She caught it about a year ago, in the middle of praying, and she has not been able to un-catch it.
She was asking for those years to come back, the way she has asked for a long time, and a sentence went through her that was not part of the prayer: I want to feel like that again.
Not I want Him. I want to feel like that again.
She stopped mid sentence and has been more or less stopped since. Because if that is what has actually been driving thirteen years of asking, then she has been petitioning God for an atmosphere. For adrenaline with a hymn under it. For the particular electricity of being twenty three in a full room where anything might happen.
She is not stupid about this. She knows a person can want both, and probably did. What she cannot work out is the proportion, and until she knows the proportion she does not feel entitled to open her mouth.
So a woman who asked for thirteen years has asked for almost nothing in the last one, and she has told nobody why.
If you caught yourself and stopped, come and sit in the shade. Nothing about those years is going to be run down here.
Wanting the feeling is not a disqualification
Let us be careful here, because she has noticed something true and then drawn a conclusion that does not come from it.
The true part: some of what she misses is the intensity. That is worth knowing, and noticing it was honest, and most people who lived through a season like that never notice it at all.
The conclusion: that a mixed motive invalidates the request. That is where it goes wrong, and it goes wrong in a very specific way. She has decided the request must be pure before it may be made, which is a rule nobody in the book operates under and which no human being has ever satisfied.
And there is something she has missed while auditing the proportion. Even if the feeling is nine tenths of it, one tenth of that request is a woman wanting God, and that tenth has been silenced along with the rest for a year.
You are not disqualified by a mixture. Nothing you have noticed about your own motives has ever made the request improper. I am not saying it to lower a standard. Scripture says if thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence (Exodus 33:15), which is a man distinguishing the Presence from everything else on offer, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it hold in a woman who stopped mid sentence.
The distinction Moses makes out loud
Here is the part that turned this for me, and it takes nothing off those years.
Read what Moses is being offered and what he refuses, because the refusal is the exact distinction she has been trying to make privately.
And he said unto him, If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence.Exodus 33:15
He was offered the land, the angel, the promise kept, the whole plan continuing. Everything except the thing itself. And he says, in effect, that he will not take the package without the Presence in it.
That is the distinction she is worried about, made out loud, by a man who does not appear to have found it embarrassing to have to make it. He did not conclude he was unfit to ask. He named which one he wanted and asked for that.
You may name which one you want and ask for that, and Scripture has a man make exactly that distinction out loud. That is written into the verse itself, and it is the Holy Spirit who brings it to a woman a year into a silence.
Nothing here runs down those years
Something must be said very plainly, or this becomes a page suggesting that a season she loved was mostly atmosphere.
It was not. Real things happened to real people in those years, and the intensity was not a substitute for God, it was what a room is like when a lot of people are paying full attention at once. Feeling is not the enemy of substance. It usually accompanies it.
And nothing here says the woman she was at twenty three was shallow. She was twenty three in a full room and she was right to love it.
You are asking for this again, here. The fire that stayed is the one you want, not the one you remember. Scripture says how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him (Luke 11:13), where the object of the request is named for you and it is a Person rather than a season, and it is the Holy Spirit, and not an atmosphere, who is what the asking is actually for.
And if this year has cost more than the friends at that table know, if sleep has gone, if praying has started to frighten you, 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.
So here is the turn, and it is not a promise that anything comes, or when.
You are asking for this again, here. The fire that stayed is the one you want, not the one you remember. Scripture has a man say if thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence (Exodus 33:15), where the distinction is made out loud without shame, and it is the Holy Spirit, not the atmosphere of a full room, who is named as the object of what you may ask for.
I cannot tell you the proportion, and neither can you, and I would not trust anybody who offered to weigh it for you. What I can tell you is that a year of silence has not clarified anything, and that the tenth of you that wants Him has been quiet along with the rest.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in your own voice. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the standing under these words is His rather than your own. You speak under His will and not yours, and what God does next, and when, is His to decide, however He answers.
- Suspicion that I only miss how it felt, you are a thing worth noticing and you are not a reason to stop asking. Exodus 33 has a man say if Thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence, making that exact distinction out loud without one trace of embarrassment, and the Holy Spirit never required a pure request before it could be made. In the name of Jesus I open my mouth again.
- Rule that a mixed motive invalidates the asking, you are not what God says about me and you are not sitting at this table on Sunday. Luke 11 names a Person rather than a season as the object of the request, so the naming does the sorting, and His Spirit is what I am asking for. I am asking for this again, here.
- Father, if Your presence go not with me, carry us not up hence, and Exodus 33 has a man refuse the whole package without the one thing in it. I thank You for real things that happened to real people in those years and for a girl of twenty three who was right to love that room, and Your Spirit has been there every week I said nothing. The fire that stayed is the one I want, not the one I remember.
Exodus 33:15
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