He still says amen. That is what makes it hard to spot.
He is in the third row, he helps with the chairs, and when somebody prays about the thing he has been carrying for nine years he says amen along with everybody else and he means it in the way you mean a courtesy.
What he does not say, and has never said to one living person, is that somewhere around year six he stopped expecting anything. Not decided. Stopped. It went the way a fire goes when nobody has put wood on it, and one day he noticed there was no heat coming off it any more and was surprised how little that surprised him.
He would tell you God is able. He would say it and mean it in general. It is the particular that has gone: God is able, and it is not going to happen here.
And he has kept that entirely to himself, because in his experience saying it out loud gets you a talking to, and he has not got the energy for a talking to.
If you have quietly gone out somewhere around year six, come and sit by the fire a minute. I have not brought a talking to.
Nobody is going to scold you for this
Let us settle it right at the start, because braced men do not hear anything and the title will have braced you.
I am not going to tell you that unbelief is what is holding this up. I am not going to suggest that if a man would only believe harder the thing would move, or that a man can talk himself out of his own answer, or that the giving up is a sin to be repented of before God will do anything. None of that is in the written word, and the Holy Spirit did not put it there.
That whole line of talk puts the weight on the man who has been carrying it for nine years already, and there is not a chance I am adding to that load.
You are not the obstacle here, and your flat expectation is not what has kept this shut. I am not being soft with you: the written word says he knoweth our frame, he remembereth that we are dust (Psalm 103:14), and a God who remembers what people are made of is not tapping His foot at a tired man in the third row, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that hold rather than my simply saying it.
Nine years is a long time to hold a thing up on your own. Fires go out. That is what they do when nobody feeds them, and noticing it is honesty and not treachery.
There was a man at a gate who said it out loud
Now let me tell you a story, because there is one in the written word that fits exactly, and the Holy Spirit did not have God deal with him the way you have been expecting to be dealt with.
A city under siege. Famine so bad the details in the chapter are hard to read. And a prophet stands up and says that by this time tomorrow there will be food in the gate at a price nobody could believe.
And the officer standing next to the king says the sentence that everybody in the room was already thinking.
Behold, if the LORD would make windows in heaven, might this thing be?2 Kings 7:2
That is the honest man in the story. That is the one who says out loud what nine years does to a person. And I will be straight with you, because you would smell it if I were not: it does not go well for him afterwards, and I am not going to use that as a stick, and I am not telling you this story so that you will be frightened into hoping.
Here is why I am telling you. Look what happened to the city.
So a measure of fine flour was sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, according to the word of the LORD.2 Kings 7:16
It turned. In a night. While that man stood at the gate not believing a word of it, the whole thing turned anyway, and it did not wait for his expectation to come back up first.
You are not powerful enough to hold God's kindness shut, and your flat expectation is not stronger than He is. The written word says if we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself (2 Timothy 2:13), and that is written about people whose belief had gone thin, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a fact you can lean your weight on tonight.
What honest sounds like
There is one thing I would ask you to do, and it is not to start expecting again on command. You cannot manufacture that and I am not going to ask you to fake it.
It is to stop keeping it a secret from God.
You have said amen for three years while carrying a private sentence you would never say in the room. That gap is heavier than the unbelief is. God is not going to be shocked by the sentence, and He has heard it from better men than either of us, including one standing at a gate in a famine.
You are allowed to bring Him the actual state of it, and He is not going to withdraw over your honesty. Pour out your heart before him: God is a refuge for us (Psalm 62:8), and pour out is a word for the whole contents and not the presentable half, and the Spirit is the one who makes an honest sentence in a kitchen more prayer than three polite years were.
And if what has gone flat is wider than this one thing, if the not expecting has spread across the whole of your life lately, please tell somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, or a crisis line, and the emergency services if you or anybody near you is in danger tonight. A fire that has gone out across everything is worth saying out loud to a professional, and that is sense and not surrender.
So here is the turn, and it does not need your expectation back first.
God is not offended by what you have stopped expecting, and He turns things that people have written off. The written word says with God all things are possible (Matthew 19:26), spoken to disciples who had just been told something was flatly impossible and had said so, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that steady in a man who has been out since year six.
I am not going to tell you your thing is about to move. I do not know, and a page that promised you that would be lying to sound warm. What I can tell you is that a city changed overnight while the honest man at the gate could not believe it, and that his unbelief did not stop the flour arriving for anybody.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in your own voice, wherever you are. You speak these standing in Christ and it is not issued on the strength of how much expectation you can muster tonight. What it rests on is the written word, and what makes it living is the Holy Spirit rather than merely honest, and what God does about your thing and when is His, in His own way, and nothing written here knows what that is.
- Thing I wrote off somewhere around year six, you are real and you are not settled by what I have stopped expecting. Second Kings 7 turns a city in a single night while the honest man at the gate cannot believe a word of it, and the Holy Spirit saw his sentence kept in the record uncorrected. In the name of Jesus I say your name out loud instead of walking past you.
- Fear that my flat expectation is what has kept this shut, you are a sentence God did not say, and you are not standing in my kitchen tonight. If we believe not, yet He abideth faithful, for He cannot deny Himself, and that was written about people whose belief had worn thin, and His Spirit is settling it in me while mine is still thin. I am not strong enough to hold His kindness shut.
- Father, You remember what I am made of, and Psalm 103 says it of You rather than leaving it to be guessed, and Your Spirit has never once tapped a foot at a tired man in the third row. I thank You that You are not offended by the sentence I have been carrying and never said. Here it is out loud, exactly as it runs, and I am not putting anything on the end of it.
2 Kings 7:16
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