All right, so if you could open up your Bibles to Romans 8, please. We'll be looking at, we'll be pretty much camped out here in 8, verse 26 and 27. I wanna take a close look at this verse and the role the Holy Spirit plays when it comes to our prayers as believers. This came about the other while back. I was in a situation where I didn't know how to handle it or I didn't know what to say. I remember putting up a quick prayer for a little bit of wisdom and the emergency of the situation passed, but as I thought about the situation and how to continue forward, it occurred to me I had no idea even what to pray for. And then this verse, the Holy Spirit brought to remembrance this verse. Romans 8, 26 and 27. Likewise, the spirit also helps in our weakness for we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now he who searches the heart knows the mind of the spirit is because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. At the time, I'll be honest with you, I didn't actually remember the reference, but I remembered the truth of the verse that came through loud and clear. But first of all, I want to review some basics truths about prayer. Prayer is the Greek word prosike, and it means to speak to or remake quests of God. This is communing or communicating with God. We can do this with conversational prayer, and that is speaking or communicating with God in the same way we would communicate with friends and family. So just everyday conversation, speaking with God on an everyday conversational base. Psalms 116, one and two, says, I love the Lord because he has heard my voice and my supplications, because he has inclined his ear to me. Therefore, I'll call upon him as long as I live. First Thessalonians 5.17, a short verse. Oops, says, pray without ceasing. So if we're gonna pray without ceasing, a part of that is gonna be conversational. The other type of prayer we see in the Bible or we can participate is laboring prayer. This is extended periods of time dedicated to God, to prayer with God. We just had a 20, 30 minute extended period of time dedicated to prayer with God. We can consider that. The examples I have here is Daniel in the lion's den. Now, when Daniel knew the writing was signed, he went home and in his upper room, with his windows open towards Jerusalem, he knelt down on his knees three times that day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as was his custom since the early days. So this is what something Daniel did three times a day. The Lord Jesus Christ, when he walked the earth, When it came to pass in those days, he went out to the mountain to pray and he continued all night in prayer to God. So he left the masses, got himself a little alone time up in the mountain and went up there purposely to pray and he prayed all night. We have believers, examples of believers, Epaphras. Apostle Paul talking about Epaphras says, Epaphras, which is one of you, a bondservant of Christ, greets you, always laboring fervently for you in prayers. For what reason that you may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God. In the Bible, we're instructed how to pray. Matthew 6, 9 through 13, which includes the Lord. This is the Lord instructing disciples how to pray when they ask. He's instructed them to pray to God the Father. Matthew 6, starting in verse 5. When you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have the reward. But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut the door, pray to your father who is in the secret place, and your father who sees in the secret will reward you openly. The other thing we were taught to pray is then, when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathens do, for they think they will be heard for their many words. Therefore, be not like them, for your father notices things you have need of before you ask. Matthew 6, 6, which I just read. So when you pray, go to your room, pray to your father. Philippians 4, 6, and 7 says, be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God. We're instructed to pray in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. John 15, 16, you did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should remain. And whatever you ask the father in my name, he may give you. John 16, 23 says, and in that day, you will ask me nothing. Most assuredly I say to you, whatever you ask the father in my name, he will give you. We have different forms of prayer found in the Bible. First one is confession, which is an omission of sin to God. First John 1.9, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So confession. The next form of prayer is praise and exaltation. This is attributing to God the glory and honor and praise that he deserves. Hebrews 13, 15 says, therefore by him, let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God that is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name. Another form of prayer is giving thanks. Apostle Paul in Ephesians 1, 16, It says, do not cease to give thanks for you, make and mention of you in my prayers. Ephesians 5.20, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Philippians 4.6 and 7, be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God. First Thessalonians 5.18 says, in everything give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Oh, there it is, in everything give thanks. Intercession for others. Intercession is pleading the case for another. Acts 12.5 talks about this. The church was praying for Peter when he was in jail. Peter was therefore kept in prison, but constant prayer was offered up to God