The Spirit Himself Intercedes

"We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express."  -Romans 8:26

Lilias Trotter returns to her thoughts on downward praying (see Confidence):  "No longer a weary wrestling to get access and an answer, but catching His thought and swiftly asking alongside in His name--His the overtone, ours the undertone, so to fill in the harmony.  Praying down rather than up--that is the summing up; how the velocity and power of anything that comes down, gains in ratio of high proportion with the height from which it drops."  Lilias also quotes Mother Julian of Norwich from 400 (now 500) years ago:  "Prayer is the true lasting will of the soul, united and fastened into the will of our Lord by the sweet inward working Holy Ghost."

It is always thrilling while following a slow moving stream to come upon a waterfall.  The power of the water as it spills over the precipice churning the water below, then watching it all smooth out again to a placid stream never ceases to delight me.  This is how it is with prayer when we pray from a high place--when our lives are so entwined with the working of the Holy Spirit in us.  Prayer will flow from us, via the Holy Spirit, to God and downward to do its working.

I am grateful that I do not always need to know what to pray when the words do not come, knowing that the Spirit intercedes for me.