The Turn I Never Learned to Take

He had been to that house forty or fifty times, and he had never once driven there.

He had always followed. His brother in law's car pulled out first, every time, and Marlon fell in behind and watched two red lights for twenty five minutes. Around the reservoir, up through the estate, past the place where the road forks and one of them takes you back the way you came. Forty or fifty times.

Then his brother in law's back went out, and somebody had to fetch the aunt on Sunday, and Marlon said of course, no problem, I know where it is.

He got as far as the reservoir.

And he sat at that fork with his hands at ten and two, and it was the strangest feeling of his adult life, because he had seen this junction fifty times and he could not tell you one thing about it. Which way. Not a clue. He knew the color of that gate. He knew the dip where the suspension bangs. He knew every single thing about that road except how to choose on it, because he had never once had to.

He had been to the destination. He had never made the journey.

Now hear how that felt, because this is the part that is not about roads. He did not feel lost. He felt like a fraud. Fifty times, and he could not do the one thing a person is supposed to be able to do after fifty times, and there was nobody to be angry with, because the man in the car in front had only ever been kind to him.

You have sat at that fork. You closed your eyes to pray and out came the worship leader. His cadence. His word for God. That little rise at the end of a line he does, and the phrase he uses about the blood, and the pause before amen. You have been to the destination a thousand times behind his tail lights, and when it came to it you could not find the turn on your own.

Sit with me a while. There is nothing wrong with you, and I am not going to ask you to be angry at anyone.

What Jesus says about the go between

Let me stay in the low place a moment, because you have been quietly ashamed of this for a long time.

It is not that you do not pray. You pray plenty. It is that when you listen back, none of it is in your voice. It is in his, and you have gotten so used to the sound of that borrowed voice that praying alone now feels like a rehearsal for something. There is a worry underneath it that you have never let get to the surface: that God has been answering him, and you have been standing near it.

Nobody in this is a villain, and I want to say that plainly before I say anything else. The man who taught you that road gave you something. You would not know the destination at all without him. A person who drove in front of you for years so you would not get lost is a gift, and gratitude is the right response, and none of what follows is a case against him.

Now come and stand in the upper room, on the last night, with eleven men who had listened to Jesus pray for three years and had never once prayed like that themselves.

Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.John 16:24

Hear the tone. There is no rebuke in it. He does not say, why have you never asked. He says hitherto, meaning up to now, meaning that was the arrangement and the arrangement has changed. And then He hands them the imperative and it is one word long. Ask.

So take this over you tonight. You have your own access, and it was opened by the finished work of Christ and not by anybody's fluency. That is not my opinion of you, it is what Jesus said out loud on the last night of His life, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that access live in an ordinary person in an ordinary room.

And then, a few lines later, He says the thing that answers the exact worry you have never said out loud.

He tells them that in that day they will ask in His name, and then, immediately: I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you, for the Father himself loveth you, John 16:26 and 27. The Father Himself. Not the Father through somebody more articulate. Jesus, who had every right to remain the only one speaking, deliberately takes Himself out of the middle and puts the word Himself in the sentence, so nobody would ever have to wonder again.

Read it slowly, because it is aimed at you. You are loved by the Father Himself, directly, personally, with nobody's phrasing in between, and Scripture puts the word Himself there on purpose. The Spirit who carried that sentence into the record is in you now, and He did not come to improve your delivery.

I know the objection, because it is the honest one. It comes out so plain. It sounds like nothing. He says it beautifully and I say it like a child asking for a lift somewhere.

Then hear what Paul writes about the plainest praying there is. The Spirit Himself helps our weakness, and makes intercession with groanings which cannot be uttered, Romans 8:26. Groanings which cannot be uttered. That is not a phrase. That is not even a sentence. That is a sound a person makes when they have run out of language, and God calls it intercession, and He calls it the Spirit's own work in them.

So the plainness you are embarrassed about is not the problem. It is nearer to the model than the polish is.

And there is one more thing to put down, because you are carrying it. Growing your own voice is not growing away from anybody. It does not make you independent, it does not mean you stop needing that room or that man or the way he prays, and it is not a step toward doing this alone. Nobody has ever been more inside a body of believers than the person who can also talk to God in their own kitchen. The gift here is access, not self sufficiency, and you can drive that road yourself on Sunday and still be glad every time you see his car ahead of you.

You have a voice that God recognizes, and He has never once required a translator. The written word says the Father Himself loves you, and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying that from the page into your chest tonight.