What Does The Holy Spirit's Groaning Sound Like?

Did you ever wonder? Did you ever wonder?

I do. Did you ever wonder? Why the sun always rises, but the stars never fall?

Why dry land is never satisfied by water? And why fire never says, enough? Enough. Last night we recorded Maslin Journey and a dear friend of mine was illustrating, you know, how he doesn't necessarily know how to pray. It's very awkward at times to pray. And I think if we're all honest, we all experience that. Like we don't have the right words. We don't know how to express ourselves. And so he illustrated that both beautifully in the clip from Meet the Parents where Greg goes to pray the Thanksgiving blessing and he talks about the smorgasbord and all those kind of things, which, you know, is just like kind of what God gave me this morning, a smorgasbord. But anyway, very cool. Then he went on, you know, he just did a great job of talking about how, and he illustrated it so clearly in his story about trying to pray and asking God for the right words to express his soul.

And, you know, it's just not easy. Well, you know, as he was going into all that, it reminded me that recently or actually every single day in my daily prayer, I asked the Spirit to do those groanings for me that I would be more like Jesus, because I don't know exactly how to pray that. And obviously he does. And so just on a whim, I guess somewhat whimsical, you know, sometime last week I asked God, you know, when I was up in his lap, Lord, what does the Spirit sound like when it does that groaning? And for whatever reason, I'd forgotten that I'd ask him that until Rodney was explaining, I'm sorry, my friend who I was talking about was explaining how he tried to pray and use the Spirit.

And I brought it back to my mind. So this morning, of course, I went back and I said, oh, Lord, remember that I wanted to know what that groaning sounded like. And he said, well, Robbie, you know, why don't you look into that word in Romans and just do some study and see what you might find? And so I started to study, as I often do, and I just love God's word in so many ways. Interestingly, it does pretty easy point you back in the Septuagint to the word for groaning that Paul was using. And beautifully, you know, it's interesting that that groaning you're going to find in the Psalms in several different places. One of the really cool places, I think, is in Psalm 12, where it talks about God talking in general and how pure his word is and all that kind of thing, and sometimes how impure our words are.

And there sits that word groaning. And that word in Hebrew is truly a spectacular word. It's an aleph and a nun and a kuff and a hay, which when you get the idea of that aleph, it's like the faith of the Father, right, in closeness expressed.

So it fits perfectly with the idea of what the Spirit would be communicating. But the other fascinating thing, and I think this is clearly where God had me on this, and the reason I'm actually doing this particular podcast and God wanted me to, was another way that that word is translated, that is translated groaning in Hebrew, is also the word ferret. And actually, when you look at that word ferret in Hebrew, and you know Adam named all the animals with the energy that they were given, and apparently ferrets have an energy to groan. And so, fascinatingly, I was like, oh, so you're telling me that if I listen to a ferret, I'll get an idea. And so I went to YouTube immediately and said, you know, what does a ferret sound like? Well, just this remarkable—the very first video I saw was the 14 sounds or groans that a ferret makes, and they even describe in the video that there's many, many, many more.

And so I am posting the link to the ferret at my website, for those of you who are curious like me, on a whim on what that might actually sound like. But I get the picture as you listen to the ferret and you think about the groanings, that ferrets are actually very highly communicative, and through groaning, and interestingly, you know, I get a sense that those groans that the Spirit is using are completely from our souls somehow. In other words, they're truly—and when you think about the Spirit being breath, and the idea that breath coming through in a groan, it's like, man, these are deep, deep waters and deep needs that are expressed through groaning and crying and those kind of things. Or maybe you can remember at some time—in fact, the other day when I was actually working on my show for Saturday morning, the leaning on the everlasting arms, I recalled my mother's arms holding me when I was a baby, and it caused me to go into a great cry. I mean, it was probably one of the best cries I've had a long time.

And I don't know if you get to that point in crying where you start going, you know, and I was like, oh, man, that's it. That's part of how your soul can actually groan and you can hear it. And so, you know, of course, it's all stuff to ponder and wonder about. I thought it was just whimsical and wonderful. And so I wanted to share that this morning. Of course, the link to the ferrets would be in my show notes there at my podcast page. And again, I'm so grateful for your listening and thinking with me about, you know, what does that groaning sound like?