There are two of them and you have never told anybody there are two.
The first one is the one that happens at your table with people round it, and it is not a performance and I am not going to call it one. It is careful and it is warm and it names people and it is the reason half this street thinks of your house as a place where God is spoken about properly.
The second one happens on the roof before anybody is up.
It is shorter. It has no shape to it at all. Some of it is not even in sentences, and it is in the language you dreamed in as a child rather than the one you conduct your life in now, and there are two or three lines in it that you have said several thousand times and would not say in front of your own brother.
That one has never had an audience.
You have assumed, for years, that the first one is the real one because it is the one that gets said properly.
Before we go on, hear me.
I am not correcting you.
You have not been running a deception. Two registers is not two faces, and I am not going to tell you that the table version is hollow, because it is not, and half a street would say so.
I am saying I know there is a roof. That is all.
Before it has words
Here is a verse about how far ahead of a sentence God already is.
For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether.Psalm 139:4
In my tongue.
Not in my mouth. Not spoken. In the tongue, which is to say while it is still forming, before it has been given a shape, before anybody could have judged the quality of the delivery.
And the word at the end is altogether. The whole of it. Which for a half formed thing means the whole of the half formed thing, including whatever it would have become and whatever it is instead.
So the roof version, the one in the old language with no sentences in it, was known altogether before the first line of it left you.
So I want to turn now and speak this over you, up there with the city going gold at the edges.
You are known in the language you dream in. Not one day, not once the roof version becomes respectable, not when you can say it downstairs. Right now, before anybody in that house is awake, you are the man in verse four, and the knowing gets there before the words do. That is not my comfort to you. That is what is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who sets a written line down in a real man on a real roof.
Now, why did you decide the table one was the real one?
Because it is the one other people can hear, and thirty years of being a man other people rely on will teach anybody that reliability gets measured in what can be heard.
That is not sin. That is what happens to a man who has been the steady one in every room he has ever been in, and it has never once occurred to him that the version nobody hears might be the older and the truer of the two.
And this next part is settled rather than pending, so hear it. You have one prayer life and it has always been one, and the two registers have never been graded against each other by anybody but you. The word says thou knowest it altogether, which is a claim about completeness rather than about eloquence, and it is His Spirit who carries a written line into a real morning on a real rooftop.
The roof one counts. It always counted. It has been the one He has been answering.
So we are going to stop grading them.
Not stop the table version. Keep it exactly as it is. This street needs a house where it is said properly and yours is that house.
We are going to say plainly, once, that the roof one is not a lesser tier, and that it has been arriving whole the entire time.
And then we are going to say the oldest divided prayer there is, the one from Mark, in whichever language it comes.
If saying that the roof one counts feels like a demotion of the other, that is what usually happens, and it is not a failure. Thirty years of being the man who says it properly does that.
So let this be said over you before you speak. You are known altogether in the language you dream in, and the knowing arrives ahead of the words; Psalm 139 was written long before this roof, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes what is written and sets it down in a real house, at a real hour, before anybody is up.
And no change of feeling is required to make this true. This is not about producing anything at first light. It is about a man stopping the grading of his own two prayers.
Declare this over yourself
Say these on the roof. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and that has been true in both languages and on every morning; the authority in these words is His, delegated to you and carried in His Name, and it is His Spirit who puts what is written into a real mouth. And however He answers about the two or three lines you have said several thousand times, and He answers in His own way and His own manner, you are inside the promise the whole time He is doing it.
- Two prayers I have been running, you are not two, and the one in the dark was heard before it had words. Psalm 139 says there is not a word in my tongue but He knows it altogether, and altogether was written about the half formed ones as much as the finished ones.
- Grading system that says only what can be heard is real, you were built out of thirty years of being relied upon, and I am setting you down in the name of Jesus. The Holy Spirit has been answering the roof version the whole time.
- Lord, You know it altogether before it is a word in my tongue, and Your word makes that a claim about completeness rather than about eloquence. I am saying the short one out loud up here this morning, in the language it comes in.
Psalm 139:4
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