Did you know that God prays for us?
I don’t share this story very often because it’s deeply personal to me and my family. But I asked their permission to share this story because this is one of our “God is For Us” stories.
This is a picture of a blog post I wrote in 2014.
This post got nearly 3000 views from people all around the world. As you can see from the title, we were asking people to pray for our son Will.
What I didn’t know when I wrote this post is that we were in for weeks and months of not knowing, waiting, and the kind of uncertainty that can almost crush a person.
Worried, Not Worried…
At the time, Will was 8 years old. Alisha had noticed this dark spot on his ear and she was concerned it might be something we needed a doctor to look at. You know me, father of the year over here, I didn’t think anything about it. I wasn’t worried about it.
I thought he was fine.
But you know how God seems to put the right people in the right place at the right time?
That year, Will was playing on a little league baseball team in Atlanta and Alisha got to know one of the moms of one of the boys on the team who happened to work at a dermatology office. Alisha asked her if she would just look at Will and let us know if it would be something to get checked out or if it was nothing to worry about.
She took one look and said, “You better get that checked out.”
It was summer and I was away on a mission trip to Mexico when Alisha calls me. She had made an appointment with a pediatric dermatologist for Will. The doctor took one look at the spot on his ear and said, we need a biopsy today. The doctor was very concerned.
Well, they were unable to do the biopsy that day. Both Will and Alisha have an aversion to needles and people who want to cut things off their body!
So when I got home from Mexico, I took Will to an oncology office, to a place that specialized in Melanoma. That’s what they were concerned about. It’s extremely rare in kids but as you can imagine, it’s also extremely dangerous in kids.
Because it’s so rare in kids, we’re now sitting in the waiting room of a doctors office filled with older people. The receptionist thought we were in the wrong place, but I assured her we were not and I explained who we were and why we were there. We were blessed that one of the top doctors in Atlanta had agreed to take Will’s case and look at him.
We went back to an exam room and this doctor took one look at Will and said, “We need a biopsy today!”
Once again, that did not go well at all. Without going into all the details, it was one of the hardest days of my life and Will’s life.
The doctor finally came out to meet with me and told me the only way to get the biopsy we needed would be to take Will to the hospital, schedule an O.R., sedate him, take the biopsy and stitch him up. He said it would be a very quick procedure, but in his opinion, and he was right, it was the only way.
We scheduled the procedure. They got the biopsy. Will got a few stitches and some ice cream and then, the waiting began.
Melanoma?
What we didn’t know then was that the cells they were concerned about that could potentially be Melanoma are incredibly difficult to identify in kids as cancerous. In children it’s very difficult to distinguish if these types of abnormal cells are benign or cancerous. It’s almost identical in the way it presents.
So the initial results from the biopsy were inconclusive.
The only way to tell would be to have another test done on the same biopsy sample but that test would have to be approved by our insurance.
That’s when the real waiting began. We waited for weeks that turned into months. I spent hours on the phone, mostly on hold, with our insurance trying to get help, trying to get answers.
As it turned out, the test we needed was categorized by our insurance as a genetic test and our insurance didn’t cover genetic testing and if we had it done we would have to pay for it out of pocket and it would be incredibly expensive. But our doctors were working with the insurance trying everything they could to help us, but that meant more waiting.
What we knew was that if it was cancer, it would involve removing a piece of our son’s ear along with several lymph nodes. The longer we waited, the more worried we became. It was hanging over us and him like a dark cloud and there wasn’t anything we could do about it.
Have you ever been there?
Waiting.
In the uncertainty. In the unknown.
In the in-between moments of life when you don’t know what’s going to happen, how things are going to turn out and it was like a weight on your shoulders that you weren’t sure you could bear?
That dark cloud surrounded you and it overshadowed every moment of every day and you didn’t know when, or if, or how you would ever emerge from it?
What I don’t want to do today is compare my story to your story. Many of you have had to endure far more that I ever have. Some of you haven’t had to wait for just weeks or months, you’ve had to wait for years. Some of you have been waiting for a lifetime. Some of you are living with pain that won’t go away.
And that pain may be physical, but it may also be relational, or emotional, or mental, or some other kind of pain. We’re not here to compare stories but we are here to acknowledge that this is part of the human experience and this is part of the spiritual life.
For some people in other parts of the world, they’re living in and through the devastations of war. They’re dealing with the consequences of decisions made by powerful people over which they have no control!
Whatever it is, whatever the pain, the source of the pain, it all comes down to the reality that we are living in a broken world. A world that was literally broken by sin. And there are limitations to what we can do, what we can fix, what we can heal, what we can mend.
It’s a hard truth that we don’t often talk about, just like we talked about last week, suffering is a part of walking with Jesus. Hardship, difficulty, pain… it doesn’t go away when we say, YES, to Jesus.
But there is a promise for us when we say YES to Jesus.
The Promise
Romans is a letter written by the Apostle Paul to a group of Jesus followers living in the ancient city of Rome some 2000 years ago who knew what it meant to suffer.
2000 years ago medicine wasn’t nearly as advanced as it is today. There were no cures for many of the sicknesses we face today.
2000 years ago there were wars, persecutions, people who died unimaginable deaths at the hands of violent people, emperors who thought they were gods, and warlords who loved to wreak havoc.
And we haven’t even talked about natural disasters, plagues, pandemics, the mortality rate for people and for children, and the list goes on and on and on.
To live in the first century in Rome when this letter was written meant that you understood hardship, difficulty, and pain. And for these first believers in Jesus, all that didn’t go away when they said, “YES,” to Jesus.
But Paul wants them to know there was a promise for them when we said YES to Jesus. In Romans 8.26-30, Paul gives them this promise…
26 And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness.
This is how much God is FOR US! He knows we can’t make it on our own. Try as we might. So he has given us NOT a part of himself, NOT a piece of himself, but he has given us ALL of himself, the Holy Spirit, to help us in our weakness.
