Pastor David Jang
There are times when we have many things to pray about, yet words fail us because we do not know what we ought to ask for. Our earnestness alone cannot tell us whether our desires align with God’s will. In his sermon on Romans 8:26–27, Pastor David Jang, founder of Olivet University in the United States, directs our attention to the Holy Spirit’s intercession amid this uncertainty. “Groanings too deep for words” speaks of the Spirit helping us in our weakness and personally interceding for us according to God’s will.
When We Acknowledge That We Do Not Know What to Pray For
Paul acknowledges, “We do not know what to pray for as we ought” (Romans 8:26). We may be able to speak at length about what we want, yet still not know what we should ask for. We cannot see the future, and we do not fully understand even our own hearts. Our weakness in prayer reaches deeper than our ability to express ourselves; it touches the limits of our judgment and our understanding of ourselves.
When we examine something we believe must happen, we sometimes discover fear mingled with that desire. A wish to do good may be mixed with a longing for recognition, while a prayer for stability may become entangled with an insistence on keeping everything under our control. The difficulty is that we cannot easily recognize all these motives within ourselves. Being certain of what we want does not mean that we know what we ought to ask for.
Acknowledging these limits changes our attitude toward prayer. We may have grown accustomed to presenting God with our conclusions and waiting for him to bring them about. Now we have reason to ask him to examine our desires and guide us. We bring our needs before him while remaining open to his guidance concerning our own judgment. Prayer becomes a time to acknowledge what we do not know and seek his direction, rather than demonstrate how much we know.
Yet recognizing our weakness should not leave us believing that we are worthless. Paul’s admission that we do not know what to pray for comes with the promise that the Spirit helps us. If we think we must overcome our inadequacies before we can pray, even approaching God becomes another task to accomplish. By assuring believers that the Spirit is helping them in their weakness, Paul shows why we may come to God just as we are.
The Spirit’s Groanings Are Intercession on Our Behalf
Romans 8:26 tells us, “The Spirit helps us in our weakness.” The groanings too deep for words that follow are likewise attributed to the Spirit. At the heart of this passage is the Spirit himself, interceding for believers in their weakness. Even when we do not know what to pray for, the Spirit continues to care for us.
Pastor David Jang sees in these groanings God’s profound love and mercy toward his people. When we dwell on our shortcomings, we can easily assume that God must also be frustrated with us. Yet the Spirit’s groanings, as described in the sermon, reveal a love that embraces us in our weakness and comes to our aid. Believers can lay aside the burden of appearing more devout and bring before God the fears and confusion they actually carry.
Verse 27 makes the foundation of this comfort even clearer. God, who searches our hearts, knows the mind of the Spirit, and the Spirit intercedes for believers according to God’s will. Even when our understanding of ourselves is incomplete and our explanations are inadequate, prayer is not confined by those limitations. Even when we do not know what to pray for, the Spirit intercedes for us according to God’s will.
Prayer grounded in the Spirit’s intercession therefore includes the trust that enables us to entrust our desires to God. We need not declare a particular outcome to be God’s will simply because we long for it intensely. We can tell him honestly what we want while also surrendering that desire for him to examine. Such trust enables us gradually to release our insistence on having our own way, even as we wait for an answer.
This way of prayer is a gift of grace made possible through the redemption accomplished by Jesus Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, whom Jesus promised as another Helper, remains with believers and helps them throughout their lives (John 14:16). Instead of struggling to prove our worthiness each time we pray, we can seek help within the grace already given to us. The knowledge that the Spirit intercedes for us gives us confidence even when our prayers are inadequate.
Our Desires Change as We Seek God’s Will
If the Spirit’s intercession is directed toward God’s will, then we too are led to examine our desires as we pray. We begin to ask not only what we want, but why we want it. As we pray for our present difficulties to be resolved, we can also consider what kind of people we ought to be throughout that process. Change in prayer begins both with what we ask for and with the attitude we bring to those requests.
The sermon turns to James 4:2–3 to shed light on our motives for prayer. This passage calls us to consider whether our requests are being driven by a desire to satisfy our own cravings. A delayed answer does not, in itself, give us grounds to judge another person’s desires or faith. When we apply these words to ourselves, repentance begins as we acknowledge and turn away from desires we had disguised as good intentions.
