Have you ever been so confused that you didn’t know what to pray for? Have you ever been so heartbroken that you didn’t even have the strength to pray? Have you ever wondered if God could possibly love someone who had made such a mess of life? Do you feel helpless or hopeless or worthless?

Then today’s passage is good news for you, for it reminds us that salvation is all of God. Are you having trouble in prayer? Trust God, for verse 26 tells us that the Holy Spirit will pray for us, even when we can’t put our prayers into words. Even when we don’t know our own minds well enough to know what is really upsetting us – we can be assured that God knows. The Holy Spirit can pray for us so effectively because God is the One Who searches our hearts. God knows us better than we know ourselves because in His Holy Spirit, He is living within all who belong to Jesus.

Are you heartbroken by what is going on in your life? Do you wonder why a loved one got sick or died, or why you didn’t get or keep a job, or why that special someone walked out of your life? Trust God, for He not only knows everything about you – all your thoughts and dreams and feelings. He also understands and commands all the circumstances that swirl around us. However hopeless we might feel, the good news is that God is in control, and verse 28 says that He is somehow able to put all the broken pieces of our lives together in a way that will ultimately bring good to ourselves and to others, and that will bring glory to Him.

Do you feel like you have let go of God? Do you feel like you’re so mixed up and messed up that God couldn’t possible love you? Are you so helpless and hopeless that you feel like you’re worthless? Trust God, for He is the One Who reaches out to the worst, the most rebellious of sinners. Verse 30 reminds us that God is the One Who takes the initiative in human salvation. Just as Jesus came into our world unwelcomed and unbidden, just as He died on a cross for people who abandoned Him and denied Him, He still comes to sinners like us. However great the darkness in which we are trapped, He called us into His marvelous light.

And He comes to us and calls us so that He might justify us, so that He might take all our sins upon Himself. Instead of condemning us for how far away we have run from Him, He comes to us and wraps all His people in a robe of His own righteousness. The amazing truth is that when God looks at His people, He sees the perfection and holiness of Christ. And Christ did all this so that we might be adopted into God’s family, so that we might share in God’s own glory.

Do you feel helpless or hopeless or worthless? Trust the God Who knows you. Trust the God Who is in charge of everything that happens to you. Trust the God Who takes the initiative to save even the worst of sinners, reaching out to the lost and binding up the broken. Trust God, and be certain of His love for you.

Romans 8:26-30 (ESV)

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.
27 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.
28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.