How The Holy Spirit Helps Us
The Holy Spirit is the best gift Christ gave us after His ascension. Although He is for everybody, some people decide otherwise. The Holy Spirit is not inside us to point out our faults or nag at us when we do wrong. God’s Word tells us that He is inside us to help us in our weaknesses. Even when we don’t know what to pray, “the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groaning which cannot be uttered” (Romans 8:26).
This does not mean that the Holy Spirit makes intercession for us even without our participation. If it were so many Christians would have been living victorious lives automatically. But we all know that there are many Christians who are not walking in the fullness of God’s blessings.
In the first part of the verse, the word “helps” is sunantilambanomai in the original Greek text. It means “to take hold together against”. Now, “together” means that our participation is crucial in obtaining the desired results. In other words, the Holy Spirit sunantilambanomai or takes hold together with us against the problem.
So if we just sit back and don’t take hold of the problem, the Holy Spirit has nothing to “take hold of” with us. If we don’t pray, He has nothing to pray. He can’t pray through us if we keep quiet. But when we open our mouths and begin to pray in other tongues, we are actually allowing Him to pray through us. How the Holy Spirit helps us is never through manipulation or force.
Now you can be confident that when you ask anything according to the will of God, He hears you. And if you know that He hears you, whatever you ask, you know that you have the petitions that you have asked of Him! (1 John 5:14–15)
Not only does He help us in prayer but He also transforms us from the inside out. The Holy Spirit changes the heart of believers which translates in their behaviour. Many religions have got it all wrong by trying to force people to behave in some pattern. A pig will always return to the mud no matter how you clean it. The same way, a person will eventually do evil unless their heart is transformed for the better. This can be done by the Holy Spirit only.
