Sometimes we know something is true because we read it in the Bible. I’ve been reading the Bible for more than 40 years now, so there are lots of things I know because I read them year after year and they’re still in there. They haven’t changed.
But other times we KNOW something is true because we have personal, firsthand experience with it.
In Genesis 22, God tells Abraham to take his only son Isaac up a mountain and offer him there “for a burnt offering.” Can you imagine? I cannot, but apparently Abraham could. So he packed up some supplies on a donkey and took two of his servants and Isaac and headed for Moriah. Apparently it was a long journey, because it says “on the third day,” Abraham finally saw the place God was telling him to go. Verse 5 says,
And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.
Don’t miss that part where Abraham tells his servants that he and Isaac will “come again to you.” Abraham was just obeying God and he had 100% faith that God would work it all out somehow. Also don’t miss the part where Abraham considered what he was about to do “worship.” Obedience in any form is an act of worship toward God, even if you’re not standing in the auditorium with the worship band playing, lights turned low, and people singing with hands raised. Worship looks a lot of different ways, and sometimes (often?) it’s not glamorous.
As Abraham and Isaac climbed the hill carrying the wood for the fire, a torch to start it with, and a knife, Isaac asked his dad, “Where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” and Abraham replied, “God will provide himself a lamb.” Isaac trusted his father just like Abraham trusted his God. And God did provide himself a lamb a few thousand years later, in the form of Jesus. He was the perfect, spotless Lamb sent to bear the punishment for the sins of the whole world—you and me and everyone in between. But that’s another story.
When they got to the place God told Abraham to go, he set the wood in order and bound his son Isaac and laid him on the wood. Are you paying attention? Abraham tied up his only son and laid him on the altar. He was still obeying God, still knowing that God would work this out somehow. As I read these verses, my heart is pounding and my body is tense, even though I know the outcome. The fact that a man has that much trust in God blows my mind.
Abraham pulled his hand back to plunge the knife into his son and God said,
Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me. (v12)
Every time I read this story I get to this verse and think, “It’s a good thing Abraham was listening and didn’t miss this part.”
But here’s the point: God is omniscient. That means he knows everything—past, present, and future. He knew Abraham would obey. But he said, “now I know . . .”
Now I KNOW. God, who already knows it all, said now that I’ve tested you, I KNOW you fear God. It almost sounds like he wasn’t sure before this event. Maybe he had a head knowledge, but not a heart knowledge. He knew in his mind, but afterward he knew in his body, in his experience. Is that possible? I don’t know, but I know what he said.
For months I have had this thing I knew I was going to have to do. I agreed to it even though deep down I really didn’t want to. Most people would think it was a fun thing, but most people are not me with all my difficult experiences and traumas and reactions. It scared me on a lot of levels. But I said I would do it, so I knew it was coming.
Mostly I didn’t think about it; denial is my strong suit. But when it came up and I was forced to think about it, anxiety ratcheted up like nobody’s business.
And do you know when anxiety likes to ratchet up best? In the dead of night. Daytime would be less effective with all the things of life to distract me.
No, anxiety likes to show up at 3 am when the house is dark and quiet and everyone else is asleep. When I can’t get up and do something to take my mind off it because I don’t want to wake others. That’s when anxiety comes out to play and demands my attention.
So what do I do? I lie silently in bed or on the couch and ruminate. I think of all the things that could go wrong and all the facets of this thing I’m afraid of and I roll them around and around in a never ending mind-loop, getting more and more dysregulated. My body shakes and my heart pounds and my cortisol goes through the proverbial roof. I get angry about the situations I am making up in my head and cry because I just don’t want to do the thing. My brain is completely hijacked by my amygdala and it is in full fight-or-flight mode.
And do you know what a brain that’s hijacked by the amygdala can’t do?
Form words. When our nervous system’s stress response is highly activated, our prefrontal cortex—the seat of reason and logic and verbal processes—is not connected. Unavailable. In the O-F-F position. Putting feelings into words is not even possible. Have you ever been so shocked you were speechless? This is why.
And do you know what happens when we can’t form words?
We. Can’t. Pray.
The one thing I could be doing that has a big chance of helping, and I am cut off from my ability to pray. Do you think God knew this was a possibility? The one who made our bodies and brains and amygdalas and prefrontal cortexes? Do you think maybe he anticipated there would be times we would be unable to utter words?
God says “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17), and instead I am on the intrusive thought carousel. Round and round I go. He says, “in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God,” and I am riding the roller coaster of emotion instead, unable to get off.
Sometimes I am actually aware that this is happening while it’s happening, and if it were daylight, I could do something about it. I could shake my body to expend all the excess energy created by an overabundance of cortisol. I could put a bag of frozen peas (if I had one) on the back of my neck to activate my vagus nerve, or hum, or put my fingers in my ears and pull down. I could go for a brisk walk to give my brain the bilateral stimulation that helps it process difficult things. But remember, it’s 3 am.
I feel stuck and helpless and hopeless.
My inner critic says, “What a loser you are, Karen. You could be communicating your fears to the Father, the Shepherd of your soul, but instead you’re wallowing in your anxiety.”
But God is much kinder than I am. Do you know what he says?
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)
The Spirit helps our infirmities.
If you’ve never been overwhelmed by intrusive thoughts, you just don’t know how infirm it feels. This doesn’t just refer to physical ailments, but emotional and psychological and spiritual ones as well. And God says his Spirit helps them all.
We don’t know what to pray for.
I think this is true much more often than we want to admit. When someone is sick, it’s easy to know what to pray for: we pray for them to be healed. Same when someone loses a job or their car breaks or a thousand other situations. The answers are obvious to us.
But when the problem is anxiety, rumination, intrusive thoughts, panic attacks, we get so up in our amygdalas that we lose all sense of reason and our ability to find words for what we feel. We don’t even know what to ask for, and there’s just about nothing more desperate feeling than that.
We don’t know how to pray for that, but the Spirit does.
The Spirit intercedes for us.
What a relief. I don’t have to find words. God doesn’t sit up there like he’s talking to a crying two-year-old saying, “Use your words.” He doesn’t need them. Guess what: God doesn’t speak English. He doesn’t speak French or German or Mandarin or Urdu or Sango. He doesn’t have a first language and then other languages he learned after that. He speaks none of them and all of them. He does not need words—those are for our benefit.
God does not need my words.
His heart communicates with my heart. Sometimes there are words involved that help me feel better about the communication. But God doesn’t need them. He is so much bigger than that.
The Spirit takes my groans and hands them to God, who fully understands what they mean and the deep hurt they come from
I am reassured. I already feel better. I can take a deep breath and know that God hears my heart even when there is no language involved. He understands communication through raw emotion. What pure love.
Then the day after I’ve lost hours of sleep and am sitting at my computer trying to work through the high-cortisol aftermath of intense dysregulation, the answer comes.
God answers the prayer I didn’t even pray. He responds to my anxious late-night spiral with empathy and mercy and grace and the help he promises to be. How is it possible we can know a God like this and call him Abba, Father, Papa?
I have always known the Spirit intercedes for me. I’ve read it a hundred times. I have carried that head knowledge around with me for more than 40 years.
But now I KNOW it. I have firsthand, bodily experience with God’s Spirit interceding for me and God answering the words I did not pray.
Now I know.