Most of us have experienced being out of sync. From jumping into a moving jump rope at the wrong time, to getting on a treadmill at the wrong pace, to pushing on a swing against its momentum.
Similar asynchronies can be experienced in the life of prayer. Prayer will often feel like travail unless we learn how to be in sync with a movement that’s already happening in God.
Understanding what Romans 8 says about the relationship of the members of the Trinity can help us pray in concert with God himself.
Out of Sync with God
Deep, authentic prayer is difficult. Not the surface kind of prayer with rote verbal recital of hackneyed phrases. I mean the kind of prayer that’s according to God’s will in both content and affection, where we pray for the right things and genuinely desire them (1 John 5:14).
We often try to get God’s attention, to meet some imagined condition so he’ll hear our prayer. Such performance is only followed by its hollow echo in an empty room, bouncing off an impenetrable ceiling. In good faith, we speak our opening lines, but the interest appears unrequited. And so we try harder, with more gusto.
The assumption behind this is that God is like a finite agent, or, as C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape puts it, “Located—up and to the left at the corner of the bedroom ceiling, or inside his own head, or in a crucifix on the wall.” He both acts and is acted on. Prayer becomes an attempt to control God, either by having him do our bidding or by imagining him as a finite conversation partner. Prayer with a controlling, cajoling attitude is out of sync with God, for it pushes when it should pause, much like pushing on a swing when it’s on its descending arc.
Prayer with a controlling, cajoling attitude is out of sync with God.
Paul addresses this asynchrony with terms such as “weakness” (Rom. 8:26) or “the law of sin that dwells in my members” (7.23), which indicate discord between the Spirit’s presence and our flesh. This incongruity with the Spirit often manifests itself in prayer, which is precisely what makes it labored and sometimes awkward.
Triune ‘Prayer’
Romans 8 reframes our understanding of prayer, speaking of a kind of prayer in which the person praying is carried along by another “prayer” that goes on in the heart of the Trinity. Before the Christian even considers praying, there’s already a twofold intercession occurring. Let’s consider it in inverse textual order. Paul mentions the Son’s intercession in verse 34. In the incarnation, the Son is sent by the Father and intercedes before the Father (John 17:25–6), revealing both his distinction from the Father and his origin from him. He both intercedes for the saints and concretely reveals the Father’s will to them, teaching them what to pray for.
Paul also mentions a second intercession, that of the Holy Spirit, who “intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Rom. 8:26). How are we to understand the Spirit’s intercession and groans, given he hasn’t assumed a human nature and thus cannot properly be said to pray? The traditional consensus is aptly expressed by Calvin: “Not that he actually prays or groans, but he excites in us sighs, and wishes, and confidence, which our natural powers are not at all able to conceive.”
The Spirit’s aid is different than the Son’s, in accord with their personal properties. The Son intercedes as the Word who has revealed the Father—his intercession is, as it were, verbal. The Spirit intercedes as the bond of love (Rom. 5:5; 1 John 4) between the Father and the Son—his intercession is affective, guttural. As the breath of God, he accompanies the Word, keeping it tethered to the Father.
In context, Paul indicates this groaning is a form of longing for something that hasn’t been given yet, perhaps even something we don’t understand. Like an unnamed, unidentified longing, a desire not yet understood—as when your body needs some substance like iron or calcium, a precognitive need. The Spirit’s sigh is like a baby’s deep, visceral attachment to the mother. It’s not accidental that it’s by the Spirit we cry “Abba” (Gal. 4:6; Rom. 8:15), for he’s the “Spirit of adoption” (Rom. 8:15) and of sonship.
In the processions of the Son and the Spirit and through their missions to us in incarnation and indwelling, we can speak, circumspectly, of something like a “natural frequency” of the Trinity, the movement from the Father to the Son and from the Son to the Father in the love of the Spirit. This is the very life, the natural movement, of the triune God. We feel this movement in our bones when the Spirit, the breath of God, imprints this heavenly murmur on our hearts. Then, as sons, we understand what the will of the Father is, and as breathers of the Spirit, we also love it.
Entering into Resonance with the Trinity
Prayer, then, isn’t an autonomous human action, seeking to have an effect on a God who’s “up and to the left.” We enter into resonance with a prayer that’s already going on in the Trinity itself, where the Son intercedes for us. The Spirit’s work is to bring us into resonance with that prayer. He aligns the rhythm of our desire with God’s will.
We feel this movement in our bones when the Spirit, who is the breath of God, imprints this heavenly murmur on our hearts.
Apart from that work of the Spirit, we’re out of sync with God, as two dancers stepping on each other’s toes. This is one reason our prayers are so labored—until we find that cadence, the worries of our soul dictate the pace and thus we fail to pray “as we ought” (Rom. 8:26). The Spirit’s peculiar work modulates according to our natural frequency and with our will to bring us in sync with God’s will.
A certain approach to the doctrine of the Trinity emerges through prayer. Having abandoned all attempts to seize God conceptually, to solve the logical puzzle of the three-in-one, we instead discover the Trinity as a new rhythm that grace has taught our hearts. There’s a new law, the law of the Spirit, working against the law of the flesh, gently bringing us into resonance with the Father’s will. Prayer to a transcendent sovereign God only makes sense if “communication about the welfare of God’s children is characteristic of the communion among the persons of the Trinity,” as Michael J. Gorman so adequately put it. In prayer, we discover grace’s Trinitarian cadence.