Somebody asked you a straight question in the kitchen after a meeting and you gave a straight answer, and then you spent the walk home regretting it.
They asked whether you believe God is going to do something about the thing you had mentioned.
And you said: I think so, and I am not sure.
That is your prayer, actually. Word for word. When you stop arranging it and just let the thing come up as it is, that is the sentence.
And you regretted saying it out loud because as soon as it was in the air you could hear it, and it sounded thin, and you thought: that is not a prayer. That is a shrug with a religious word in it.
So you have gone back to the arranged version. You have been using the arranged version since about the spring.
Let me say something before we go anywhere.
I am not correcting you.
There is nothing thin about you. A sentence that says two things at once is not weaker than a sentence that says one, it is more accurate, and I am not going to reframe accuracy as a deficiency.
I am saying I heard the version you gave in the kitchen. That is all. And I thought it was the better of the two.
This poor man cried
Here is a line in the middle of a psalm, and it is one of the shortest complete accounts of prayer in the whole book.
This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.Psalm 34:6
Three clauses. He cried. The LORD heard. He was saved out of it.
And look at what is missing between the first and the second, because the missing part is the whole point. There is no assessment in that verse. There is no clause that says, and the LORD examined the manner of the crying and found it acceptable.
The cry goes up and the hearing happens, and the psalm does not put anything at all between them.
And notice the word for the man. Poor. Not eloquent. Not steady. Not a person who had it arranged. The psalm chose the word that describes somebody with nothing to bring.
So here it is, said directly to you, on the rug with the fire going.
You are heard without an assessment being carried out. Not one day, not once the sentence firms up, not when I think so becomes I know. Right now, exactly as you are, you are the poor man in verse six, and the verse puts no step at all between his crying and God hearing it. That is not my reassurance. That is what is written, and it is His Spirit who takes a written line and lands it on a real person in a real room.
Now, about the thinness.
You heard your own sentence out loud and judged it. That is what happened in the kitchen, and I want to name it accurately, because it has been called embarrassment in here and it is not.
It was an assessment. You performed on yourself, in about half a second, the exact assessment that Psalm 34 does not contain.
And here is the thing about your sentence. I think so, and I am not sure is not a shrug. A shrug has nothing in it. Your sentence has a genuine leaning in the first half and an honest report in the second, and both of those are load bearing, and most people manage neither.
And hear this, because it is settled rather than pending. You have a cry that reaches without being graded on the way. The word says this poor man cried, and the LORD heard him, and there is nothing in between those two clauses at all, and it is His Spirit who carries a written line into a real house on a real night with the fire lit.
Say the thin one. It is not thin. It is the only version of the sentence that is entirely true, and truth is the one thing nobody can arrange.
So we are going to send the thin one.
Not firm it up. There is nothing to firm and firming it would make it less true, and you would know.
We are going to say the actual sentence, out loud, and let it go as it is, with the leaning and the honesty both in it.
And then the older version of the same sentence, from Mark, which is the same shape and was said by a man in front of a crowd and answered without amendment.
If it sounds thin in the air again, that is expected and it is not a failure. Everything true sounds thin to the person saying it.
So take this in before you speak. You are heard with nothing standing between the crying and the hearing, and that has been the arrangement since long before this spring; Psalm 34 was written long before that kitchen, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries what is written and sets it down in a real room, on a real night, with the fire going.
And it does not start being true when you feel it. It is true now. This is not about producing confidence on a rug. It is about a careful person sending the accurate version.
Declare this over yourself
Say these where you are sitting. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and that has been true since the spring and before it; the authority in these words is His, delegated to you and carried in His Name, and His Spirit is the one who makes what is written speakable. And however He answers about the thing you mentioned in that kitchen, and He answers in His own way and His own manner, you are inside the promise the whole time He is doing it.
- Rule that says a thin prayer is not a prayer, you are not from Him, and you are not filtering what leaves this room. Psalm 34 says this poor man cried and the LORD heard him, and there is nothing at all standing between those two clauses.
- Assessment I ran on my own sentence in half a second, you are the very thing that verse leaves out, and I am dismissing you in the name of Jesus. The Holy Spirit did not grade the crying on the way up, and He has never once sent one back for rewording.
- Lord, You heard a poor man and saved him out of all his troubles, and Your word calls him poor rather than eloquent. I think so, and I am not sure, and I am saying it to You exactly like that tonight.
Psalm 34:6
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