I Understood The Whole Prayer

You kept your eyes shut for a while after the amen, and you were not praying.

You were standing in a circle in a stone room with candles along the sills, and somebody prayed, in the other language, for about two minutes. And you followed it. Not the shape of it and not the tone. The words. What was being asked, for whom, and why.

And then everybody said amen and there was the sound of people shifting, and you kept your eyes closed for another ten or fifteen seconds because you did not want to be back in the room yet.

I want to say the true thing before anything useful.

You have not told anybody and you are not going to, and I want to be careful about the reason, because it is not modesty.

It is that there is no way to say it that would not sound like a claim about your spiritual life. If you told somebody you understood the whole prayer, they would hear something about closeness to God, and that is not what happened, and you would have to spend four minutes correcting an impression you did not intend to create.

So the whole thing has stayed inside you for eight days.

The Spirit maketh intercession

There is a verse in Romans about praying, and I want to handle it carefully because it is not about language comprehension and it would be easy to pretend it was.

Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. (Romans 8:26, King James Version)

Groanings which cannot be uttered.

Now what that verse is actually about is not knowing what to ask for. It is not about foreign languages and nothing in this article is going to claim that the Spirit translates for anybody. That is not what happened in that room and it is not what the verse says.

What it does give you is something about where prayer actually happens.

You have been in a room where prayer was going on underneath the words as well as in them, and a thing carried below language has never once been the same as a thing carried by it. Romans 8:26 puts intercession in something that cannot be put into words at all, and the Holy Spirit is the one standing in a circle in a stone room.

Now stay on the phrase cannot be uttered, because it is remarkable.

The passage names a kind of intercession that has no words available to it in any language. Not words that are hard to find. Not words in a language somebody has not learned. Groanings which cannot be put into speech at all, and the verse treats those as real prayer.

Which means the verbal layer of a prayer was never the whole of what was happening in that room.

You have been present at something that had more going on in it than the sentences, and a prayer has never once been only the words it used. The Holy Spirit is the one who is doing the part that has no words in it, and Romans 8:26 names an intercession that language cannot reach.

And here is the third thing, which is what that means about your eight days of silence.

The worry has been that saying it would make a spiritual claim. But the verse says the deepest layer of that prayer was never available to anybody in the room in any language, including the man who prayed it out loud.

So understanding the words is not a claim about closeness. It is a claim about words.

You have something to say that was never once a claim about your own standing with God, and following a sentence has never once been the same as being nearer than anybody else. Romans 8:26 puts the deepest part of prayer out of reach of every language equally, and the Spirit of God is the one who has been with a woman for eight days of not saying anything.

Prayer is the easiest thing in a language to follow

Here is the practical half, and it will take some of the weight off in a way you may not like at first.

A prayer is the most followable speech there is, and there are three reasons and none of them are about you.

It is slow. People pray more slowly than they talk, in every language, without deciding to. It is repetitive, because the same handful of words come round constantly. And the content is predictable: somebody is being asked for, something is being thanked for, and help is being requested, and there are not many other things that happen in a prayer.

That is the easiest listening material that exists.

You have been listening to the most followable thing in that whole language, and an easy target has never once made the hitting of it untrue. The Spirit of God is the one who was in that circle, and Romans 8:26 names a layer of prayer that no language touches at all.

Now here is why that does not shrink it, and I want you to hear this part properly.

Two minutes is a long time. Whatever made it easier, you followed continuous speech for about a hundred and twenty seconds without a break and without losing the thread, and that is a completely different thing from catching a sentence.

A sentence is a moment. Two minutes is a stretch, and staying inside a stretch requires you to keep up while also holding what came before, and that is the skill that makes conversation possible.

You have stayed inside something for two minutes rather than caught something for two seconds, and a stretch has never once been the same achievement as a moment. Romans 8:26 describes a continuous intercession rather than a single asking, and the Holy Spirit is the one who knows what a woman did for a hundred and twenty seconds.

And here is the thing about the fifteen seconds afterward, said plainly.

You kept your eyes closed because you knew that opening them would start the process of losing it. That is what you were actually doing in those seconds, and it was the right instinct, and it is the reason this article ends where it does.

You were holding on to something rather than hiding, and a person who keeps her eyes shut has never once been doing nothing. The Spirit of God is the one who was with a woman in the fifteen seconds after the amen, and the written word names a groaning that nobody has ever managed to put into speech.

Write it down and keep the paper

So here is the assignment, and it answers the eight days directly.

Write down the sentence you understood and keep the paper.

Not the whole prayer. It will not be recoverable and trying will lose the rest. One line. The clearest thing in it, the part with least doubt on it, in the language it was prayed in if possible and in English if not.

On paper, in your own hand, today.

You have one line to recover and eight days of silence to end on paper, and a record has never once been the same thing as a claim. Romans 8:26 puts the deepest layer of prayer beyond language for everybody equally, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a woman writing one line down.

And here is what to write underneath it, which is the part that solves your actual problem.

One sentence saying exactly what happened, in the flattest possible words. Something like: I followed two minutes of continuous speech.

Because that is the true account and it makes no claim about anybody’s spiritual life at all. It is a statement about listening. And the reason it could not be told was that no flat sentence was available, and there is one now, and it sits on the paper rather than in a conversation.

Then stop, because one piece of paper is the assignment and nothing else is asked of you today.

You have permission to keep the true flat account of a thing, and a plain description has never once been able to be mistaken for a claim. The Spirit of God is the one who knows exactly what happened in a stone room and needs no explanation of it, and Romans 8:26 keeps the unutterable part unutterable.