for him by the church. There's many references in the Bible, such as Ephesians 3, 14 through 21. This is Paul's prayer for the Ephesian believers. For this reason, I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and in earth is named, that he would grant you, the Ephesian believers, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened through the might, through his Spirit, in the inner man. That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width, the length, and the depth, and the height. to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundant above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us, to him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen. James 5.16, which is a famous verse. Part B is the effective fervent prayer of the righteous man availeth much. The first part of that verse is confess your trespasses to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. Supplication is asking God for a personal need or desire. Matthew 21, 22, and whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive. Philippians James 1, 5. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to you. Apostle Paul had a thorn in the flesh, and he asked concerning this thorn in the flesh. He says, concerning this thing, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. Now we know the Lord answered him and said no, but this was a personal need or desire of the Apostle Paul. Different categories of prayer are long range results or goals or results. We have another prayer of the Apostle Paul in Colossians 1, 9 through 12. I would say this is a long range goal or result for the believer. For this reason, we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing him, being fruitful in every good work, increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, for all patience and long-suffering with joy, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints and the light. Pacific needs or immediate requests. James 1.5 is a great example of this. If any of you lacks wisdom, specifically lacking wisdom, let him ask of God who gives to all liberally without reproach and it will be given to him. The Apostle Paul asked for Pacific and immediate needs many times. Ephesians 6.19 says, and for me, pray for me and that the utterance may be given to me that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel. And there's times for prayer. We have private prayer, which is the individually scheduling or spontaneously communing with God, which in Matthew 6.6, when you pray, go to your room, and when you shut your door, pray to your father in your secret place. And then what we just had was public prayer, where two or more are gathered together in prayer to God. Prime example again is Acts 12.5, Peter was in prison, the church was praying for him. Reasons to pray is God is glorified by our prayer. John 14.13, and whatever you ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. John 15, seven and eight. If you buy to me, my words abide in you. You will ask what you desire and it shall be done for you. By this, my father is glorified. We are to pray because of the ongoing spiritual battle. The end of the paragraph of Ephesians 6, 10 through 19, verse Ephesians 6, 18 says, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints. We are commanded by God to pray. 1 Samuel 12, 23. Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord and ceasing to pray for you. As a final review, an effective prayer includes walking in fellowship with God. And secondly, we are to play according to God's will. Now to get to our passage tonight, the Holy Spirit and prayer, Romans 8, 26. The Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. Romans 8.26, likewise, the Spirit also helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. So the Holy Spirit helps with our weakness. Now this word helps is a really cool word. It means to take up a matter or to share a task with. So this, the word to us helps is short, but in the Greek it's three syllables put together. The S-Y-N or soon. means together with, then we have the anti, A-N-T-I in the middle, which is over against, and the lambano, which means to take. So what this word speaks of is the action of a person coming to another person's aid by taking hold of the load they're carrying. The person helps with the load, they don't take over the entire load, but they come along and they help them. This word is used exactly the same way in Luke 10.40. And this is the famous story of Martha and Mary. Martha is distracted with serving. Mary is sitting at the Lord's feet. And Mary was distracted with much serving. And she approached him and said, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore, tell me to help me. Same exact word. No, Martha wasn't going to stop serving. She was going to continue to serve. She just wanted Mary to come along and help her with the load, to share the task. This word is a verb and it's in the present, middle, or passive, which means that the Holy Spirit is the one that is sending himself to help with our prayers. He's deeply involved with this. The Holy Spirit continually chooses to help us as we pray. He continually helps us by sharing in the workload of praying. Now notice, We're not to stop praying because the Holy Spirit is gonna do the job for us. We have a responsibility to pray and the Holy Spirit will come along and help us. He'll come take up the matter. He'll share the task with us. So we're not to just let the Holy Spirit take over. We are still to pray and do our thing and be responsible to pray. It's just that the Holy Spirit's gonna help us with this task. Weakness. The word weakness here is the Greek word asthena, or I think we get the word anesthesia from it, but I'm not sure. But it means incapacity, a limitation, or infirmities. We have a weakness. Notice the Apostle Paul here says we. This is the Apostle Paul. He isn't talking to us as believers saying you have a weakness. The Apostle Paul includes himself with this. We have a weakness. We have a limitation. We're incompatible. We have incapacity. This word means It means a want of strength is another way of saying it. If you have the King James Version, or if you remember a King James Version, the words infirmities is used here. Likewise, the Spirit also helps our infirmities. So what is our weakness? That is answered in the next part of the verse. