When we groan in prayer

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. Romans 8:26

King Claudius of Denmark is having a bad time. He has murdered his brother and taken both his throne and his widow. His nephew, Prince Hamlet, has made it clear that he knows all about it. Claudius is afraid: “O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven”. And so he kneels to pray.

But he can’t. Oh, he can utter the words all right; but he knows that unless he confesses both to God and to his fellow-men what he has done, his prayers are a waste of time; they simply bounce off the ceiling. And so he rises from his knees: “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below./ Words without thoughts never to heaven go.”

Well, you don’t need to be a murderer to know that feeling. If your heart isn’t in what you are praying you are wasting your time. C S Lewis put it well: you might as well train a parrot to say your prayers for you.

But wait a minute. Suppose we reverse what Claudius says – instead of “words without thoughts never to heaven go”, what about “thoughts without words often to heaven go”?

Is that true? Putting it another way, are words essential to prayer?

According to the Bible, the answer is a definite No.

In Romans 8:26 Paul makes it very clear that there are times when we just don’t have the words. Perhaps we don’t know enough about the situation that’s troubling us. Perhaps we are feeling crushed in spirit and can’t conjure up the words we need to express what’s going on in our hearts. Perhaps we are simply dog-tired with the pressures of life. Perhaps the best we can do is “groan”.

If that is so, Paul has a massively encouraging thing to say: the Holy Spirit within us turns our groanings into prayers that God our Father hears, understands and responds to. He “intercedes for us through wordless groans”.

Words can be highly over-valued things! Of course, under normal circumstances they are vital: they are the most natural and obvious way in which we communicate with one another, and, of course, with God himself.

But they are not essential.

We hear a lot these days about “body language”, and is there any reason why groans, tears, cries, sighs, even shoulder-shrugging and fist-shaking, shouldn’t come under that heading?

I knew a man who had lived for many years with severe physical pain. It got to such a pitch one day that he lay down on his living-room floor and – to use his own words – “howled at God”. He got up free of pain.

I’m not suggesting, of course, that howling at God – or any other action - is a guaranteed way of getting our prayers answered. Of course not! But – well, if I remember right, that’s what he told me.

There are times and circumstances for long, sustained praying, perhaps accompanied by fasting. But we needn’t be too hard on ourselves if that is not our everyday pattern. I have just counted the number of words in the Lord’s Prayer in my NIV Bible: around seventy. Next to nothing! (This post you’re reading will probably run to about eight hundred.) And this is the “model” prayer Jesus gave to his disciples! You can pray it, in an unhurried way, well within a minute!

But let’s go back to groaning (so to speak). This is a very unusual New Testament word, occurring about half a dozen times. But it obviously mattered to Paul. In Romans 8 it occurs here in verse 26, and also in verse 23, as something Christians routinely do. In verse 22 it is used of “the whole creation”, which is “groaning in the pains of childbirth”: as if to say that our fallen, sinful, hurting world is moving towards something beautiful, new and wonderful.

But I specially like the occurrence in Acts 7:34. Stephen, who is about to be stoned to death, takes his persecutors back to the time of Moses and the Exodus, and quotes God as saying: “I have seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their groaning…” (You can find the reference in Exodus 3.)

God doesn’t say he has heard their words, their prayers – though I’m sure he has. No, he says he has heard their groaning.

What need is there to say more? If God heard the groaning of his people in Moses’ time, some thirteen hundred years before Christ, and again in the days of the early church, why should we doubt that he still hears them today?

Christian, use words in order to talk to God. Of course! But if, for whatever reason, you can’t find the words, don’t doubt that God loves you, hears you, and will answer even your wordless groanings.

Father in heaven, please fill me more and more with your Holy Spirit, and so teach me better how to pray - whether with words or without them. Amen.