He tried an experiment on himself and it did not go the way he expected.
He was in the truck, and the thing came up, the way it always does, and he decided to imagine it repaired. Not vaguely. Properly. He walked himself through the whole day: the phone call, the paperwork, driving home, telling everybody, sitting down at his own table with it finally sorted.
And when he got to the end of it, he felt nothing much at all. A kind of thin relief, and then a hollow.
That frightened him. Because if the answer he has been asking for arrives and it lands like that, then what exactly has he been doing for the last five years, and what is he going to want the day after.
He has not said it to a soul. In his family, wanting the thing fixed is the whole of what everybody is doing, and a man who says the fixing might not be enough sounds either ungrateful or unwell.
If your own answer went hollow when you imagined it, come and sit down at the end of this table. Nothing about the repair you need is going to be belittled here.
The hollow is information, not ingratitude
Let us name the frightening thing straight away, because it has been sitting in the truck with you for weeks.
The hollow is not proof of ingratitude. It is not proof that the wanting was never real either. What it actually is, is a piece of information: it tells you that a real need has been standing in for a deeper one, and that the deeper one has been quietly waiting the whole time.
That is not a fault. That is what happens to anybody who carries one thing long enough for it to fill the whole window.
You are not ungrateful. Nothing about that hollow says anything against you, and it has never once made God impatient. I am not saying it to be kind. The written word says he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust (Psalm 103:14), which is Him accounting for what a person is rather than being disappointed by it, and the Holy Spirit is what carries it into a man frightened by his own imagination in a truck.
The man who refused a fixed situation
Here is what changed this for me, and it is not a suggestion that you stop asking for the repair.
There is a moment where God offers Moses everything he has been asking for. The land, the angel going ahead, the enemies driven out, the whole logistical package. And He says, in effect, but I will not go up in the midst of thee.
And he said unto him, If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence.Exodus 33:15
Read what he turns down. Not a disappointment. The answer. He is offered the fixed situation and he says he would rather stay in the desert without it than go on into everything he wanted without the One who promised it.
Nobody had taught him to say that. He had just been in the tent enough to know what was actually valuable.
You have been given a God who never sends the package instead of Himself, and the Word records a man discovering that and refusing to swap. That is written down in the account exactly that way, and the Holy Spirit is what drives it home in a man who has just imagined his own answer and felt nothing.
The repair still matters
Something must be said before you overcorrect, because by Thursday you will be trying not to want it fixed, and that is not holiness, it is just a different way of getting your own life wrong.
The need is real. Ask for it. Keep asking.
You are allowed both, and the Word has never once made a person choose between the trouble and the Person who hears it. Scripture says in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God (Philippians 4:6), where every thing means the practical, specific, unspiritual detail of your actual week, and it is the Holy Spirit, and He is the one who has carried five years of that detail without ever calling it small.
And if these five years have cost more than anybody at this table 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, then, and it is not a promise about the situation, 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 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 who makes that true at your actual table tonight rather than in general.
I cannot tell you what God does about the thing, or when. Nobody honest can. What I can tell you is that the hollow you felt was not a verdict on your gratitude, and that the deeper want underneath it has a name and He has been in the truck the whole time.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in your own voice. The standing to speak like this is yours in Christ, and it was never issued on the strength of how well you have wanted the right things. Scripture is the ground under it, the Holy Spirit is what makes it living rather than merely honest, and what God does about the situation, and when, is His, however He answers, and nothing on this page pretends to know.
- Hollow feeling at the thought of getting what I asked for, you are a signal and you are not ingratitude. Psalm 103 says He knows my frame and remembers that I am dust, which is God accounting for a man rather than being disappointed in him, and the Holy Spirit has never once read that hollow as a charge. In the name of Jesus I stop hiding you.
- Fear that a man who says the fixing is not enough is ungrateful or unwell, you were never spoken over me by God, and you are not sitting at this table tomorrow. Exodus 33 has a man handed the whole package and answering, if Thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence, and His Spirit kept that refusal in the record as wisdom. I am asking for the repair and for the Presence in one breath.
- Father, You were made flesh and pitched Your tent where people actually live, and John 1 says we beheld Your glory. I thank You that Your Spirit carried five years of practical detail without ever calling it small. Here is the repair by its real name, out loud, and here is Your name after it.
Exodus 33:15
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