Jesus Christ, the Righteous! He is our Advocate. He is our Mediator. He is the One Who presents our petitions before God the Father. Since He is a Righteous Advocate, we can be sure that He takes no cases except those which He considers to be righteous causes—and He has taken ours! With that assurance, we can know undoubtedly that our petitions will be heard and answered.
There are longings in our hearts. We take them to the Lord in prayer. But alas, we often don’t know how to pray, or what would be the right request to make. We fumble, and we seem to be asking in the dark. But, we have a blessed Holy Spirit Who knows our innermost heart, and also the will of God for us. He lovingly takes our prayers, and straightens them all out, and gives them to our Mediator—Jesus Christ. Our prayers, though perhaps greatly adjusted, presented by Jesus Christ the Righteous, will certainly get answered.
Where are your longings? Who do you have in your heart? If you are one of God’s children—if you have personally placed your faith in the crucified Christ—you can be assured that God will hear and answer your prayers. Perhaps not to the letter of how we pray them, but certainly to the much better way of how the Holy Spirit adjusts them.
Our longings begin in ‘the bowels of Jesus Christ’—His heart. Our burdens and longings were His burdens and longings first, and He placed them in our hearts so that we could share them with Him. When we pray out our longings, we’re simply agreeing with the longings that are already in His heart. So, pray away! God is listening, and thrilled that you are sharing this burden with Him!
For God is my record, how greatly I long after you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ. Philippians 1:8