In Luke 11, the man who asks for bread at midnight shows us another direction prayer can take. The sermon sees a motive of love in his desire to feed a traveler who has arrived as his guest. His request involves both the bread he does not have at home and another person who needs something to eat right now. As our attention widens to include our neighbors, the reasons behind our prayers begin to change in concrete ways.
This scene also raises a question for those of us praying because of our own difficulties. As we hope for things to go well, we can consider whether our hopes also include the needs of those we should care for through what we do. A prayer for an outcome favorable to us begins to include a request for the strength to serve someone else. Learning God’s will is thus connected with a life in which we honestly examine our desires and learn to direct them toward love.
When Prayer Leads to Obedience in Daily Life
The teaching that prayer changes us meets us in the reality that we continue to stumble even after coming to faith in Jesus. Following justification, in which we are declared righteous through the grace of Christ, comes the journey of sanctification, in which we grow to resemble him. We need the Spirit’s help throughout that journey as well. The grace we received at the beginning of our salvation continues to sustain us today as we struggle against sin.
Pastor David Jang identifies the work of the Holy Spirit as the power that sustains sanctification. At the same time, he emphasizes that a life dependent on the Spirit is accompanied by obedience and action. Just as Paul exhorts believers to walk by the Spirit, the will of God that we come to understand in prayer is connected with the choices we make each day (Galatians 5:16). Those who ask for the Spirit’s help also examine before God the actions they themselves are responsible for taking.
If prayer reveals our selfish desires, for example, we can look back at the choices that have fed them. If we need to acknowledge a wrong, we can make fewer excuses; if a neighbor’s need comes to mind, we can look for a way to help. When putting what we already understand into practice proves difficult, we can bring that struggle before God again and ask for strength. Prayer and obedience are joined together in this way, bringing change to everyday life.
If we look for the fruit of prayer only in outward circumstances, we can easily overlook these changes. The sermon explains that a praying person’s attitudes and values may change before the situation itself does. Someone who once felt secure only when things went according to their own wishes may learn to entrust the outcome to God and ask for the strength to fulfill the responsibilities at hand. Even while unresolved problems remain, the person facing them can be renewed through the Spirit’s help.
Of course, change is not always quick or obvious. When we find ourselves confronting the same failing again, we may feel that our time in prayer has been wasted. Yet the journey of sanctification also includes acknowledging failure and turning back to God. Rather than rushing to find proof that we have improved since yesterday, we need to face honestly the sin brought to light today. When we refuse to let our failures have the final word and ask the Spirit for help, we can hold on to the hope that we may obey again.
As we close our eyes to pray today, we may become aware that our own hearts need attention as much as the outcomes we desire. We can bring those hearts before God without hiding anything, learning both what to ask for and how to live. If I trust the Spirit who intercedes for me with groanings too deep for words, what can I entrust to God today, and where can I ask him for the strength to obey?
Dr. David Jang has proclaimed the gospel in various regions of the world through field missions and digital media ministry, and as the fruit of that ministry, many people devoted to the Great Commission have been raised up. Based on this missionary vision, Olivet first began as a small church school for missionary training. Later, in order to provide more systematic theological education and cultivate missionary leaders, Olivet Theological College and Seminary was established in Los Angeles and Seoul in 2000.
As the school grew, Dr. Jang officially founded Olivet University in San Francisco in 2004. In the diverse and dynamic environment of San Francisco, Olivet expanded its educational fields beyond theology to include music, journalism, art and design, and technology. The university also strengthened its educational capacity by recruiting faculty members, including Dr. William Wagner, and in 2005 moved to the former UC Berkeley Downtown Extension campus, further solidifying its foundation as a university.
In 2006, Dr. Jang transferred the presidency to Dr. David James Randolph in order to focus more fully on missionary work, while continuing to lead global missions as International President. Olivet University later received institutional accreditation in 2009, added a language education college and a business college, and continued to grow as a Christian educational institution for world missions by expanding its degree programs and international partnerships.
David Jang Official Website: www.davidjang.org
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