Tolerated

She prays for other people at length and for herself in about nine words, and she has never once noticed the difference.

Listen to it sometime. For her sister it is detailed and unhurried and she uses her sister's name three or four times. For the woman at the surgery it is warm and specific. For the boy up the road whose mother is not well it goes on for a while.

For herself: Lord, help me be more patient, sorry about yesterday, amen.

It is not that she doubts He is there. She has never doubted that. It is that somewhere, without ever putting it into a sentence, she settled the question of what she is to Him, and the answer she settled on was tolerated. Allowed. Kept on. Not turned away, which she is grateful for, and not exactly wanted either.

You can see it in the small things once you know to look. She apologizes at the start of praying. She thanks Him for putting up with her, and she means it as reverence. When something good happens she says she does not deserve it, quickly, as though the good thing might be withdrawn if she seemed to be enjoying it too openly.

And she would tell you, if you asked, that this is humility.

That is you, and it is not humility, and I think you have suspected that for a while.

This is not going to be an argument

Let me say how this page intends to work, because you have probably had the other kind and it did not move anything. Scripture stands under that in Isaiah 43:4, and the Holy Spirit does the part no sentence can do.

There is a way of dealing with this that is all reasoning. Verses lined up, logic assembled, four reasons you should feel differently, the whole thing built to corner you into a conclusion. It is well meant and it fails, and it fails for a specific reason: you are not in doubt about the doctrine. You could explain to somebody else exactly why God does not merely tolerate them. You would do it beautifully. You have probably done it. It is written, in Isaiah 43:4, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes what is written off a page and into a life.

So I am not going to argue with you.

What I am going to do is put in front of you what has actually been said over you, and let you look at it, because being seen is what settles this and being persuaded never has been.

You are not in a debate you have to win. Scripture says the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, Psalm 34:18, and He gets near without waiting for anybody to reach a conclusion, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries that into a kitchen where a woman has just said nine words about herself.

What God says before He says anything else

There is a verse in Isaiah where God is speaking to people who had every reason to think they were being put up with. They had a long record. They were in trouble largely of their own making. This is not a sentence spoken over people at their best.

Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honourable, and I have loved thee.Isaiah 43:4

Three things in one line and none of them is tolerated.

Precious. That is a valuing word, and it is not conditional on the last week.

Honorable. That is a standing word, and He assigns it rather than waiting for it to be earned.

I have loved thee. Past tense, settled, already done. Not I will love you if. Not I love you despite. I have loved thee, said backwards over a life that was already underway.

And the timing of it matters. He says it since thou wast precious. It was already the case before the sentence was spoken. He is not announcing a new policy; He is telling somebody what has been true the whole time.

You are not being put up with. Scripture says since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honorable, and I have loved thee, Isaiah 43:4, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a sentence like that off a page and sets it down where a nine-word prayer usually goes.

Where tolerated actually came from

It did not come from God, and I suspect if you sit with it for a minute you can find where it did come from.

Almost nobody arrives at that conclusion from Scripture. People arrive at it from a room. From a house where affection had conditions in it. From being the child who was easiest to manage and learned that being easy was the price of being kept. From a stretch where you were, for a while, genuinely a difficulty to somebody, and never quite recovered your footing afterwards. Scripture settles that in Isaiah 43:4, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries it rather than these words.

Whatever the room was, you learned the arithmetic there and then applied it upward, and it fitted so well that it never occurred to you to check it.

That is not a moral failure. It is a very ordinary transfer, and almost everybody does it with something.

But it means that the thing you have believed about God for most of your life was learned from a person, and it has been running ever since under the name of humility, which is why nobody has ever challenged it.

You are not describing God when you say that. Scripture says God is love, 1 John 4:8, and it does not qualify the sentence in any direction, and the Holy Spirit is not the author of the arithmetic you brought upward from that room.

The nine words

Here is where it shows, and it is worth looking at because it is measurable.

Nine words for yourself. Four minutes for your sister.

You would never say out loud that your sister matters more to God than you do. You would find the idea appalling if somebody said it about her. And your praying has been quietly operating on exactly that principle for years, because the arithmetic is not in your theology, it is in your hands.

I am not going to ask you to feel different about this. Feelings arrive last and they arrive on their own schedule and no page produces them.

I am going to ask you to change one measurable thing, which is the length.

Pray for yourself the way you pray for your sister. Same detail, same unhurried tone, and use your own name in it out loud, three or four times, the way you use hers.

You are welcome to take up that much room. Scripture says come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need, Hebrews 4:16, and boldly is the word, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gets a woman to spend four minutes on herself for the first time in years.