In Our Weakness

“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And He who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”
—Romans 8:26-27

In the Garden of Gethsemane our Lord prayed, "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will"—Matthew 26:38. He was deeply grieved at the task before Him. Several times in Scripture, when confronted by the reality of death, the divine narrator says that Jesus’ time “had not yet come” (John 7:30; 8:20). But now, in the anguish of the moment, His time had come (John 17:1) and He was overwhelmed with sorrow. And what did He do in such a moment? He prayed. Three times He prayed. And what did He pray for? He prayed that God might take the cup from Him. His humanity appeared to be on a collision course with His Divinity, but the Spirit of the Son shone forth when He prayed, “not as I will, but as You will.” The Son had come to “seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10) and to give His life as a “ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). The hour was upon Him and He felt the full weight of what needed to be done, what had to be done. He had come for this hour (see John 17:1), and He desired for the cup of divine wrath to pass by Him, yet the desire to do His Father’s will preempted any sense of doubt or despair. He submitted Himself to the divine decree of God. No sooner had He said, “if it be possible, let this cup pass…,” He immediately followed with, “Not as I will, but as You will.” Oh, what mysteries were uttered at that moment! What inexplicable longings and groanings within the incarnate Son of God are we privy to! He submits Himself to the divine decree that the heavenly Trinity ordained before the foundation of the world (1 Peter 1:20).

The Holy Spirit in His blessed divinity enables the groanings of Jesus’ heart to be expressed in sweet surrender. Has there ever been a moment of surrender so full of awe? In His humanity, Jesus’ sense of anguish over the task at hand caused Him to ask the Father three times to take that it from Him. His aversion to horrific suffering (especially one’s own) is not unlike our own (Hebrews 4:15). His weakness is in many ways our own. The anguish and struggle that plagued His humanity plague ours as well. But when our Lord Jesus submitted Himself to the Father, He did what we are to do, submit ourselves to God. We pray in our weakness. We pray in our suffering. We cry out in our pain. We bow the knee and we shed tears of pain and hope. In our doubt we plead, but as the Son of God grows up within us, we submit to the will of God. The Holy Spirit intercedes at the moment of greatest tension so that our spirit does not continue to direct our prayers, except in conformity to the desire and direction of the Holy Spirit within us. And the Holy Spirit “intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” God’s will is beyond ours. His purposes are unfathomable, His thoughts unmeasured, His decrees most perfect, and as our Lord prayed in Gethsemane, the prospect of dying may not have seemed the optimal one, but He knew it was, because it was in His dying that many were made alive. In prayer, we die to our own wants and our own desires, but come alive to the will of our loving and merciful God.

My dear brother or sister in Christ, I pray that we all might “grow up in every way into Him” (Ephesians 4:15). We pray as God’s children (see Romans 8:14, 16, 19), but we pray imperfectly, because now we only have a glimpse into heaven through what we have been told by our Lord, and from what has been seen in Him. Or as Paul said,  

“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known”—1 Corinthians 13:12. 

And again when he wrote,  

“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit”—2 Corinthians 3:18. 

We pray in our darkest times, in our times of need, asking God to transform whatever situation we are facing, or transform us, in order that we might be able to glorify God within it. Let’s then bow the knee together, placing our faith and trust in Him, so that He might show Himself to be God in our world and in our lives. Amen.