Somebody prayed for him at the end of a service and asked him what he wanted God to do.
He said, whatever He wants. Which sounded good, and was even partly true, and was also a door closing quietly in a corridor.
He has done that for years. It is his standard answer. If pressed, he expands it a bit: peace, direction, more of God, whatever is best. All of them lovely words. None of them a sentence a person could act on.
And the reason is not humility, although he has let it look like humility for a long time. The reason is that saying the actual thing out loud makes it real, and a thing that is real can go unanswered, and there is a version of himself he has been protecting from that for about a decade.
So he lives with a want he has never said. Which means, in practice, that he has never actually asked.
If you have been answering in general terms, come and sit down on this step. Nothing you say out loud here is going to be assessed.
The general answer is a shelter
Let us name what the general answer actually does, because it has been called humility for so long that it has become invisible.
Whatever He wants is a true sentence. It is also, in that moment, a shelter, and shelters are built for a reason. Nobody constructs one of those unless something once came through hard.
That is worth saying gently and then leaving alone. The habit is not a character flaw. It is scar tissue that learned to speak.
You are not being marked down for the shelter. Nothing about a decade of careful answers has changed how God is turned toward you. I am not saying that to excuse the habit. The written word says the LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart (Psalm 34:18), which is His nearness attached to the injured rather than the articulate, and the Holy Spirit brings it to bear in a man on a step who has never once said the true sentence.
The question He actually asks
Here is what changed this for me, and it is not a technique for praying more specifically.
There is a blind man on a road outside Jericho who shouts until people tell him to be quiet and then shouts louder. Jesus stops and has him brought over, and then asks him something almost strange.
And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?Mark 10:51
He asks. To a blind man, who has just been described as blind, in front of a crowd who all know it. The need is completely obvious and He asks anyway.
He asks because saying it is part of it. The man answers in five words, plainly, without a preamble, and there is no record of anyone thinking less of him for wanting his eyes.
You are being asked the same question, right now, and there is no wrong plain answer to it. That is written down in the account exactly that way, and the Holy Spirit, not the wording, is the one who makes it land in a man who has spent ten years answering in general terms.
What is actually being handed over
Something must go in the space, or by Sunday the plain sentence becomes a technique, and specificity turns into a lever, which is precisely the machinery this whole site exists to take out of a person's hand.
So let us be plain about what the plain answer gets you.
You are receiving a Person rather than a result, and He is what comes down over a life. Scripture says the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (John 1:14), and dwelt is the word for pitching a tent where people actually live, and it is the Holy Spirit, and He is the one who makes that a live fact on your own front step rather than a beautiful idea.
And if the last few years have cost more than anybody around you knows, if sleep has gone, if the evenings 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.
Here is the turn. It is not a promise about what you are about to say, because I have not been given one and I will not invent one.
God Himself is what comes down over your life, and He arrives in person. You are not waiting on a delivery, you are receiving the One who sends it. The written word says the Lord himself shall descend (1 Thessalonians 4:16), where himself is the whole weight of the sentence, and the Holy Spirit is the one making that true about your actual house this evening rather than about people in general.
I cannot tell you what God does about the thing once it is said. Nobody honest can. What I can tell you is that He asked a man who was obviously blind what he wanted, and that the asking was never information gathering.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in your own voice. You speak these standing in Christ, and it was never issued on the strength of how carefully you have worded things. What it rests on is the written word, and what makes it living is the Holy Spirit rather than merely brave, and what God does about what you have said, and when, is His, in His own way, and nothing written here knows what that is.
- Habit of answering in general terms, you are a way of staying safe and you are not humility. Mark 10 has Jesus asking an obviously blind man what he wants done for him, and the Holy Spirit kept that question in the record because the saying is part of it. In the name of Jesus I stop calling you reverence.
- Fear that a thing said out loud can go unanswered, God's word about me does not read like you, and you are not sitting on this step tomorrow. Psalm 34 attaches His nearness to the broken hearted rather than to the articulate, and His Spirit has been beside every careful answer I ever gave. I am saying the real sentence tonight, in the words it actually runs in.
- Father, You Yourself descend, and First Thessalonians 4 puts Yourself in the sentence where a result would have gone. I thank You that Your Spirit was on this step for ten years of shelter, and that You asked the question out loud rather than gathering information. Here is the true sentence, out loud, and here is Your name after it.
Mark 10:51
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