Forty years. And he still prays the way a man stands in front of somebody who could put him off the place.
He would not have used those words about himself. His wife used them, once, not unkindly, after listening to him pray at a table with the family, and he has not been able to unhear it since.
Hat in his hand. Standing. Deferential in a particular way that has nothing to do with reverence and everything to do with employment. Grateful for the work. Careful not to presume. Asking small.
He learned that posture before he was ten, from a man he loved who worked another man's land, and he watched how his father stood at that back door every quarter, and he took the whole shape of it into himself before he had words for any of it.
And then he brought it to God at nineteen, and God has had a hired man's prayers for four decades from somebody He calls a son.
If you pray like staff, come and sit on this step. Nothing about your father is going to be criticized here.
Reverence and deference are two different things
Let us get the distinction clear, because the whole thing turns on it and they are easy to confuse.
Reverence is what a person owes to God on account of who He is, and it never goes anywhere. Deference of the other kind is what a man owes to somebody who could end the arrangement, and it is entirely about insecurity of position.
They look similar from the outside. They sound almost identical at a table. But one of them can be held by a son standing in his own father's kitchen, and the other one cannot, because the other one requires the possibility of being sent away.
You are not staff. Nothing about how you learned to stand has ever described your position with God, and no year of service has ever been what kept you on the place. I am not saying it to lift you. The written word says the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever (John 8:35), which draws the line between the two exactly where the difference matters, and it is the Holy Spirit, and He is the one who makes that hold on a porch in the fortieth year.
The verse that changes the noun
Here is what turned this for me, and it is not an instruction to pray more familiarly.
Paul is arguing about sonship, and at the end of it he does something to the reader directly. He changes what they are called.
Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.Galatians 4:7
No more a servant. That is not a promotion for good work. Read what it hangs on: through Christ, which means the change of noun happened somewhere entirely outside the man it happened to.
And the sentence is addressed in the singular. Thou art. Not the church in general. One person, standing on a porch, holding a hat.
You have had the noun changed, and the Word says it to a person rather than to a crowd. That is written in the second person singular on purpose, and the Holy Spirit is the one that makes it register in a man in his fortieth year.
Familiarity is not the fix
Something has to be said before Sunday, because the obvious next move for a man is to try to sound easier with God, and that is just a new performance with a friendlier accent.
Nothing here is asking you to be casual, and reverence stays. A son in a good house is not casual about his father. He is simply not standing at the back door with his hat.
You have a position rather than a manner to adopt, and the position does not improve when a man loosens his voice. Scripture says because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father (Galatians 4:6), where the family word is put into a mouth rather than worked up in it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been doing that in a man for forty years while he stood outside.
And if this has cost more than anybody around here knows, if sleep has gone, if the evenings have started to frighten, 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 going around God. It is one of the ways He keeps people.
So here is where the whole thing turns, and it is not a manner to adopt and it is not a promise about answers.
The way to God is standing open and it was opened for you. You come in as somebody who belongs here, not as somebody hoping to be let in. The written word says through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father (Ephesians 2:18), where access is stated as something possessed rather than granted per visit, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that true on your actual porch tonight rather than about believers in general.
I cannot tell you what God does with what you bring in. Nobody honest can, and nothing here says a son gets more than a servant asked for. What I can tell you is that the posture came off a back door in another decade, and that the noun has already been changed.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud on the step, in your own voice. The right to speak like this is yours in Christ, and it was never issued on the strength of forty years of work. The written word is the ground under it and the Holy Spirit is what keeps it living instead of just respectful, and what God does with what you bring, and when, is His, in His own way and in His own time, and nothing on this page claims to know which.
- Hat in my hand, you are a posture I learned young and you are not how a son stands in his Father's house. Galatians 4 says thou art no more a servant but a son, and if a son then an heir through Christ, and the Holy Spirit changed the noun somewhere entirely outside me. In the name of Jesus I put you on the hook by the door.
- Deference that belongs to a man who could be sent off the place, you are not God's word about me and you are not standing on this porch tomorrow. John 8 says the servant abideth not in the house for ever but the Son abideth ever, which draws the line exactly where it matters, and His Spirit has been crying Abba in me for forty years while I stood at the back. I am walking in the front tonight.
- Father, through Him I have access by one Spirit unto You, and Ephesians 2 states it as something I have rather than something granted per visit. I thank You that Your Spirit put the family word in my mouth rather than asking me to work it up. Here is my first sentence, out loud, standing inside the room.
Galatians 4:7
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
