Groans of the Heart | Max Lucado | Help Is Here | Oak Hills Church

46:16 I don't know if people appreciate the sophisticated sense of humor that I have. And so I don't know if you, you know, will appreciate it either, but I'm going to test it on you, okay? prepare yourself for a wonderful joke. This guy's being interviewed for a job, and the person conducting the interview looks over the resume, says everything looks in order except for four years. There's a four-year gap here. What was going on? And the guy being interviewed said, Oh, that was Yale.

46:53 The guy conducting the interview says, Well, that seals it. We're offering you the position. And the guy said, well, that's such good news because I really do need this yob. I thought it was a funny joke. Did it make sense to you? It's a funny joke. That's about as good as I get. If you're coming back asking for more, I don't have it. COVID-19 just about did us in I mean those were tough seasons We feared a tiny microscopic virus, masks on faces, doors closed, fear of the fatal inhale, keep your distance, flatten the curve.

48:02 We hope we never have to go through something like that again, don't we? We learned a lot during those days. And that season of COVID-19 came to mind to me this last week as I was reviewing this message. Because this message focuses on how God helps us in our weakness. And during those days, the truth of the matter is, we did not know how to pray. And the promise of Scripture that we're going to look at from Romans chapter 8 is, the Spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance with the will of God. We're dedicating our spring messages to a conversation about the Holy Spirit.

48:58 And one of the privileges the Holy Spirit assumes is to help us talk to God when we don't know what to say. The reason I say that COVID-19 reminded us that we do not know how to pray is because we kept a living prayer website during those days. And every day I would post a message and invite people to pray. I would say, post your prayer needs and we will pray for you. And the page was flooded with requests from Cambodia to Connecticut. People posted their prayer requests. Pray that I find a job. Pray that I can get along with my family.

49:51 Pray that I can get some work. Pray that I can sleep. Pray that somebody will come to see me. I'm lonely. But by far and away, the most common type of request was this heartfelt one. Directly from the page, I took a few. I don't know what to ask. Just pray for me. I'm at a loss for words. Can you mention my name? I tried to pray, but can't. Most of the time I just weep. I pray, but the needs are too great for words.

50:33 All I can do is sigh. The groans of the heart. You've heard them. You've had them. this is the vernacular of pain. This is the chosen tongue of despair. And when there are no words, these are the words. And when prayers won't come, these will have to do. The sunnier days will hear us offer more poetic, seemingly more powerful petitions. But stormy seasons generate these mournful, guttural moans of fear and dread. Yet, these raw appeals find their way into the earshot of our Heavenly Father.

51:31 How can we know? How can we be sure? Because they are entrusted to the care of the Holy Spirit. the apostle wrote this the spirit helps us in our can you say that word weakness we do not know what we ought to pray for but the spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans and he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the spirit because the spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance with the will of God. Again, that's from the pen of the Apostle Paul in the book of Romans chapter 8, verses 26 and 27. Few passages reveal the tender heart of the Holy Spirit more than this one from Romans chapter 8. We are accustomed to the powerful actions of the Holy Spirit. Fire falling on Pentecost. The Red Sea opening for Moses.

52:46 The doors opening for Paul. Because of the Holy Spirit, Ezekiel saw dead bones rise. We're accustomed to the mighty visible acts of the Holy Spirit, yet church, of equal import is this, that the Spirit of God curates and translates the incoherent prayers of the weak until they are heard in the throne room of heaven. The Holy Spirit curates, that is, cares for, and translates, that is, puts in appropriate language, the incoherent prayers of the weak, the sick, the feeble, the lonely, the addicted, the isolated, the imprisoned, the weak.

53:46 and makes them worthy of being presented in the tribunal of heaven before the presence of the Trinity. Is this not a beautiful reassurance? The apostle helps us understand this assurance by introducing us to three ideas. He will tell us about our condition. And then he will help us articulate our confession. But he closes out this teaching with a beautiful conviction. So let's start with our condition. The apostle says that the spirit of God helps us in our, there's that word again, weakness. Weakness.

54:40 When we feel weak. The apostle Paul used this word more than once, in his epistles, most of the time he used this word translated weakness. It was in regards to a physical condition. He talked in the book of Galatians in chapter 4 and verse 13 about his personal afflictions or his weakness. He spoke about Timothy's illness in 1 Timothy chapter 5 in verse 23. It seems that infirmity was at the forefront of Paul's mind when he talked about the Holy Spirit helping us in our weakness. We understand why. Weakness can take its toll on us. sickness can sap our strength it's been about 20 years now and i'm so grateful that the lord healed me of a heart condition that left me absolutely exhausted poor circulation the doctors were bewildered i was befuddled and discouraged and day after day week after week for literally months.

