness. Like Elijah we might feel strong in our faith in one moment, but then something happens, and we run to a cave hoping no one will find us. And by casting such a large net and referring back through the history of the Israelite people, Paul casts a wide net that grabs in each of us because no matter how strong your faith, we all feel like ‘less than’ at times. We know we should not, but we feel that way.
For when we feel weak in any way, Paul says the Spirit is active.
Weakness is closely tied to our word, “feebleness.” Christians in the church do not like to think of themselves as weak or feeble, but Paul wants to make sure we hear this idea first—not out of condemnation but something more important. Hope. For the implication of this is that any type of suffering that we endure that causes us to feel that God is out of reach is simply not true.
Move 2- Helped
Look at verse 28. In that verse we find another treasure for us to hold onto: the idea that we receive help from the Spirit in these moments and places of weakness. Help that we did not anticipate initially. A lot of people when they think they are weak can fall into the trap of thinking that they are weak because their faith is fragile and shallow. But this is wrong.
The help that Paul writes about in verse 28 is but another example of how our English translators do not fully encapsulate what Paul is talking about. When I think of help, I often think of someone, like God, bailing me out. But that is not what Paul is thinking when he considers the help that the church receives in these moments. The literal meaning of “the Spirit helps” should sound more like this: “The Spirit jointly helps.”
Taking Paul’s word and breaking it down it means that the aid, the help, that we receive is a coming together of two parties from opposite sides to hold a task so that the burden is jointly carried. Shoulder to shoulder. This is yoke language that Paul is writing for us that should remind us of Matthew’s gospel where we just heard a couple weeks ago that they yoke is easy and the burden is light.
On one side of this moment, we have the perfect God we love and serve in the embodiment of the Spirit. Perfect. Sinless. Able to carry and endure everything. In the Spirit, God takes up His side of the task willingly.
The other side of this work is us. Those who suffer any form of weakness—a weakness that we all feel and all struggle under. A weakness that we think makes us unworthy, unable, to bring anything to the Lord. We pick up our side of this work as God picks up His.
We come together with the Lord and what takes place next is nothing short of transformational. This is the help that Paul tells us that God has promised for everything who thinks they are weak and feeble. Together in the Lord, we are made strong again.
Move 3- through prayer.
This act of coming together is accomplished through the work of prayer with, and in, the Spirit. It is accomplished through the communication that takes place in prayer—even if the prayer is unable to audibly spoken, and especially if we feel that we do not have any words to speak to God. The Spirit is there to help us in a way that, frankly, I have struggled all week to put into words. But the Spirit comes to help us in our weakness.
Together we come to the Lord, and God and we jointly work together. The theme of prayer runs throughout the remainder of our text today. Prayers of help. Prayers that remind us that nothing can separate us from God and His love.
Like Elijah, left to our own devices and our own interpretation of God’s Word, we will fall short on our own. But, when we come together, in the Lord, and even in wordless-prayer, we find a way forward with God’s help.
This takes me back to my first statement, ‘pray as you can, not as you can’t.’
For as Romans tells us, God is with us when we pray so how can we fall short any longer?
Romans tells me that because I pray and spend time that form of communication with the Lord, who will be able to bring a charge against me? For we are in union with God in a way that life altering.
Because you and I pray, even wordlessly when we feel the weakest, nothing can separate any of us from the love of God. We may feel weak, feeble, like this work that God calls us to will never actually come to fruition, but the Spirit is there to help me. To help you. To help us.
Conclusion
When we feel our weakest, we often think that God is no longer close to us. Many people do look around, and their first confession is one of isolation and being forgotten. But as Paul’s words teach us this is not true at all.
I wonder this week when you feel yourselves in those weak places, weak moments, moments that make you feel feeble, can you reach back out to God—even wordlessly. I wonder what would your testimony and your faith will look like when notice that God is right there the whole time helping you pray and hold you up?
DM
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