Waiting To Feel Sure Before I Asked

You have been going to ask for nine years.

Not putting it off out of laziness. You are not a woman who puts things off. What you have been doing is more particular than that, and I do not think you have ever put words to it.

You have been waiting to feel a certain way first.

There was a time, long ago, when you asked for something and there was a settledness underneath it. You can remember what that felt like, and you know the difference between it and what you have now, which is more like wanting something a great deal while being unable to locate the floor.

And somewhere along the way you decided that the settledness was the qualifying condition. That a person asks when they have got that, and that asking without it would be presumptuous, or hollow, or both.

So you have been waiting.

Nine years, near enough. The beans have gone up those canes nine times.

Let me say something before we go on.

I am not correcting you.

Waiting for something before you ask is not laziness or unbelief. It is a form of reverence and it came from somewhere respectable, and I am not going to hand you nine years back as wasted.

I am saying I know what you have been waiting for. That is all.

Who has been waiting

Here is a verse that turns the whole picture round, and the first word does most of the work.

And therefore will the LORD wait, that he may be gracious unto you, and therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy upon you: for the LORD is a God of judgment: blessed are all they that wait for him.Isaiah 30:18

Therefore will the LORD wait.

Read the direction of it. The waiting in that verse is being done by God, not by the person. And the stated reason for His waiting is that he may be gracious, which is to say He is not delaying in order to withhold. He is waiting in order to give.

And then the last clause turns it round again. Blessed are all they that wait for him. Both parties are waiting, and the verse holds them together in one sentence, and nowhere in it is anybody told to produce a feeling before anything can happen.

So I want to turn now and speak this over you, at that gate with the beans behind you.

You are being waited for by somebody who is waiting in order to be gracious. Not one day, not once the settledness comes back, not when you can locate the floor. Right now, in the middle of the day with a basket in your hands, you are inside a verse where the waiting is mutual and the intention is stated. 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 woman at a real gate.

Now, about the feeling.

I want to say this plainly because nine years is long enough for a wrong idea to look like furniture.

The settledness you remember was real, and it was a gift, and it was never a qualification.

Nobody in Scripture is required to feel a particular way before asking. There is no examination at the front of any prayer in that book. The psalms are full of people asking in every conceivable condition, including several that would not pass the test applied in this house since your fifties.

That is not a technicality and there is no other side to it.

And this next part is settled rather than pending, so hear it. You have permission that does not depend on a feeling arriving, and the permission was in place through all nine of those summers. The word says the LORD waits that he may be gracious, which names His purpose in the waiting rather than setting a condition on yours, and it is His Spirit who carries a written line into a real garden in the middle of a real day.

Ask without it. That has always been allowed and nobody told you.