55:59 I just kind of operated without all my cylinders. I was weak. More than once a day, I would stand up, leave my office here in our building, and work my way down to what used to be our sanctuary. It's on the opposite side of the building. If you're here, you remember what we now call the West Auditorium. And in those days, we had some wooden prayer altars at the front of the room. And I would enter the sanctuary completely dark, completely silent, all alone. And I would go to one of those prayer altars. And I would kneel. And I did not know that for which to pray. I didn't know how to pray. So I would just sigh, groan.

56:56 Weakness does that. Do you? Of course, my weakness is nothing compared to the cancer that's stealing the vigor from your life, the multiple sclerosis that's taking the oxygen from your lungs, the rheumatoid arthritis that is stiffening your joints. In these times, our prayers become groans. We're in a season of weakness. Am I speaking to anyone who right now today would say, yeah, that's me? Or maybe your weakness comes not from a physical affliction, but maybe an emotional crisis. You're battling depression.

57:43 Anxiety just comes at you like a tsunami. You can't sleep. Your relationships are not working. Your marriage is crumbling. You can't keep a job or the job you have you can't enjoy. It's just, it's a season of struggle. A time, the apostle would say, of weakness. During times like this, it seems like our minds are too jumbled, too cluttered, to really articulate a coherent prayer. We can relate to the prophet Hezekiah who said, I moan like a dove. my eyes are weary with looking upward or we can relate to the psalmist who wrote this paragraph I am feeble and utterly crushed I groan in anguish of heart all my longings lie open before you Lord my sighing is not hidden from you. There is often a gap between what we want in life and what we get in life and during that time we need help and it is about that time that the apostle describes our problem. We do not know what we ought to pray for. That's our confusion.

59:16 We don't know how to pray during a time. Our condition is weakness. Our confession is this confusion. We don't know how to pray. Thank you, Paul, for this honest statement. If you, an apostle, an author of epistles, did not know for what to pray in certain times. That's reassuring because sometimes we just don't know. For what should the cancer patient pray? Healing or deliverance into heaven? For what should the parent of the prodigal pray? Repentance or more time in a pig pen? For what should the incarcerated believer pray? Release from jail or ministry in the jail?

1:00:12 Sometimes we just don't know that for which to pray. And what if our prayers don't deserve to be heard? what if our prayers feel weak shallow selfish I mean we read about people praying when Paul was in prison they prayed and the jail doors opened we read about storms in the Mediterranean being calmed because of the prayers of the apostles and we've heard legends or stories about people who are called prayer warriors and we feel like prayer wimps people who have a special ability to pray or pray in a particular language or tongue or people who seem just to be powerful in their prayers.

1:01:16 I heard a person a few days ago described as one who could pray the paint off the wall. I don't know what that means or why they would want to do that. But what about when we feel just the opposite? when it's all we can do to bow our head? Or what about when we're just angry at God? We won't have anything to do with him. When we're ticked off.

1:01:49 What happens then? The apostles answer to that question, when we do not know for what to pray, is the Spirit himself. intercedes for us. Is that not an extraordinary thought? The Spirit of God curates and translates the prayers of the sick and weak souls until they are worthy of being heard in heaven. The Spirit intercedes. for us. What does it mean to intercede?

1:02:33 Well, to intercede is simply to stand between. when a person has a solution and this other person has a problem but the one with the problem either cannot connect or convince the one with the solution to help an intercessor an advocate places him or herself in between and speaks on behalf of the one who has the need my wife Dinalyn and I enjoyed the blessing of one who interceded for us in 1983 we moved from the United States to Brazil where we took on a five-year missionary assignment we were in our mid-20s I think I was 27 maybe 26 and she was 24 when you're 24 when you're in your mid-twenties, you feel like a grown-up, don't you? And now looking back, I realized I was still just a kid. Off we went. Newlyweds, no kids. Kind of ill-prepared for what awaited us.

1:03:51 You can read all the books and have all the conversations about cross-cultural experience, but nothing prepares you for when you get off a plane and you don't have a return ticket. the sights, the sound. We came to love Brazil, but boy, those first few weeks, it was rocky. And what made it worse is that all of our belongings were in a crate, a shipping crate, stuck in customs at the harbor of Rio de Janeiro. We had the stuff that we brought in suitcases. so we could change clothes. But our stuff, and we didn't have a lot, but we had some furniture. We had some wedding gifts. We had some pots and pens. Most of us, we had pictures and scrapbooks.

