There are four hundred and something of them in a folder called notes and nobody has ever seen it.
She started at nineteen, in her second year, on a bad night when she wanted to pray and found that she physically could not make her mouth do it. Not a spiritual crisis. Something much more ordinary and much more stubborn: she opened her mouth in a room by herself and her throat closed and it felt ridiculous and she stopped.
So she typed it instead.
And it worked, in the sense that everything she could not say came out. She wrote about six hundred words that night and went to sleep, and it was the first time in about a fortnight that she had.
That was five years ago. It is still what she does.
They are not tidy. Some are two lines. There is one from a Tuesday in the spring that is just a name typed nine times, which she has never gone back and looked at and never deleted either. She does it in bed mostly, at about one, with the screen turned down.
And here is the thing she has never said to anybody, including the two people she tells everything.
She does not think they count.
She thinks of them the way you think of a note you leave when somebody is out. Better than nothing. Not the same as being there. And every so often she reads something, or hears somebody at church talk about crying out to God, and she gets a very specific feeling that other people are doing the real version and she is doing the accessible one.
And that is you with your screen turned down, or you would have put the phone away by now.
Paul never says it has to come out of your mouth
Let me put the verse in front of you and then show you what is not in it.
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.Romans 8:26
There is no medium in that sentence.
Paul does not say spoken prayer. He does not say aloud, or on your knees, or in a place set aside. He describes a shortfall in the person praying, and Somebody covering it, and that is the entire mechanism.
And then he goes further, and this is the part for you specifically:
with groanings too deep for words.
The deepest praying in the passage is not spoken. It is not written either. It is under both, in a place where the medium has stopped being the question, because there is nothing to put in a medium.
You are inside the same mechanism as everybody else, and it has never once run on your mouth. It is written that the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words (Romans 8:26), and Paul specifies no delivery method anywhere in it. The Holy Spirit has been under four hundred and something notes typed in the dark.
Now the thing you have quietly concluded, which is that you are doing the accessible version.
You are not doing a reduced version of prayer and there is no full-price one you are missing. It is written that the Lord looks on the heart while man looks on the outward appearance (1 Samuel 16:7), and a medium is about as outward as an appearance gets. The Holy Spirit is not more engaged by a spoken sentence than by a typed one.
And the name typed nine times.
I want to say something about that specifically, because I think you are slightly embarrassed by it, and it is the best thing in the folder.
That is a groan. That is exactly the thing Paul is describing. A person with something in them too big to be phrased, doing the only thing available, nine times.
Your Tuesday in the spring was prayer of the deepest kind in the passage. It is written that He who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God (Romans 8:27). The Holy Spirit put that in front of the Father fully formed, and it did not need to be a sentence and it did not need to be said.
And I am not going to tell you why your throat closes. I do not know. It might be worth telling somebody who does, and that would be a sensible thing rather than a spiritual failure, and it is not what this page is for.
You are not required to fix your voice for the praying to have been real. It is written that the Spirit helps us in our weakness (Romans 8:26), and weakness there is a plain word for what a person cannot do. The Holy Spirit was not waiting for you to be able.
So put the phone face down for a minute and let this be settled.
You are not going to make yourself say it out loud tonight, and nobody here is going to set you a target of praying aloud by Sunday, because that would turn a thing you already do into a thing you are failing at.
You are going to turn both hands over, palms up, and say nothing at all for one breath.
Which, for you, is not a stretch. That is the point. You are already the person who does not say things, and for one breath that is not a deficiency, it is exactly the posture.
Not to feel anything. Not because silence does something. There is no technique here, and there are no levels, and a typed prayer does not rank below a spoken one anywhere in Scripture.
You are prayed for at a depth that has never depended on a medium. It is written that the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words (Romans 8:26). The Holy Spirit was in your room at one in the morning on every one of those four hundred nights, and He got there before the first word was typed.
Then type it, if you want. Or do not.
The folder is not a note left for somebody who is out. It is four hundred prayers, and every one of them was carried.
Declare this over yourself
Say them where you are. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and that standing was given to you rather than earned by anybody's ability to speak. Scripture is the ground under every line and the Holy Spirit is what makes them live in a person. Whatever He does with your voice from here is His, and the outcome is His.
- Notes app at one in the morning, you are not a lesser substitute and you are not a note left for somebody who is out. It is written that the Spirit Himself intercedes with groanings too deep for words, and Paul names no medium anywhere in it. He carries what I cannot say, and my prayer is heard now, wordless as it is.
- Feeling that other people are doing the real version, in the name of Jesus you are put out of this room. It is written that the Lord looks on the heart while man looks on the outward appearance, and a medium is as outward as it gets. The Holy Spirit is not more engaged by a spoken sentence than by a typed one.
- God, You searched my heart on a Tuesday in the spring and found a name typed nine times. It is written that the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to Your will, so it arrived fully formed and needed no sentence around it. I am not doing the accessible version, and I never was.
Romans 8:26
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
