Until I Am Sure I Mean It

The scan came back clear on a Wednesday and he was in the parking lot of the hospital by twenty past three with his hands on the wheel and both of them shaking, which surprised him, because he had been calm for eleven days.

He did not drive off for a while. And at some point in that half hour he said to God, in the car, not out loud but in the way that counts:

I will live differently. I am not going back to how it was. I promise You.

He went back to how it was in about six weeks.

Same hours, same food, same silence toward his wife when he is tired, same not doing the one or two things he knows would change everything. He has not become worse. He has simply become exactly what he was, which he had not thought was possible after two weeks like that.

Two years.

And the thing that keeps him from praying is not shame, or at least he would not use that word, and he is a precise man. What keeps him from praying is that he does not trust his own sincerity any more.

Because he was sincere in that parking lot. That is the trouble. He was not bargaining and he was not frightened into it, and if you had put him on oath at twenty past three he would have said, truthfully, that he meant every word. And it made no difference at all. So what is the value of him meaning something? And if his meaning it is worth nothing, then saying anything to God now is a performance, and he will not perform.

So he has set a condition, and he has never said it aloud, and it is this: he will speak to God again when he is sure he means it. Really sure. Sure in a way that will hold this time.

You may be waiting on your own sincerity. You may have discovered that meaning something with your whole chest did not produce a single change, and concluded that until you can vouch for yourself you have no business opening your mouth.

The man who said both things at once

There is a father in Mark's gospel who I think about more than almost anybody in the Bible, because he is the only person in there who says out loud what most of us are actually doing.

His son has been ill for years. He brings him to the disciples and they cannot help. Then Jesus arrives, and there is an exchange, and Jesus says something about believing, and the man answers.

And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.Mark 9:24

You are able to be heard while you are still divided, and the dividedness is not what disqualifies a person. Mark 9:24 records both halves in one breath and records the answer, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been carrying your divided heart for two years.

Both halves in one breath

Read it as a single sentence, because it is one, and it is not a man correcting himself.

Lord, I believe. That is true. He would not be standing there otherwise.

Help thou mine unbelief. That is also true, and he says it in the same breath, to the same person, without pausing to resolve the contradiction, because he cannot resolve it and he knows he cannot.

That is a divided man saying so out loud in front of the one person whose opinion could finish him.

And what happens next is the part that should undo your rule. Jesus does not send him away to sort himself out. There is no: come back when you are sure. There is no assessment of the percentages. The boy is healed, and the father's honesty about his own dividedness is not treated as a disqualification but as the thing he had to bring.

You are able to be heard while you are still divided, and the dividedness is not what disqualifies a person. Mark 9:24 is where that is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes it out of a crowd around a boy and puts it in a car in a hospital parking lot.

Now let me say the honest thing about the parking lot, because you are a precise man and precision is what will help you.

You were sincere. I believe you entirely. And your conclusion from the six weeks was reasonable but it was wrong in one particular: you concluded that your sincerity was worthless. It was not worthless. It simply was never load bearing. It was never the thing that was going to produce the change, and you had quietly assumed it was, which is why its failure felt like a verdict on you.

You have been grading a thing that was never holding the weight. Scripture puts a man's honest division in front of Christ and shows what He does with it, and the Spirit of God has been with you through two years of you refusing to speak until you could certify yourself.

The condition comes off and nothing goes on

Now let me guard it.

I am not taking certainty off you and handing you a lesser standard. I am not saying that instead of being sure you only need to be genuine, or humble, or willing, or that you need to at least want to want it. Each of those is the same test with the pass mark moved, and a precise man would simply start measuring the new one by Thursday.

The condition comes off. Nothing goes on.

You are inside on His terms tonight, and His terms have already been met by Him and not by your conviction. That is exactly what happens to the father in Mark 9, and His Spirit has been carrying your divided heart the entire time you refused to bring it.

And the living differently? It is still worth doing, and I suspect some of it is genuinely simple and you already know the one or two things. But that gets done from inside, by a man who is talking to God again, and it is not the toll on the road in.