The Holy Spirit is not a part of God. He is God. The Holy Spirit is the Helper, the Advocate, Jesus promised we would receive after he left planet earth. The Holy Spirit is what Paul and Peter and Jesus all said we would receive in our confession and baptism.
Paul says, God’s “power is made perfect in my weakness!” – 2 Corinthians 12.9
He says, “For when I am weak, then I am strong.” – 2 Corinthians 12.10
And then he says, “Therefore I delight in my weakness!” – 2 Corinthians 12.10
We don’t like to admit, much less boast, about our weaknesses! Yet, this is another way of testifying God is FOR US!
Testimony also comes from confession of weakness where God has the opportunity to prove he is WITH US, FOR US!
For Example…
Then Paul says… FOR EXAMPLE…
26 For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. 27 And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will.
This is just one more reason to step into the waters of baptism… for those of us who have been united with Christ in baptism and are believers in Jesus.. the Holy Spirit living inside of us pleads before God for us!!
Paul says, here’s one way the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness: Have you ever tried to pray and you honestly didn’t know what to pray for?
Maybe you were just tired. Fatigued. You sat down to pray and you were like… “I got nothing!”
OR… The situation was so bad, so hard, it felt so hopeless that you honestly didn’t know what to pray for.
Do you pray for healing OR do you pray that the one you love can peacefully enter into the arms of Jesus?
Do you pray for the person to repent and return to God OR do you pray that they will hit rock bottom so that maybe then they can get the help they need and be transformed by God?
Do you pray for reconciliation in the relationship OR do you pray it comes to an end so people can hopefully move on?
Sometimes, as a follower of Jesus, it’s hard to know what to pray for. Maybe no one has ever told you that. Maybe you haven’t had that experience yet. But sometimes, the situation, the circumstance is so hard, you don’t know what to pray for.
Here’s the good news… The Holy Spirit does. And when you don’t know what to pray for you or for the ones you love…
GOD PRAYS FOR YOU!
The Holy Spirit knows exactly what you need. Exactly what to ask. Exactly what your Father in Heaven needs to provide for you. And here’s the promise and the powerful reminder that God really is FOR US… when you don’t know what to pray, the Holy Spirit prays FOR US!
This is just ONE WAY, ONE EXAMPLE of how the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness!
And then Paul writes…
28 And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. 29 For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And having chosen them, he called them to come to him. And having called them, he gave them right standing with himself. And having given them right standing, he gave them his glory.
Paul doesn’t say, everything is going to work out for your prosperity.
Everything is going to happen the way you want when you want.
God wants you to be happy.
Your problems will go away or your pain will be alleviated.
HE DOES SAY… Whatever you’re going through, no matter how hard it seems, it’s not in vain. You are not alone. And God can use it, whatever it is, for your good and for His glory!
We don’t talk about it much, but the reality is your spiritual formation, your growth, it comes from your adversity.
We understand this truth in the physical world. A plant has to push up through the earth before it’s strong enough to bloom.
A tree has to be able to endure the wind before it’s strong enough to bear fruit.
If you want to get stronger, you have to lift heavy weights frequently and repeatedly!
Growth only happens through adversity, difficulty, tension, and resistance.
When you go through whatever you go through with God, your faith grows stronger and God receives more glory!
What adversity are you up against?
What problem are you trying to solve? What are you carrying that is weighing you down?
It was October 22, 2014 at about 4:30PM when I got the phone call.
We had hit a dead end with our insurance. They denied the genetic test we needed to see if the biopsy was Melanoma or just benign. But our doctors were undeterred.
They learned that there were 2 doctors in the nation who had the ability, the expertise, and the equipment to look at the biopsy and could tell us if those cells were cancerous or not. One of those doctors was in San Francisco. The other was in Boston.
The doctor in Boston was willing to help. After studying the sample he gave us the news that in his opinion, it was NOT Melanoma.
I wish you could have been in our kitchen that night when we gave Will the good news. A burden had been lifted. Prayers had been answered. The dark cloud was finally removed.
But here’s what we learned and what we were reminded of through that experience… that there were thousands of people all around the planet, many we knew and many we had never met, who were praying for us. They ushered us and our son into the presence of God over and over again, as long as we needed, asking God to do what only God could do.
We learned and we were reminded that we are not alone.
Not only were we being carried by family and friends and friends who are family during that difficult time, but we were being carried by God. Throughout the whole process, God was working in invisible ways, ways we could not see, possibly know or understand, for our good and for his glory!
And when we didn’t know what to pray, God prayed for us.
The Holy Spirit took the groanings of our hearts and translated them into the language of Heaven that only God can understand so that God could work in our lives for our good and at the same time, for His ultimate glory. And we believe that’s exactly what He did.
Every time we tell this story we share our testimony of how through our adversity God was WITH US and God was FOR US!
And if you’re in the middle of your own valley of the shadow of death today, here’s want I want you to know…
God is intimately aware and actively involved in the details of your life.
In fact, God often works in invisible ways, ways you cannot see, possibly know or possibly understand, for your good and for his ultimate glory.
You serve a God who knows you by name, loves you as you are, and has chosen you to be a part of his family. He sees, He knows, and He cares about what you’re going through. Not only is your God FOR YOU, your God PRAYS FOR YOU.
While you/re in the waiting…
While you’re in the waiting, while you’re dealing with the unknown and the uncertainty of it all, keep trusting.
Keep believing. Keep praying.
Even if you don’t have the words to pray, just enter into the presence of Jesus and ask the Holy Spirit to pray for you. He will.
Because He has promised He would.
