Mother’s
Day, 2006
Motherhood
at work
Romans
8:23-28
Did you know that there is evidence that when a woman becomes pregnant
her brain shrinks? And there is some evidence that pregnancy brings
“difficulties in concentration, deterioration of expressive language skills,
mental fogginess, forgetfulness, confusion, disorientation and poor
concentration?” But rather than
that being a loss, it results in a transformation of the mother.
Apparently mothers’ brains not only return to their normal size within
months of birth, but have enhanced capacity.
Thursday’s Washington Times has an article on why mothers are
smarter. It features a book written
by Katherine Ellison entitled, “The Mommy Brain:
How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter.”
Mrs. Ellison lists five attributes of what she calls a “baby-boosted
brain.” Among them are
“enhanced perception, with greater sensitivity in smell, vision, hearing and
physical contact,” called “Mom radar.”
“Mothers are also likely to become efficient and resourceful
multitaskers who are strongly motivated to set and fulfill goals.”
Another hallmark is “improved social skills and emotional intelligence,
which allows them to reduce stress and encourage resilience.” The bottom line is that “motherhood turns most women into
some kind of supermom” (Cheryl Wetzstein, WT, 5/11/06, A14).
Isn’t that interesting? We
have people that think that childbearing turns women into nitwits, turns their
brains into Jell-O, or subtracts points from their IQ bank.
The truth is the opposite – it strengthens them; it turns them into
better women. Isn’t that just
like God – to take what looks damaging and turn it around into growth and
development?
I find that when God is at work in our lives, the exact same thing
happens; He turns what looks like it is shrinking life – the frustrations, the
pain, the agony, the unfulfilled plans, into what develops life.
We are talking about the Holy Spirit, and I want to show you today the
part that the Holy Spirit plays in taking common, ordinary, irritating,
frustrating life and changing us.
Romans 8:26 Likewise the Spirit
also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we
ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which
cannot be uttered. 27 Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the
Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the
will of God. 28 And we know that all things work together for good to those
who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.
I.
The problem – our weakness.
The Holy Spirit “helps in our weaknesses.”
The word “weaknesses” describes normal human life, that commonly
comes up short, insufficient, incomplete. The
Holy Spirit is the designated solution. He
is the One who can meet in a practical way our weaknesses, our ignorance, our
failures, our worldliness, our selfishness, our deadness, our inconsistencies,
our emptiness, our discouragements. The
word “weakness” is in the singular, which suggests that it describes a state
of weakness, a permanent weakness, a missing gene in our spiritual lives.
The passage mentions two specific areas where we find problems:
A. We don’t know what
to pray for or how to pray. “For
we do not know what we should pray for as we ought.”
The assumption in the verse is that we “ought” to pray.
Prayer is the solution to our situation, but the problem is that we
don’t know how to do it. We
can’t express prayer that corresponds to our needs.
We can’t put the situation in which we find ourselves into the right
words.
The point is that we seldom understand either the dangers we face or the
needs we have. We pray, “I need a new car.”
But do we need a car or do we need extra contentment with the present
car? We say, “make my children
more obedient.” But do we need
more obedience from them or does our example to them need improvement?
“Lord I need money, right now.”
Do we need money or more wisdom in how to use what we have been given?
Do I need a better job or greater insight as to how to please my boss?
“Lord would you remove my enemy.”
Do I need God to expunge my enemy or do I need His love for my enemy?
Our view of our needs is so often incomplete, fuzzy.
As a result we repeatedly come up short when it comes to knowing how to
pray.
How do we pray for the Guatemala team?
What specific requests should we make?
“Lord bless them” is the standard prayer.
Do we ask that God would bring in all the money they need instantly?
Or that God would strengthen their faith in the process? That God would prepare them for the challenge of entering a
third world country? That God would
make it easy for them? Perhaps all
of the above – and more. Maybe we
should be praying that we would all go? Wouldn’t
that be dangerous! Why are we
satisfied with 17 people going? Do
you see how limited our understanding can be?
The key in life’s situations is prayer, but we are so often at loss for
words.
B. Someone is searching our
hearts. Verse
27 says, “Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is.”
The One who searches the hearts wants to answer our prayers in light of
our heart’s desire. But have you noticed how it’s possible to mouth words that
don’t represent what you really feel in your heart?
At the same time we are praying to the One who can see exactly what is
going on in our hearts. As the Holy
Spirit was convicting me about this I found a number of correlating verses in
the Bible.
For example, David speaking to his son before he took over: “As for
you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father, and serve Him with a loyal
heart and with a willing mind; for the LORD searches all hearts and understands
all the intent of the thoughts. If you seek Him, He will be found by you; but if
you forsake Him, He will cast you off forever” (I Kings 28:9).
And then Jeremiah says, “The heart is deceitful above all things,
And desperately wicked; Who can know it? I, the LORD, search the heart, I
test the mind, Even to give every man according to his ways, According to
the fruit of his doings” (Jeremiah 17:9-10).
