I Prayed About It Instead Of Asking

You have prayed about this for a long time now.

You have prayed that your household would want to be together. You have prayed about the screens and the closed doors and the quietness of the evenings. You have taken it up more or less weekly for the best part of a year, and you have meant every word of it.

And I want to ask you one question, and I want you to answer it honestly before we go anywhere else.

When did you last say it out loud to them?

Not: mention it. Not: hint that it would be nice. Say the actual sentence, to their faces, in words: I am going out for twenty minutes, come with me.

And if the answer is that you cannot remember, or that it was a long time ago, or that you sort of do but not really, then I think we have found something, and it is not a failure of faith. It is much more ordinary and much more human than that.

Be ye warmed and filled

There is a line in James that is uncomfortable in the best possible way.

And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? (James 2:16, King James Version)

Be ye warmed and filled.

The person in that verse is not a hypocrite in the ordinary sense. They are not sneering. They say a genuinely kind thing, they mean it, and then they do not do the small physical action that was actually available to them.

You are not being accused of insincerity, and it was never a lack of meaning it that James is talking about. James 2:16 describes somebody saying a true and kind thing and stopping there, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that read as an invitation rather than as an exposure.

And the question at the end is the gentlest possible form of the point. What doth it profit. Not: how dare you. Just: what did that accomplish, in the room, for the person standing there.

You have been asked a question rather than given a verdict, and it was never a sentence handed down on the state of your heart. The written word ends on a question about outcome instead of on a judgment about motive, and the Spirit of God is what keeps this from landing on a man as condemnation.

Why the praying is easier

Now let me say what I think is actually happening, because I do not think it is laziness and I do not think anybody here has been hiding.

Prayer cannot be refused. That is the whole of it.

You can take this to God every week for a year and never once hear a no. Nobody sighs. Nobody says in a minute, Dad. Nobody looks at you the way a seventeen year old looks at somebody who has just suggested a walk.

The sentence, said out loud in a living room, can be refused in about a second and a half. And a man who has been quietly turned down enough times will find, without ever deciding to, that the version which cannot hurt him is the one he keeps reaching for. Prayer was never a substitute for the sentence, and saying it out loud is not a smaller act of faith than praying about it.

You are not a coward, and it was never weakness that moved a man toward the safer version of the same request. James 2 puts the kind word and the withheld action side by side without a word of contempt for the speaker, which is exactly why the Spirit of God addresses the gap rather than the man.

Both, not instead

I want to guard something here, because there is a bad reading of this article and it would do real damage.

Nothing in this says stop praying. Nothing here says the year of intercession was wasted or that it was a substitute you should be ashamed of.

James is not against saying depart in peace. He is against saying it and stopping. The instruction is both, and the order in that verse is that the words came first, which is exactly the order yours have come in.

You are being asked to add and not to replace, and it has never once been the praying that James takes issue with. James 2:16 keeps the kind words in the sentence and adds the needful thing to them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a praying man hear that as completion rather than as correction.

So the year was not wasted. It was half of something, and the other half takes about four seconds and has been available every single evening.

Say the four second sentence

Here is the practical part, and I am going to be exact about it, because vagueness is what has protected this for a year.

Today, out loud, to their faces: I am going out for twenty minutes, come with me.

Not: shall we do something as a family soon. Not: we should really get out more. Those are prayers said in the direction of people, and they cannot be answered because they have not asked anything.

You are able to say a sentence that can be refused, and it has never once been reckless to hand somebody something they can say no to. The passage measures the kind word by whether the needful thing followed it, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a man saying four seconds of plain words in his own living room.

Then go, whatever comes back. Do not wait for the answer to be good enough. The going is not conditional on the answer, and it never was.

And keep praying. Same as before. Just with the sentence in it now.

You are able to carry both of these at once, and it has never once been necessary to choose between asking God and asking them. James 2 sets the word and the action side by side rather than in competition, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in both halves of the same evening.