He keeps a notebook, and in January he read a year of it back, which he had never done before.
It is not a journal. It is a list, more or less: dates and short lines, the things he has been asking God for, because he found years ago that writing them down keeps him honest and stops him praying in circles.
There were about a hundred and forty entries.
He went through them with a pen, the way he does, and about two thirds of the way down he stopped and went back to the beginning and did it again, more carefully, because he thought he had made a mistake.
Every single one of them asked for strength.
Not in those words every time. Help me carry this. Steady me. Get me through Thursday. Give me what I need for the conversation with the elders. Hold me up in this stretch. Let me not fall over in front of the children.
A hundred and forty entries and not one of them, in a whole year, asked to be comforted.
He is fifty three.
And what makes it worth writing about is not the discovery, which is the sort of thing anybody might find. It is what happened next.
He sat there and tried to compose one. An actual prayer, in his notebook, asking God to comfort him. And he could not do it. He wrote four words and crossed them out. He wrote something else and it turned into a request for strength in the third clause without him deciding.
He tried three times and then closed the book and went to bed.
Nothing was wrong that January, particularly. His life is good. It was not a crisis; it was a man finding out what shape his asking has.
You know the list. Yours may not be written down. But you know what it is to want one thing from God so consistently that you cannot get any other request out of your mouth, and to find out, at fifty three, that it has been the only thing all year.
He has been asking one half for everything
Let me name the pit before the verse, because if this becomes a criticism of asking God for strength it will be silly, and you would put it down.
Asking for strength is right. Scripture is full of it and God gives it and you have received it and there are people in your church who are standing because you did.
The pit is that a hundred and forty entries in a row is not a preference. It is a shape, and a shape that complete has usually got a belief underneath it, and the belief in this case is not hard to name once you look at it: that strength is what God supplies, and that comfort is what you supply to other people, and that the traffic runs one way in each case.
Here is the verse. It is out of a song Moses sang at the end of his life.
Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee.Deuteronomy 32:18
Two halves in one line, and one God in both.
The Rock that begat thee. That is a father's word and it is strong, and it is exactly the half your notebook has been addressing for a year. A Rock is what a man asks for strength from, and he is right to.
And the second half, in the Hebrew, is the word for a woman bringing a child to birth, which is why a good many translations render it as the God who gave you birth.
Both halves. One God. In one line, in the same song, and neither raised by lowering the other.
Here I draw the line in the same paragraph, because on this ground the two never travel apart. God is neither male nor female. Numbers 23:19 says God is not a man, and He is not a woman either; He is spirit. Deuteronomy 32:18 does not make God half a father and half a mother, and it does not give Him a soft side. It uses two pictures, both chosen by Him, for one God whom neither exhausts. He is never addressed by any title Scripture does not give Him, and the pictures stay in the form He gave them.
You are free to ask for comfort and not only for strength, and you were given a God who holds both. Deuteronomy 32:18 names the Rock and the birthing in one line, and it is the Holy Spirit who puts a second kind of prayer into a man whose whole year came out in one shape.
Take that with the notebook open, and know it is not my rebuke, it is what is written. You have been asking one half of God for everything for a year, and the other half was in the same verse the whole time. Deuteronomy 32:18 has both, and it is the Holy Spirit who opens a second kind of request in a man who could not write one down in January.
You have been shaping a year around one request.
You are entitled to ask for comfort and not only for strength, and you were given a God who has both halves in Him. Deuteronomy 32:18 names the Rock and the birthing in one line, and it is the Holy Spirit who gets a second kind of prayer into a man whose whole year came out in one shape.
Not deliberately, and not because you doubt God. Because the request works, and because you know what to do with strength when it arrives, and because comfort is a thing you have been giving out for twenty years and there is no muscle at all for taking it in.
And January proved it. Three attempts and the sentence turned into a request for strength by the third clause, twice.
So make it very small and very specific, because a man who cannot write it cannot pray it either until he has said it with his mouth.
Say it out loud. In these words or close to them: God, I would like to be comforted.
Then stop. Do not add the reason. Do not add what for. And above all do not add so that I can, because the so that I can is where it turns back into a request for strength, and you will feel it coming and it will feel like good sense.
You are dealt with by a God who gave you birth, and being comforted by Him is a request He put in His own song. That is Deuteronomy 32:18, and it is the Holy Spirit who opens the second kind of asking, and He has been in that notebook for a year watching one word come round a hundred and forty times.
And I want to say one thing about the year itself. Nothing was wrong that January and nothing is wrong now, and this is not a warning that you are about to fall over.
It is simpler than that. There was another thing to ask for, and you did not know it was there, and now you do.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, sitting. You are in Christ, and the authority to speak over a shape a year deep is delegated to you in Him; it does not depend on your being able to compose the prayer, which you could not in January. These stand on what is written in Deuteronomy and are carried by the Holy Spirit, not by your asking well. How He comforts you, and when, is His to decide, and He answers in His own way and in His own timing.
- One request I have made a hundred and forty times, you are right and you are not the only thing on offer, and I say so in the name of Jesus. Deuteronomy 32:18 says the Rock begat me and God gave me birth, and I have been asking one half for everything.
- Belief I never put into words, that strength is what God supplies and comfort is what I supply to other people, you have no place on this step. It is written that both halves stand in one line about one God, and His Spirit is the one who opens the second kind of asking.
- Lord, You are neither male nor female, and You both begat me and gave me birth. I ask You out loud to comfort me, in those words, and I am not putting so that I can on the end of it.
Deuteronomy 32:18
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