Stop for a minute and ask yourself what is being played on the monitor of
your heart as you sit here today. Are
you focused on the Lord as you sit here? Or
is your heart in Hawaii? Or a game
somewhere? Or a math problem? What goes on in your heart as you pray? Are you in a hurry to get it over with? When your heart is not in it, prayer becomes a ritual.
You mouth words, that you don’t mean.
“Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep,” you
say as you are thinking about money. What
happens when you don’t pray from your heart?
Jesus said in Matthew 15, “These people draw near to Me with their
mouth, And honor Me with their lips, But their heart is far from Me. 9
And in vain they worship Me . . .”
I don’t know if you have any trouble, but I have trouble keeping my
heart in it as I pray. I think of 16 other things, I realize how busy I am, I go to
sleep, I wake up, I doze again. How
to keep our hearts focused?
There is our weakness, the how and the heart.
We don’t know how and our hearts wander and wobble, and we become
double minded.
II.
The Solution – The Holy Spirit prays for us.
The unbelievable news is
that the Holy Spirit is assigned to do the praying for us: “the Spirit Himself
makes intercession for us” (26). And
in verse 27: “He makes intercession for the saints.” Have you ever heard of that?
God praying for us? Isn’t
that amazing? And His prayer goes
in two directions. Verse 26 says that He intercedes with “groanings.”
Verse 27 says that He prays “according to the will of God.”
“With groanings” means that He knows and feels where we are; He
participates in our agony, even agonizes with us.
And in verse 27, “according to the Will of God” means that He can fit
our groanings in with God’s plan. The
Holy Spirit lives and prays in two worlds – He is fully in our world of pain,
frustration, and misunderstanding, and He is fully in the Father’s world of
perfect understanding and perfect plan. Let
me talk about those two.
A. The “groanings”
arise because things aren’t right. Verse
23 has already introduced the source of our pain: “Not only that, but
we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within
ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.”
We groan “waiting for the adoption,” meaning the day when Jesus comes
back to make everything right. He
hasn’t finished His project of Salvation, of repairing the ruin that Adam made
– yet.
And so we live in a world that often doesn’t make sense.
Someone said in ladies Bible class on Thursday, “why does God allow all
this pain?” A very good question.
“Why is it that so many children in Uganda are mistreated and killed
and never have the first chance at a normal life?
A very short life of not much else but pain.
How can that fit into God’s program?
How can that bring any glory to Him?”
Someone else says, “how can you believe in a God who allows or condemns
what looks like a greater percentage of the world to hell?”
“Why did He even create those people who are going to hell?”
“Why not forget the experiment; it would at least eliminate the
pain?” Why does God allow
peoples’ lives to be shortened, and filled with horrible pain, and go out in
misery? How does that fit, “God
is love?”
And war, seeing people blown to bits around you?
And famine, with adults that weigh 65 pounds, with nothing to eat?
And “why am I in such a miserable state?” “And why do I pray and God doesn’t answer?”
Groanings. And with these
groanings you can go one of three basic directions.
You can say that there is no God. But
then you have to answer where in the world love and beauty and this marvelous
creation have come from. Evolution
could not have created the wonder and beauty we see all around us.
Or you can say that there is a God but He is weak and cannot handle these
things. But then you have to answer
the Resurrection, and prophecy, and the ministry and message of Christ on earth.
So you are left really with one conclusion: He is God and He is all
powerful, but He has not yet finished revealing Himself and what He is about.
That is why there are groanings. And
Scripture says that there are groanings.
So what is there that helps us reconcile Who God says He is with our
present situation? Here is the
unbelievable answer: God the Holy Spirit comes to suffer with us, comes to
shoulder our groanings, comes to present our groanings to the Father – and in
the process transforms us in the middle of the groanings – like a mother’s
brain in the middle of the toddler’s world!
The point is that God IS at work, God is doing massive things.
But He is doing it in ways that are hard to see.
He is working in ways that look so insignificant, He is working behind
the scenes, and it’s very easy to miss His glory today. But the Holy Spirit is in us to meet us in our pain and
misunderstanding; to groan with us and for us.
He is in us to help us reconcile the promises of God with the problems of
life, the dogmatic statements of hope from God with the dogmatic hopelessness we
often find in life.
R. W. Dale says, “His intercession for us is so close to our emotional
conditions that it is a kind of agony” (R. W. Dale, Christian Doctrine,
140). He, God, joins our agony.
But if the groanings arise because things aren’t right,
B. The Will of God is
available to make things right.
Notice the end of vs. 27 and 28. It
says, “He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.
28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to
those who are the called according to His purpose.”
Do you see that verse 28 is finishing verse 27?
“All things work together for good” is related in some way with the
Holy Spirit praying for us “according to the will of God.”
You can’t make a blanket statement out of “all things work together
for good.” All things don’t
work together for good. Adolf
Hitler made almost all things work together for bad.
