It happened on an ordinary Tuesday and she has never told a living soul.
She had prayed about her sister every day for six years. Not vaguely. Specifically, by name, about the specific thing, in the same three or four sentences that had worn themselves smooth over time.
And on that Tuesday she got to the place in her praying where the sentences go, and she went past it. Not deliberately. She simply did not say them, and then she noticed she had not said them, and then she found she could not make herself go back.
Eight months. She still says her sister's name when the family prays. She still means well toward her, obviously, deeply. But the asking stopped, and the thing that stopped it was not anger and it was not a decision. It was the sheer accumulated weight of six years of asking about a situation that has, if anything, got slightly worse.
And now, on top of the stopping, there is a second thing: she cannot tell anybody, because in the rooms she is in, saying you stopped praying for your own sister is not a sentence with anywhere to go.
If you stopped somewhere and never said so, come and sit down. Nothing about your stopping is going to be corrected here.
The stopping is not the sin you think it is
Let us take that first, because a braced reader takes nothing in, and the title will have braced you.
You did not stop out of rebellion. Six years of asking about a thing that got worse is a load, and something in a person eventually sets it down, and the setting down is a signal about weight rather than a statement about faith.
And I will not be adding the other thing either. This page will not suggest, at any point, in any wording, that your praying was what was holding the situation open, or that stopping has cost your sister anything. That claim is not in Scripture and it does immense damage, and it is usually delivered to the most loyal person in a family.
You are not the mechanism here. Nothing about your stopping has changed how God is disposed toward your sister, and nothing you did or stopped doing controls what He does. I am not saying it to relieve you. The written word says the LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works (Psalm 145:9), which rests her case on His character rather than on anybody's consistency, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that hold in a kitchen on a Tuesday.
The officer at the gate
Here is what changed this for me, and it is not a way of restarting your praying.
There is a city under siege, starving, past the point where anybody expects anything. A word comes that by tomorrow there will be food, and the king's own officer answers it out loud in front of everybody.
Behold, if the LORD would make windows in heaven, might this thing be?2 Kings 7:2
That is a man saying, in public, that he does not believe it. And he is not a villain in that scene, he is a realist. He has watched the food run out and the prices go mad and the city get worse by the week, and he has run the numbers, and the numbers say no.
He is exactly where you are. And the reason he is in Scripture is not so that anybody can be warned by him, whatever has been done with that verse. He is in Scripture because somebody wrote down what an honest, exhausted man said at a gate.
You are standing where a man in the Bible stood, and the Word records his sentence rather than editing it out. That is written down as it was said, and it is the Holy Spirit who puts that in the hands of a woman who has not told anybody she stopped.
Nothing is being predicted for your sister
Something has to be said plainly, because a section like the last one usually turns into a promise, and this page is not going to make one.
I do not know what happens next with your sister. Nobody does. This article will not tell you that a change is coming, or that it is close, or that God is about to move, because none of that has been given to me and a promise I invent would be worth nothing to you the first week it did not arrive.
You have God's disposition toward her as a settled thing, and nothing about an outcome is being announced over your family. Scripture says the Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us ward (2 Peter 3:9), which speaks about His character and never about a timetable, and it is the Holy Spirit, and He is the one who has been carrying six years of asking and eight months of silence on exactly the same terms.
And if this has cost more than anybody around you 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 where the whole thing turns, and it is not an announcement about your family.
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 it is the Holy Spirit who holds it true about your actual kitchen rather than about hopeful people in general.
I cannot tell you what God does about your sister, or when. Nobody honest can. What I can tell you is that eight months of not asking never once altered His disposition toward her, and that a man said the same thing you are thinking, out loud, at a gate, and it went into the book.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud in the kitchen, in your own voice. The authority in them is yours in Christ, and it was never issued on the strength of how long you kept asking. Scripture is what it stands on, and the Holy Spirit is what makes it living rather than merely honest, and what God does about your sister, and when, is His, however He answers, and no sentence here pretends to know how.
- Day I stopped and told nobody, you are a quiet thing that happened to me and you are not the end of God's kindness toward her. Psalm 145 says the Lord is good to all and His tender mercies are over all His works, which rests her case on His character and not on my consistency, and the Holy Spirit has held that through all eight months. In the name of Jesus I stop reading you as damage I did.
- Fear that my praying was what was holding it open, you were never spoken over me by God, and you are not standing in this kitchen tomorrow. Second Peter 3 says the Lord is not slack concerning His promise but is longsuffering, which speaks about His character and never once about a timetable, and His Spirit carried six years of asking and eight months of quiet on identical terms. I am saying the true sentence out loud today.
- Father, if we believe not, yet You abide faithful, and Second Timothy 2 says You cannot deny Yourself. I thank You that Your Spirit kept an exhausted man's sentence at a gate in the book instead of editing it out. Here is the thing I no longer expect, out loud, in the words I actually use, and there is nothing on the end of it.
2 Kings 7:2
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