Every week in worship we get to lift up our prayers to God. We ask in confidence, knowing God hears and grants our prayers when are according to his will. But we often think of prayer only in terms of the prayers we offer. But we are not the only one praying.

Ps. 40:5 says  “You have multiplied, O LORD my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us; none can compare with you! I will proclaim and tell of them,  yet they are more than can be told.”

In Jesus’ high priestly prayer in John 17, he prays for us: “I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours.  All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.”

Jesus prays for us, and perhaps most wonderfully, the Spirit prays with us and on our behalf as Paul describes in Romans 8:26: “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. And 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.”

This is a great comfort when we don’t know what we ought to pray. Even Paul knew what it is like come up empty, and he says the Spirit intercedes for us. In prayer we don’t start a conversation with God but join one already happening between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.