1:04:44 We had some personal items that we treasured. We found an apartment and rented it, but we could not furnish it because we didn't have our stuff. And so I made regular trips to the dock to see if I could get our belongings out of customs, day after day after day. Again, my Portuguese was pathetic. I was the greenest of gringos.

1:05:14 And I would try to explain our situation. And the customs official, the same one, every day rebuffed me. No, senor. He would say. And he would use words that I came to later learn. Like delayed. Bureaucracy.

1:05:37 Paperwork. Come back tomorrow. And I began to dread that trip back from the port to our apartment. Where I would have to tell Dinalyn, my young bride. No. It's still just us sleeping on the floor.

1:05:59 Enter Kenyo. Kenyo. That was his name. His real name is Joachim. But everybody called him Kenyo. And he was our next door neighbor. In our apartment building. And he and his wife came over to meet us. We didn't have a place for him to sit. so we sipped our coffee standing up and I tried to explain to them our situation and Kenio began to smile he said I got it leave it with me and I said you don't understand I've been going down every day every day I got this I'll solve it I'm a lawyer and I said I still think it's good No, no, no.

1:06:51 Anyway, so we set up a time the next day, and together we went. We went down to the same place where you have to go to get stuff out of customs. And there was that guy, that same official. I pointed him out to Kenyo. Kenyo told me, you stay here. And he walked across the room, and he went up to the fellow, and the two started talking. Within a matter of moments, they were laughing. They were chuckling. Within a matter of moments, Quino had his arm around the guy. And then he pointed at me and waved for me to walk across the room, which I did. And Quino introduced me to the guy and said, this is my neighbor. And the two talked a little bit more about laws, about nuances, about this and that. And there may have been a little money given. next thing I knew it was green light and I went home and told my wife that Kino solved our problem he interceded for us he had everything I did not have he had an understanding of the culture he had an understanding of the law and also the nuances of the law he had an understanding for just kind of the way things worked and of course he was absolutely fluent in the language and he did for me what I could not do for myself Thank you.

1:08:37 the spirit of the living God offers to be your intercessor. He will do for you what you cannot do for yourself. He knows the language. He knows the will of the Father. And he knows how to present your requests before the heavenly Father however the difference is he is our heavenly father is not some reluctant customs official he is more than willing to pry open the crate of blessings and release them upon you and the holy spirit continually presents your case before the heavenly father would you please believe me on this one. This is the message that will move you out of despair into prayer, out of desperation into inspiration. This is the assurance that you need to help you face the problems that you feel are insurmountable. Help is here. Help is here. When you say yes to Christ. He places his spirit within you. And he takes on the task of curating and translating your prayers. Now, some of you are finding this hard to believe. I can just see it on your face.

1:10:16 Some of you are thinking, I can't even get the plumber to call me back. You're telling me that the only true power in the universe is going to help me pray. That's exactly what I'm telling you. And the tender, loving heart of the heavenly Father, unique to the Christian promise, is it's not up to you to pray correctly. Your prayers are not judged according to their poetry or their power. And that the true power of prayer does not reside upon the way we say the prayer or the person who offers the prayer or the position we take in prayer, but the real power of prayer resides in the one who hears the prayer. We are so prone to do with prayer what we do with everything else, and that is turn it into a work. If we kneel correctly, if we cross ourselves correctly, if we go to the wailing wall, if we wear a certain kind of beads. I don't care if you go to the wailing wall, and you can rub beads if you want, but the power of prayer is not in our customs, but it's in the blessed Holy Spirit. Prayer falls under the same word that salvation does, and that is grace. It's a grace. Do you believe me? That right now, at this very moment, the Holy Spirit is making himself available to make prayer out of our wordless sighs and our aching groans, to intercede for us with groanings too deep for words, to plead with God for us in groans that words cannot express.

1:12:15 This is the power of prayer. Do you find this to be amazing? Boy, I do. This flips on its head our whole idea of prayer. This tells us that some of the most powerful prayers are being offered right now by people who feel the weakest. that the greatest prayer warriors, if there are prayer warriors, are those who appear so enfeebled, the immigrants at the border. the convict in the prison,

1:12:57 the forgotten child in the orphanage, that the prayer shawl of depression is every bit as holy as the prayer shawl of Lennon. my mother last two years of her life her brain so riddled by dementia she did not recognize her own son but she would sit in the memory care facility and she would mumble and sometimes I wonder if those were prayers coming from deep within her heart If so, they were heard in heaven. Our good God hears us. Right now, at this moment, as I share these words and you hear them, the Spirit of the living God is representing you, interceding on your behalf.

