Our Spirit Connector – Romans 8:26-39

A text – Romans 8:26-39

²⁶ Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with groanings too deep for words. ²⁷ And God, who searches hearts, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

²⁸ We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. ²⁹ For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. ³⁰ And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

³¹ What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? ³² He who did not withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us, how will he not with him also give us everything else? ³³ Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. ³⁴ Who is to condemn? It is Christ who died, or rather, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. ³⁵ Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? ³⁶ As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all day long;
    we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”

³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹ nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

A reflection:

Growing up Lutheran, I surely knew there was a Holy Spirit. I was convinced of that by Pentecost Sunday worship. Tongues of fire on the heads of the apostles were the proof. Suddenly they could speak in ways the crowd could understand. And they had become suddenly confident when before they had been hiding. The Comforter Jesus had promised earlier – this was the newly arrived Holy Spirit.

But Paul’s letter to the believers in Rome, especially this 8^th chapter, gives me a more specific picture of the Holy Spirit at work in believers’ lives, even believers like me. In the Pentecost story, the Holy Spirit gave the apostles the capacity to speak in different languages or at least in such a way as the multi-ethnic crowd could understand them. But in our text for today we see that the Holy Spirit also translates our human woes and complaints and desperation to God so that God hears our prayers, even if we don’t know how to make our prayers, even if we cannot pray ourselves at all.

In this way we are never separated from the love of God and the power of God. If it is something I have done that puts a wall between me and God, the Holy Spirit can go through or around that wall and communicate for me. If something is done to me by others that keeps me from even voicing my suffering to God, the Holy Spirit knows and makes an intercession for me that God will hear and understand.

This is bigger than Star Trek’s Universal Translator device. That device translates only the words the two parties are actively trying to say to one another. Nope, the Holy Spirit knows our soul and also the will of God, and intercedes with sighs too deep for words, soul to soul, spirit to spirit. Feelings, longings, deepest connections too deep for words. Every day the Holy Spirit encounters us in our pain and frustration and joy and helps us know we are still connected with our Creator and our Savior. Praise God, the Holy Trinity.

A prayer:

Lord God, thank you for loving us. Thank you for your Holy Spirit, present at Creation and given to us in our earthly lives. Help us to remember that when we find it difficult to pray, we can trust your Spirit to bring our thoughts to you. Help us to know we are never separated by anything from your love. Amen.