He still asks. That is what makes it hard to explain to himself.
Every morning, in the ten minutes before anybody else is up, he brings the situation at work to God. Same as he has for four years. The words are fine. If somebody overheard him they would think a man was praying about something he cared about.
And there is nothing behind the words. Nothing at all. He knows exactly how it is going to go, and he has known for at least a year, and the asking continues out of habit the way a man keeps walking a route after the shop at the end of it has closed.
What bothers him is not the situation any more. It is the sense that he is performing something in front of God. That he is saying words he does not mean, to somebody who knows he does not mean them, and that this is either dishonest or pathetic and he cannot decide which.
If you are still asking about something you privately closed the file on, come and sit in the courtyard. Nothing about the motions is going to be called a fraud here.
The motions are not a performance
Let us look at what a man is actually doing when he keeps asking with nothing behind it.
He is showing up. That is what it is. It is not a lie and it is not theater, because a lie requires an audience who could be fooled and there is no such audience here. God has known the state of your expectation since about a year in.
A man who keeps coming with an empty request is doing something closer to loyalty than to pretense. He is refusing to let the subject drop between himself and God even after his own hope in it went.
You are not committing a fraud. Nothing about an empty request has ever been received by God as dishonesty, and He has never once needed you to feel something before He would listen. I am not saying it to be generous. The written word says he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust (Psalm 103:14), which is God accounting for what four years does to a man rather than being disappointed by it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that hold in a courtyard before the house is awake.
The man who said it out loud
Here is what steadied me on this, and it is not a way of getting your expectation back.
There is a city under siege and a word comes that everything will change by tomorrow, and the king's officer, standing right there, says what he actually thinks.
Behold, if the LORD would make windows in heaven, might this thing be?2 Kings 7:2
He does not go through the motions. He says it out loud in front of everybody. And whatever has been done with that verse since, the thing worth noticing first is that a man's honest sentence about what he no longer believed was written down and kept.
He had watched the situation for months. His assessment was rational. And Scripture does not clean up what he said before recording it.
You are standing where he stood, and the Word keeps a man's plain sentence rather than tidying it away. That is written down as it was spoken, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes it land in a man performing something to himself at six in the morning.
Nothing is being predicted about the work
Something has to be said very plainly, because a section like the last one usually arrives with a forecast attached.
I do not know what happens with the situation at work. Nobody does. This page will not tell you a turn is coming, or that it is nearer than you think, or that God is about to move on it, because I have not been given that and an invented promise costs you more than the silence did.
You have God's disposition toward you settled, and nothing about your circumstances is being announced here. Scripture says the Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering (2 Peter 3:9), which describes His character and never once a timetable, and the Holy Spirit is the One who has carried four years of asking, hollow and full alike, on the same terms.
And if this has cost more than anybody at this table knows, if sleep has gone, if the mornings have started to frighten, please talk to somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, a crisis line, and the emergency services if there is danger to anybody tonight. That is not a detour around God. It is one of the ways He keeps people.
So here is the turn, and it is not a forecast about your work.
God is not offended by what you have stopped expecting. He turns things that get written off, and your unbelief is not stronger than His kindness. The written word says if we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself (2 Timothy 2:13), which rests the whole arrangement on His constancy rather than on the state of anybody's expectation, and the Holy Spirit is the one making that true about your actual mornings rather than about hopeful people in general.
I cannot tell you what God does about the situation, or when. Nobody honest can. What I can tell you is that showing up with an empty request has never been read as fraud, and that a man in Scripture said the honest version out loud and it was kept exactly as he said it.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in your own voice. The standing to speak like this is yours in Christ, and it was never issued on the strength of how much you believed this morning. Scripture is the ground under it, the Holy Spirit is what makes it living rather than merely habitual, and what God does about your work, and when, is His, however He answers, and nothing on this page pretends to know.
- Motions I go through every morning, you are a habit with nothing behind it and you are not a fraud I am committing against God. Psalm 103 says He knows my frame and remembers I am dust, which accounts for what four years does to a man, and the Holy Spirit has never once required a feeling before He would listen. In the name of Jesus I stop calling you dishonesty.
- Suspicion that showing up empty is pathetic, you are not God's word about me and you are not standing in this courtyard tomorrow. Second Kings 7 keeps an officer's plain sentence about windows in heaven exactly as he said it, and His Spirit saw to it that nobody tidied the man up first. I am saying the honest version out loud in the morning.
- Father, if we believe not, yet You abide faithful, and Second Timothy 2 says You cannot deny Yourself. I thank You that Your Spirit has carried four years of asking, hollow and full alike, on identical terms. Here is the thing I no longer expect, out loud, in the words I actually use, and there is nothing after it.
2 Kings 7:2
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