By Donald M. Tuttle

Margaret was a quiet, reflective woman. She was the kind to think deep thoughts but rarely share them with those around her. On this particular day, I was visiting Margaret's husband in the Intensive Care Unit of a Kentucky hospital. He had been there for nearly three weeks, seeming to move from one major crisis to another. At moments, he seemed to recognize his wife. At others, he seemed oblivious to anyone or anything. And no one knew what would happen next.

On that day, after words of prayer, Margaret and I walked out to the waiting room, sat in two corner chairs, and began to talk. It was small talk at first--about how she was faring, about the kids and when they would visit next. Then came a pause in the conversation. It was one of those awkward moments that we try so hard to avoid. Yet there it was, allowing more serious, painful thoughts to wedge their way into our minds. After a bit, she broke the silence. "Don," she said, "do you think it would be OK to pray for God to take him? I mean--I want him to be healed, but I don't want him to stay this way. It's just not right."

How do you answer a question like that? How do we know for what to pray? It's hard, isn't it?

Of course, not knowing isn’t limited to such dramatic cases. Other possibly less serious matters can leave us wondering. Some of you have seen your child and his or her spouse struggle with the realities of marriage. You have heard the bitter words and seen the results of flying fists. But for what do you pray? For them to work through their troubles and fulfill the vows they made before God? Or do you pray that they might part and immediately end the degradation, violence and pain they inflict upon one another? It's hard to know.

It's even hard to know how to pray for the world we live in. Much has been said about family values. But for what do we pray? For a return to the families of the past, the days of "The Waltons," when moms cooked and cleaned and raised the kids while dads worked overtime to make ends meet? Or do we pray for a new understanding of family, one that recognizes that many women need the affirmation of employment and many men need to know and nurture their children? Both models are good and both are bad. For which do we pray?

It is not easy to know for what to pray. As often as not, we may stumble into the presence of God, fall on our knees, and still don’t know just exactly what it is for which we should ask of our Creator. And it happens, Paul says, because we are weak.

He says that in our weakness, "we do not know how to pray as we ought." "Weakness" here is not a matter of technique or effort. Paul is not suggesting that mastering a new method of prayer will lead us to always praying according to God's intentions. Nor is he suggesting that if we just strive a little harder, build a few more spiritual muscles, all will be well. "Weakness" is the reality that even though we are Christians, even though we are disciples of Jesus Christ, even though we have been reconciled to God through our Lord, we still struggle with the self-centeredness that has dominated our lives from the moment we were born. So thoroughly trained are we to think in self-centered ways that to think any other way, even when we pray, is nearly impossible.

A few years ago, there was an episode of the TV show “ER.” Dr. Benton was one of the characters. He played a brilliant surgeon, as gifted and as driven as anyone could be. In his desire to excel, he decides to specialize in pediatric surgery, one of the toughest fields in medicine. While he's doing his residency his supervisor gives him a simple procedure to complete. But in the process, something goes wrong. What was simple gets complicated. So well trained is he to treat adults that he naturally does what he would do if the patient before him were not a child. And the more he does, the worse it gets, nearly costing the child its life. Though he is in training; he is not yet trained. He is still subject to ways of his past.

And so it is with us. Although we are trying to follow Jesus Christ, trying to be transformed into the image of our Lord, we're not there yet. We are still subject to the self-centeredness that is human sinfulness. We still struggle to replace our will with God's will, our desires with God's desire. And though we are in training, we are not yet trained in the ways of God. And that means we come to our prayers with mixed motives. We don't know how to pray as we ought because we don't know whether it is God's will or our will that we seek. Is it Margaret's husband's pain that she seeks to relieve or is it her own pain as she watches him struggle? Is it the abuse our married child endures that bothers us or is it the fact that we can no longer protect her as we would a little child? Is it the deterioration of the culture around us that we seek to address or is it the fact that we are frightened by new realities that we cannot grasp or control?

It is hard for us to know how to pray because even as forgiven sinners we remain self-centered. We do not yet completely share the mind of God.

Yet we need not fear. For God has provided for us. Paul tells us that when we struggle to speak to God, the Holy Spirit comes to our aid, hears our prayers and "intercedes with sighs too deep for words,...[intercedes] for the saints according to the will of God.”

William Willimon tells of a member of one of his congregation. The man had been a successful businessman, rising to an upper-level post in the company. But without warning, the company changed and he was fired. “Put out to pasture,” he said.

As you might imagine, he was depressed and discouraged. To give him something to do, Willimon asked him to help out at the church’s clothes closet. The man was reluctant, but eventually said “yes.”

While working in the clothes closet, he met a mother of three who used the clothes closet to help make ends met on her domestic worker’s wages. The woman told him about her troubles with the electric company, how she had paid her bill late, had the power shut off, and now how they wanted $50 she didn’t have to turn it back on. She had tried to talk to them, but nothing she said seemed to matter.

The businessman offered to call for her. He was astounded at the way he was treated, so he demanded to speak to the manager, an old friend, and within minutes they had agreed to get her electricity back on.

What made the difference? He knew how to speak the language. He knew what had to be done and what had to be said to make the woman’s case before the company.

And that is what God gives us through the Spirit. The Spirit intercedes. It comes to our aid, takes the mumbling, stumbling prayers we offer, and presents them before God, not as we offer them but as they should be brought before God. The Spirit takes our mixed motives, our selfish desires, and purifies them so that our prayers become what we would want to pray if we knew fully the heart and mind of God.

And that should bring us comfort. Through the Spirit God hears what we would want to pray at our best, at our most faithful, rather than the prayers we offer at our sinful, self-centered worst. As one author wrote:

There is comfort in knowing that even the unspoken prayer of the uninformed opinion springing forth from the uninformed mind is valid when prompted by the Spirit who steps in and invests the sigh with significance and the tear with meaning.

Today is Pentecost. It is the day when we celebrate the tongues of flame that poured forth from heaven. It is the day we recall the powerful wind that blew into our lives. It is the day we celebrate the birth of the church. But maybe as important as these signs of power and wonder are, they pale next to the reality that the Spirit has set you, me and the Margarets of the world free to pray unfettered by fear. We can speak what is on our minds and hearts before God, knowing that the Spirit intercedes for us, knowing that the Spirit purifies our prayers that they might be made according to the will of God.