Tongue-Tied in Prayer

Hi, friend, and welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread. I'm Elisa Morgan, and I entitled our reading, Tongue Tied in Prayer. When my baby brother underwent surgery, I was concerned. My mother explained that tongue tie, ankyloglossia, was a condition that he was born with and that without any help, his ability to eat and eventually to speak would be hindered. Today, we use the term tongue tied to describe being at a loss for words or too shy to speak. Sometimes we can become tongue tied in prayer, not knowing what to say. Our tongues tie up in spiritual cliches and repetitive phrases. We arrow our emotions heavenward, wondering if they will reach God's ears.

Our thoughts zigzag along an unfocused path. Writing to first century Roman believers in Christ, the apostle Paul addressed what to do when we struggle to know how to pray, inviting us to find help from the Holy Spirit. The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. The concept of help here is to carry a heavy load, and wordless groans indicates an interceding presence as the Spirit carries our needs to God. When we're tongue tied in prayer, God's Spirit helps shape our confusion and pain and distraction into the perfect prayer that moves from our hearts to God's ears. He listens and answers, bringing the exact kind of comfort we may not have known we needed until we asked Him to pray for us.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from Romans Chapter 8 verses 22 to 27. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all.

Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. In the same way the Spirit helps us in our 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. Let's pray. Dear God, thank You for Your Holy Spirit who gives words when we are tongue-tied. Thank You for taking all of our needs, our longings, and our stuck places, and sifting them out before Your altar. In Jesus' name, amen.