1:14:02 Help is here. boy I find that to be amazing don't you and the promise in the very next verse still in Romans chapter 8 but now verse 28 he keeps us present before God you're just ever represented before God that's why we can be so sure that every detail of our lives of love for God is worked into something good. You see, what you pray in the night is heard in the light of your Father's throne. The psalmist said, you keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book. I wonder, would you please let this assurance buoy you, strengthen you?

1:15:02 Would you please let this assurance give you what you need to head into the headwinds of life? Please, would you? Would you, the next time you feel overwhelmed, would you allow the Spirit of the living God to say to you, you're not alone. You may feel alone, but help is here.

1:15:23 And would you let this teaching from the pen of the Apostle Paul move you from despair into prayer, where you don't give up, but you look up, and where you don't throw in the towel, but you get on your knees, and you realize that there's power in those prayers, not because of the way you say them, but because of the Heavenly Father who hears them. would you receive that please you're going to need this folks I'm looking at some young people and maybe your life has been just nothing but blue skies and rainbows up until this point but dear friend it's just a matter of time and you're going to need to know during that season that God hears the feeble prayers of the weakened heart and that includes you Thank you.

1:16:15 In June of 2018, a dozen boys made a decision that nearly cost them their lives. After soccer practice one day, they decided to explore a cave, the Thum Luang Cave in Thailand. The idea was simple. they were going to play around in the cave for about an hour and then come out with some memories and stories but no one expected the water sudden storms and torrential rains flooded the cave and all of the caverns and the recesses and the 12 boys were stuck they could not get out They were in utter blackness, utter darkness.

1:17:13 They had just a little bit of food. and they were completely cut off from the outside world, a full kilometer under the ground. They were irretrievably trapped. what they did not know is that the world began to pray for them.

1:17:41 You remember the story? I do too. And I remember praying for those boys. They didn't know exactly how to pray. But God heard our prayers. and a wonderful thing happened. A network of nations came together with a globe full of can-do and know-how, and they put together a plan that involved some 10,000 people.

1:18:15 Not everybody there in person, but some, most of them advising from another country, but over 10,000 people contributed to find a solution that included helicopters and ambulances and doctors and dogs and drones and robots, and most of all, divers.

1:18:37 It took nine days. Nine long days. But finally, a diver came up out of the water in one of the caverns, in one of the recesses, and there he spotted the boys, all 12 of them, huddled together on the edge of a muddy ledge. And he removed his mask, and his first words to them were, I'm just the first of many.

1:19:09 Help is coming. Can you imagine how those boys felt when they heard those words? If you can, then you can imagine how the Holy Spirit wants you to feel right now. help is coming.

1:19:33 Because when you pray, the Holy Spirit curates and translates your prayers, even if they are prayers of weakness, and takes them before the tribunal of heaven, before the Trinity, and the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit command all hands on deck, spiritual powers, angelic forces rally to come to the aid of God's children. This is God's promise to you. No, we do not always know that for which to pray. But that's okay. Because the Holy Spirit does. And he prays for you. Amen. Thank you, Lord. What assurance you give us in this extraordinary promise through Christ. Amen.

1:20:30 So when a person says yes to Jesus, part of the response of Christ is not just to save their soul, but he empowers them by commissioning the Holy Spirit to take up residence. And the Bible uses terms like temple of the Holy Spirit because we host the Holy Spirit. Now, if you said yes to Christ, the Holy Spirit lives within you. If you've never said yes to Christ, Dear friend, you're on your own. you're on your own and the promises that we've discussed today do not apply to you but you are one decision away from receiving the Holy Spirit say yes to Christ and part of the gift is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit we're going to offer a prayer prayer of salvation and if there's not a day circled on your calendar that says that's the day I became a Christian then let today be that day.

1:21:33 Let there be no doubt. We're going to offer this prayer. I invite you to pray with me word for word and then after amen I'll ask you to stand up if you're saying yes to Christ. Jesus, I'm not perfect for I have sinned but I believe in you. Save me. Change me. Forgive me. I give you my life. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Who's saying yes to Christ? Would you stand up so we can give you a round of applause? Who today is ready to receive the Holy Spirit?