You have a voice you use on people.
Everybody who does what you do has one. It is lower than your ordinary voice and slower, and it does not rush into a silence, and it has a particular way of saying I know that makes a person's shoulders come down about an inch.
It is not fake. That is the first thing. You built it out of genuine care over about twenty years and it has done a great deal of real good, and half the people on your road are steadier because of it.
Here is what has happened.
It has started running in your own prayers.
You noticed it properly on Tuesday. You sat down at the end of the day to say something to God about your own situation, and what came out was measured and warm and pastoral, and about four sentences in you realized you were doing it to Him.
Same cadence. Same reassuring turn at the end of the sentence. You were pastoring God about your own life.
And you could not get out of it. You tried twice and both times the voice came back within a line and a half.
Let me say something before we go on.
I am not accusing you of anything.
There is nothing false in you. A man whose care has become a manner is not a man who has stopped caring, and I am not going to hand you the word performance, because it does not fit what happened at that table on Tuesday.
I am saying I heard which voice was praying. That is all.
Behold, an Israelite indeed
Here is one of the strangest compliments in the Gospels, and it is worth sitting with because of what it praises.
Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!John 1:47
Nathanael has just said something rude about where Jesus is from. That is the only thing on record about him at that point.
And Jesus looks at him and the thing He picks out, the thing He says out loud in front of everybody, is that there is no guile in the man. Nothing constructed. No layer between what he is and what he says.
Notice that Jesus does not compliment him on being impressive. He compliments him on the absence of an apparatus.
So I want to turn now and speak this over you, sitting on that step with the light going.
You are seen without the apparatus. Not one day, not when you can pray in your own voice again, not once you have got the pastoral manner under control. Right now, at the end of a long day with your tools by your feet, you are known by somebody who was never talking to the voice in the first place. That is not my comfort. 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 doorstep.
Now, why can you not switch it off?
Because it is not a costume. That is the part that has been frightening you.
A costume comes off. This is more like a groove, worn in by twenty years of doing the same true thing for people in trouble, and grooves do not come off, they get worn deeper by the amount of good work that goes through them.
So the harder the work, the deeper it goes, which means the thing that has occupied your own prayer life is your own faithfulness. That is a strange and unfair mechanism and nobody warned anybody about it.
That is not sin. That is an occupational fact and it deserves to be named as one.
And this next part is settled rather than pending, so hear it. You are already known past the voice, and He has never once been listening to the manner. The word says in whom is no guile, which is what Jesus said about a man who had just been blunt to His face, and it is His Spirit who carries a written line into a real evening on a real front step.
You do not have to find your own voice tonight. He was never waiting on the voice. He was waiting on the man.
So we are going to take one sentence off the voice.
Not fix your prayer life. That is a longer job and it is not tonight's, and I am not going to hand a tired man a program.
One sentence. Plain. In whatever voice comes out when nobody has to be looked after.
If it comes out badly, that is what usually happens, and it is not a failure. Twenty years in a groove will do that.
So let this be said over you before you open your hands. You are known past the manner, and the knowing has never once been about the delivery; John 1 was written long before that Tuesday, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes what is written and sets it down in a real evening, on a real step, with the light going.
And no change of feeling is required to make this true. This is not about producing sincerity on a doorstep. It is about a man saying one thing without the apparatus on it.
Declare this over yourself
Say these with your hands open. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and that was true on Tuesday when the voice would not switch off; 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 your own situation, and He answers in His own way and His own manner, you are inside the promise the whole time He is doing it.
- Voice I use on everybody else, you are not praying for me tonight, and you do not get the microphone. John 1 says Jesus looked at a blunt man and called him one in whom is no guile, and He praised the absence of an apparatus rather than the presence of a manner.
- Fear that twenty years of care has left nothing underneath it, you are not accurate and you are dismissed, in the name of Jesus. The Holy Spirit has never once been listening to my cadence, and He was not waiting on the voice, He was waiting on the man.
- Lord, You saw Nathanael coming and named what was not there rather than what was. Your word calls that no guile, so my hands are open on this step tonight and I am saying one plain sentence with nothing on it.
John 1:47
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