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought. This word know means we possess the information about or know how to. So with the word not in front of it, we, the Apostle Paul, and us as believers do not know what to pray for. We don't possess the information. This verb, what I found extremely interesting, is in the perfect tense also. It has something happened in the past, that is a completed action, and it has produced the abiding result of we do not know. We, the believers, and the apostle Paul includes himself here, need the help of the Holy Spirit because our current state is one of either not knowing the information or, depending on how you look at the word, oida, not knowing how. The difference of defining this word leads to some translation issues, in my opinion. The New King James Version, the King James, and the ESV all translate this phrase as, for we do not know what we should pray as we ought. The New American Standard and the Net Bible translate this phrase, for we do not know how to pray as we should. As I looked through the commentators, what they thought about this one, this phrase and this difference in translations, I tend to agree with the New King James Version. And the translation should be, for we do not know what we should pray for. One of the commentators stated, though more may be involved in the concept of weakness, the primary reference here is mental ignorance. The contrast offered by Paul is in this versus between our ability to know and our ability to know what to pray for. The emphasis indicates the spirit himself prays for us. It is not the proper matter of prayer that believers are at so much a loss about, but for the fullest directions are given to them. But to ask for the right things as they ought is the difficulty. The word what here is a pronoun and it refers to the necessary thing to ask for. So what helped me, the reason I say I believe the word, the translation should be the what, referring to the what things we ask for, is as a Sunday school teacher, I'll take prayer requests for the kids, and I teach the older kids, but how many times have you heard a little kid's prayer request is that all the unsaved people in the world would get saved? Or that everybody that's sick would get better? And so these broad repair requests. get more and more Pacific as we get older. We don't, today we don't pray like we just had prayer tonight. We're not praying for everybody on the green sheet to get saved. The more we know, the more we can pray for. This past, when Jill was in the hospital down in Rochester, what was really nice is pastors would come to us and give us daily, if not weekly updates on Jill. So we could have Pacific prayer requests that he was asking for us. whether it was a certain test you would do good on or a certain test you do bad on. So it's the more we know about a given situation, the more specific we can get in our prayers. And this is the way I see how the Holy Spirit, we don't know, sometimes we don't know what's going on in a person's life, we just know that they need prayer. And the Holy Spirit is the, he knows the specifics of what is needed on that person's, in that person's life. And this is the details that he will fill in. This is one of the commentaries. The weakness spoken here is the inability of the saint to know what to pray for. We do know what the general objects of prayer are, but we do not know what the specific detailed objects of prayer at any given emergency or situation. The definite article is used before the word what. Paul says we do not know the what we should pray for, the particular what. So how does the Holy Spirit help us? He makes intercession for us. The Holy Spirit helps us by making intercession for us. This word, the word makes intercession is the single Greek word hyper, and it's unique because it has the word hyper in front of the H-Y-P-E-R. And so instead of just the normal intercession or the normal word for intercede, this means to intercede on behalf of someone. with the Pacific emphasis upon the fact that what is being done is for the sake of somebody else. So there's a Pacific emphasis of the Holy Spirit praying or interceding for us. Again, this is a verb and it's in the present, so the Holy Spirit is always praying for us, interceding for us. The Holy Spirit is interceding or He pleads our case to and advocates for us right now on our behalf to God the Father. Okay, that's out of order. This is accomplished by the Holy Spirit making intercession through groans which cannot be uttered. This word groans, it means to groan or sigh as the result of a deep concern or stress. This word shows up in Acts 7.34. This is Stephen before the Jews, before he gets stoned, and he's talking about the history