Today Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe is ruining life in Zimbabwe.
Just this week, inflating in Zimbabwe went over 1000 %.
People cannot afford a basic doctor visit.
AIDs patients cannot afford medicine.
Things are not working together for good.
But in the middle of Nazi Germany, or in the middle of life in Zimbabwe,
for those for whom the Holy Spirit is praying according to the Will of God, God
can make all things work together for good.
For whom does the Holy Spirit pray?
For every person? For every
saint? It looks to me like He is making intercession for those who
are praying. What He is doing is
taking the raw material of our prayers and re-organizing it, re-presenting it,
so that by the time it arrives at heaven’s gates, it lines up with the will of
the Father.
Here’s what happens. I
John 5:14-15 says, “this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask
anything according to His will, He hears us.
15
And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the
petitions that we have asked of Him.” Do
you see the connection between asking according to His will and confidence?
Where does confidence come from? How
do I know that God is going to do something about this?
When I know that my request lines up with His will.
The great news is that God has given us a “liner upper.”
The Holy Spirit acts as a secretary who edits what we ask, re-arranges
the requests, so that they fit the Will of God.
Isn’t that amazing? God
Himself will help me ask the right way, ask for the right thing!
The bottom line is, the Holy Spirit has been given to us to act as the
Holy Secretary. Don’t misunderstand that.
It doesn’t mean that He is also the Holy Author of the prayer.
He intercedes for those who are praying.
He is here to help us in our weakness, not in our absence.
He takes every prayer you make and improves it to “MLA” standards, or
“Heavenly code.”
What does it mean to have God praying for you?
Some people would say, “well, if the Holy Spirit is praying according
to the Will of the Father, why aren’t His requests being answered?”
MAYBE THEY ARE! Like
mother’s brains, maybe God is using all these pressures to transform us into
Him image – as we pray. Maybe we
don’t think we are getting answers because we’re looking for the wrong kind
of answers. Like the mother crying
out to God, “fix these kids.” And
He is going to fix them – just not today.
But he is using the kids to FIX HER!
Transform her; turn her into supermom!
There is a chance that this process is working in your life!
Because you have the Holy Spirit in you.
And He is in you for a purpose – to make this thing work.
III.
The conclusion – pray without ceasing.
Norman B. Harrison says, “Prayer is the pre-eminent prerequisite of a
successful Christian life” (Harrison, 81).
Paul says in Ephesians 6:18, “pray at all times in the Spirit” (NASB).
The conclusion? WE MUST
PRAY. The transformation of our
lives rides on prayer. Everything
that we need in life, from information on how to live today, to encouragement,
to understanding what God is doing – comes through prayer.
A. We don’t have to
worry about “eloquence.” The power of prayer is not in how powerfully we pray, how
loud, how precise the words, how flowery, how rightly articulated.
The power of prayer is in prayer – when the Holy Spirit prays with us
and for us to make our requests fit the Will of God.
It doesn’t matter that you can’t call down fire from heaven, it
doesn’t matter that you can’t move mountains in prayer, that you can’t say
someone’s name in prayer and they are instantly healed, or saved.
You have a Divine Secretary who makes your prayers come out right. Your responsibility is simply to do it.
We worry too much about unnecessary things, like how well we word our
prayers, or what the effects look like or don’t look like.
Yesterday in men’s prayer meeting, Dr. Jim Yoder shared the story from
some years ago when he shared the gospel with a friend with whom he worked, and
did an awful job. He didn’t
explain things clearly, he didn’t give the man a chance to talk, he just
unloaded the gospel on him. The man
didn’t say a thing; and the man never talked to him again about it.
Jim and June moved, and three years later came back where he met the man
again. The man excitedly explained,
to Jim’s surprise, how he had become a believer in those three years.
What happened? The Holy Spirit simply took the words Jim spoke, filtered out
the stuff that didn’t fit and used those words to convict him and guide him to
the truth.
It’s not eloquence in witnessing or in praying.
It’s just doing it. He
helps those who ARE praying. He
helps those who are witnessing, who are giving.
B. What we should worry
about is the condition of our “hearts.”
We are coming to the One who knows our hearts better than we do.
We can’t fake it. It
can’t be a ritual. Confess your sin, be honest, mean what you say, and pray
with your whole heart.
Do you see the beautiful design in all of this?
God is using motherhood to transform mothers.
In all the frustrations, she becomes a new woman.
In a similar way God is using not motherhood, but circumstance-hood to
transform His children, even though they don’t see anything but bratty kids
around them, and seem to spend their lives cleaning up mess after mess.
The Holy Spirit is here, and He can transform the mundane into the Super.
And that’s His goal.
Mothers, supermoms, may you be honored and blessed by the lives of your
children. You are loved; you are
blessed because you are a unique demonstration to each of us of the work of God.
05/13/06,
BBC am (Mother’s day)
TheHolySpirit03.MEF, 05/19/06