The Words She Will Not Borrow

She was raised to believe that it has to come out of you or it is nothing.

A prayer somebody else wrote is a recitation. It might be a beautiful recitation, and she has heard some beautiful ones, but it is not the thing itself, because the thing itself is a person talking to God out of their own chest.

She has believed that her whole life. She has taught it, gently, to at least four younger women, and she believed every word of it when she did.

And it worked well enough for about forty years.

Then last winter happened.

It is not this article's business what last winter was. Something came through that house, and by about the third week of January she was sitting in the chair by the window in the mornings with nothing at all.

Not doubt. She wants that clear. She never once stopped believing anything.

She simply had no words. She would sit down and open her mouth and there was nothing in it, and she would sit there for a while and then get up and put the kettle on.

That went on for about eleven weeks.

Here is the part she has never said to anybody.

There is a book on her mother's shelf with prayers in it. It has been there since she was a girl and she knows exactly what is in it.

She could have opened it on any single morning of that winter.

And she did not, because opening it would have meant putting somebody else's words in her own mouth, and she has spent forty years teaching people not to do that.

So she sat in a chair with nothing, eleven weeks running, three feet from a book.

If you have a rule about borrowed words, come in and sit by the fire. The tea is fresh and nobody here is asking you to say anything.

What He did when they asked Him

There is a moment where somebody asks Christ to teach them to pray, and what He does next settles the whole question.

And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray ... And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.Luke 11:1-2

When ye pray, say.

He gives them words. Actual words, in an order, to be said.

He could have done something else. He could have told them to speak from the heart, or explained the principles, or said that prayer cannot be taught because it has to be your own. He is the last person who would have needed a form for Himself.

He handed them one.

You are being offered a form by the one person who could not possibly have needed it. Luke 11:2 has Christ answering a request to be taught by giving words to say, and it is the Holy Spirit who kept that exchange in the record rather than a general encouragement, which means the thing you have refused to do for forty years was His own answer to that exact question.

Where the rule came from, and what it was for

Now the rule, and let us be fair to it, because it was not invented out of nothing.

It was protecting something real. Words said without meaning them are a genuine danger, and everybody has sat in a room where a form was being run through with nobody home, and your rule was built to keep you out of that.

That is a good instinct and it kept you honest for forty years.

But it was a rule about a risk, and somewhere along the way it became a rule about a category. It stopped saying watch that you mean it and started saying these words are not available to you.

You have been keeping a guard against emptiness that eventually guarded the door against everything. Matthew 15:8 has Christ quoting people who honor Him with their lips while their heart is far from Him, and the fault named there is the distance rather than the words, and it is the same Spirit who is called the Spirit of truth, which means the danger your rule was built for was always a matter of the heart and never a property of a sentence.

Eleven weeks, three feet from a book

Here is the winter, and it should be said gently, because there is nothing to be ashamed of in it.

You sat with nothing. That is not a lapse. Some seasons take the words out of a person and there is no method for getting them back, and a woman who keeps sitting down in that chair every morning with nothing is doing something considerable.

You were not silent because anything had failed in you, and no verse anywhere requires a person to supply their own words. Romans 8:26 says likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities, for we know not what we should pray for as we ought, and it is written of exactly the condition you were in, and the Spirit named there is described as making intercession, which means those eleven weeks had somebody praying in that chair the entire time.

And a book three feet away was one of the things that was on offer, and it is still on the shelf.