of Israel and the fact that the Lord was talking to Moses. And here's how Stephen put this. This is God talking to Moses at the burning bush. I have seen the oppression of my people who are in Egypt. I have heard their groanings and have come down to deliver them. Now come, I will send you to Egypt. So that's the very same word. The groan or sigh may be the result of quite different circumstances. There's a clear distinction between groaning and sighing, depending on the reason or basis for it. In Mark 7.34, Jesus sighs as he is about to heal the man that could not hear. The sigh or the groan here seems to be an expression of sympathy for the death mute that Jesus is about to heal. The groans that we talk about in Acts 7.34 are caused by severe misery and oppression. Mark 7.34, and this is Jesus, and he looking up to heaven, he sighed. So the phrase which cannot be uttered, the groans which cannot be uttered is one word in the Greek, and it means pertaining to what cannot be uttered or expressed in words, too deep for words. The New American Standard in the ESV translate this phrase this way, the groanings too deep for words. This means it cannot be expressed in an articulate language, sublime and effecting ideas for which we are the holy... The Holy Spirit of God dwelling in us knows our wants better than we. He pleads in our prayers, raising us to higher and holier desires than we can express in words, which can be found in utterance and sighing and aspirations. There's no language, no language is in view here, only the inner groanings of the Spirit. So there's no actual language. Now how can this be? How can this work if there's nothing being said? And that is because God the Father knows the mindset of the Holy Spirit. Romans 8.27, now he who searches the heart knows the mind of the Spirit. So the word, what I found interesting here is the word hearts. In Romans 8.27, the Greek word cardio, and in the Bible that could literally mean the heart, and oftentimes it means the mind. The heart or the mind. But the word here for mind in Romans 8.27 is phronema, which means the mindset. It's not the mind, but what is the person thinking. So the God the Father knows what the Holy Spirit has on his mind, his thoughts, and his purposes. Now, he who searches the hearts, this is an expression of the omissions of God. Acts 1.24 says, and they prayed and said, you, O Lord, you know the hearts of all. Show us which of these two you have chosen. Acts 15.8, for God who knows the hearts, acknowledge them by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did us. So we can see that God the Father knows the minds of the Holy Spirit. Last thing, Holy Spirit intercedes for us according to the will of God. As we said before, the effective prayer, one of the aspects of effective prayer is praying according to the will of God. So we may not know what the will of God is in someone who we're praying for or what we're praying about, but the Holy Spirit intercedes for us according, he knows what the perfect will of God is and he asks or prays for us according to the will of God. Now the words, the will of God, the will are not in the Greek, therefore the literal translation Oops. The literal translation reads, and he who is searching the hearts hath known what is the mind of the spirit, and because according to God he doth intercede for saints. Every other translation, other than Young's literal translation, puts the words the will of God in. So the New King James, King James, ESV, and New American Standard, the net, they all put the will of God in there. I found this study of these two verses to be very encouraging. And if you're ever in this situation where I was, we're at a point where you don't know what to pray for. You just honestly don't know what to pray for. Know that we are to pray, and the fact that we are praying will allow us the Holy Spirit to help us. come along and help us, and he's going to intercede for us directly to God the Father, and he's going to pray according to God's will. So our prayers can be effective. Even though we may not know the exact details or what exactly to pray for, we should pray. We are told multiple times throughout the New Testament that we are to pray. and that's what we should do. Often we pray for people in situations not knowing all the facts or what the Pacific will is for that person. We hear it all the time. Please, Lord, pray for so-and-so. Give them what they stand in need of, because we don't know what they stand in need of, but the Holy Spirit does, and he knows the Lord's will, and he's gonna pray for that person. Holy Spirit knows the wills of God and helps with these details. And we see that the intercessory prayer of the Holy Spirit are done according to God's will. So if you don't know what to pray for, pray anyways. The Holy Spirit will come along, help us, and pray according to God's will. And I'm so thankful for the ministry of the Holy Spirit when it comes to our prayers. With that, let's have a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, just thank you for these two verses where you, we can know specifically in how you help us and what you do to help us. And just thank you for the ministry of the Holy Spirit to each and every one of us that often we don't know everything, but we do know that if we pray that you will, you continually help us. And then we also know that what we don't know about your will in our life or anybody else's life, the Holy Spirit does, and he prays in your will, which is a way to be effective in prayer. In Jesus' name, amen.