It often happens that sorely afflicted children of God are stricken dumb by their grief, and their lips can utter no prayer. It is then that God's Holy Spirit makes His presence felt in their overburdened hearts and out of their stony griefs raises a Bethel, a house of God, a gate of heaven.

Commenting on this passage of Holy Scripture, the late Phillips Brooks says: "The word 'helpeth' means 'to lay hold of along with another,' and the thought suggested is that of a man bearing a burden too heavy for him. The load is becoming more and more oppressive, and he falters and turns faint and is about to sink under the intolerable weight, when a loving and strong friend steps forward and lifts the burden and relieves the weary one and enables him to carry that which seemed like a mountain. Almost crushed, the heavy-laden soul cannot pray, but only groan; and yet the groan in dumb, inarticulate language is also a prayer, the fruit of the Spirit's intercession for him and within him."

To a child of God painfully and slowly dying from cancer, who complained that she could not pray in her agony, her pastor said: "You can groan, can't you?" "Oh, yes," she answered, "my days and nights are passed in groaning." "Well," he said, "never mind your prayers, then; your groans going up to God reach His ear and heart far more surely than the most eloquent prayer, for they are the Spirit's intercession in your behalf."

One groan borne upward by the Holy Spirit is worth a thousand wordy prayers; "And he that searcheth the hearts..." that is, the Lord, "...knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God." (Romans 8:27).

[devotion text by Rev. F. W. Herzberger (1920) -
from the Family Altar - CPH (1957 edition)]
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