Groanings

Whenever I pray, it's really easy for me to keep going; it's hard for me to stop. Maybe that's my Pentecostal self coming out, but I really don't care. I love praying. If someone asks me to pray for them, I will. Martin Luther said, "To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing." I've taken that to heart because when I was younger, I didn't really like praying out loud. I had a speech impediment and couldn't pronounce "r's" or "w's," so I rarely did audible prayers. One of my children's pastors once told me this verse in Romans about how if we don't know the words to pray, the Holy Spirit intercedes through wordless groans. As if that's supposed to appease me. That's not exactly the best thing to tell someone who's afraid to pray out loud.
"It's okay that you don't like praying out loud because the Holy Spirit already does all the praying we need."

What I need to hear now, and what we all need to hear, is that prayer is such an effective means to tap into the will of God. If your life is in disarray, pray. If you don't know what to do, pray. If you don't want to pray, pray. I mean, that might sound extremely simplified, but in reality, we pray because we ought to. In Luke, right before Jesus went to the cross, he went to the mountain to pray. If the Son of God prays, shouldn't we? He, who knew exactly the outcome, prayed. It gave him strength. It gave him insight. And most importantly, it allowed Jesus to see God's will for his life.
So yeah, that's why I now love to pray. I love seeing God's will revealed to me. I get a little deposit of his promises for me. And I'm going to keep praying. Yeah, the Holy Spirit definitely groans with me throughout the day, and it/she/he brought me here to seminary: to continue to see God's will for my life. I'm going to keep praying. Lead me to the mountain, Lord.