“If God had granted all the silly prayers I’ve made in my life, where should I be now?” That observation by C. S. Lewis to his fictional friend Malcolm should make Romans 8.26 the favorite verse of many Christians. But God goes Lewis one better: The Lord would demonstrate amazing grace in ignoring our flaky requests; what God in fact does is transform them! The Holy Spirit does the heavy lifting of intercession (“help” is the word in Luke 10.40 for the hard slog of a scullery maid) by smelting the silliness out of our prayer and refining its real intent.
Ultimately there is only one Christian prayer: “Make me like Jesus.” That’s the one God always answers, the one God is always answering. When Paul claims that “God causes all things to work together for good,” the good he has in mind is for us “to become conformed to the image of His Son.” We can pray for whatever we want; what we will get is whatever makes us more like Jesus. Unfortunately for our flesh, that’s usually a cross.
So Paul clues us in to some stuff that increases our conformity to the heart of our crucified Lord. He does not guarantee that God will exempt us from tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril or sword; indeed, he seems to invite us to be the guests of dishonor at a general sheep-slaughtering. The Bible never promises that God will separate us from suffering – only that suffering will never separate us from God. And both of those things are true for the same reason: Suffering makes us more like the Son, and thus draws us closer to the Father.
Good Grief!
Doug
Collect
Holy Spirit, you hear our hearts beneath the words we think we mean. Take on your shoulders the burden of prayer that we are too weak to bear and too limited to understand, and pray without remorse or relenting that we may carry our cross until our sorrows conform us fully to the image of Christ Our Lord in whose name we pray together with the Father and You, Holy Spirit, One God now and forever, Amen.
Benediction
May the Spirit stand beside you and speak within you,
When your mind and your strength are too small.
May the Father who called you cause all things to conform you,
To the image of the crucified Son.
May the Son who died for you ever intercede for you,
And make you His inseparable and unconquerable sisters and brothers.
In the name of the Father,
And of the Son,
And of the Holy Spirit,
Amen.
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