The Man Who Read God His Record

There is a stretch of road out past the co-op where he does most of his praying, because it is nine minutes of nothing and the radio does not reach.

And he was on it in March, doing what he always does, and he heard himself.

That is the whole story. He heard himself. He was maybe four minutes in and he had told God about the early mornings, and about the family he has been quietly helping since the fall, and about how he has not missed a Sunday since the year they buried his brother. All true. Every word of it true.

And somewhere around the bend where the fence line turns he realized he had not asked God for one thing, or told Him one true thing, and that what he had actually been doing for four minutes was reading out a record. Like a man at a hearing.

He pulled over. Not dramatically. He just stopped the truck on the shoulder and sat there with the engine running.

Because he knows the parable. Everybody knows the parable. He has heard it preached maybe thirty times, and every single time he had known, comfortably, which of the two men he was.

If you have heard yourself do that, come and sit down. Nobody here is going to make you say which man.

Two men went up to pray and only one of them was praying

Jesus tells it in Luke 18, and He tells it about people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others, which is a harder sentence than most of us let it be.

One man stands and gives God an accounting. He is not lying. That is the part people miss and it is the part that makes the story sting. He really does the things he lists. His record is good and he has earned it and he is telling the truth.

The other man will not come forward, and will not look up, and says seven words.

And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other.Luke 18:13 and 14

Justified. Set right. Sent home square with God, on the strength of seven words and no record at all.

And notice: the first man is not sent home condemned in the story. He is just sent home the same as he arrived. He came with his record and he left with his record and nothing happened, because nothing needed to. He had not asked for anything.

You are being invited to arrive with nothing in your hands, and arriving that way is not a demotion. Luke 18:14 is where that sits, in the verdict Jesus gives out loud at the end of His own parable, and the same Spirit who moved on Luke as he wrote it down is the one who keeps a good man from hearing it as an insult.

The record is not the problem, and this is where most preaching goes wrong

Here is what has to be said carefully, because a man on a shoulder with his engine running can hear this the wrong way in about four seconds.

The early mornings were real. The family you have been helping since the fall is really being helped. Not missing a Sunday since your brother is not vanity, it is grief and love doing what they do. None of that is being taken off you and none of it was wrong.

The problem is not that the list exists. The problem is what the list is being used for. When it becomes the reason you are allowed to speak, it has quietly taken the place of the only thing that ever gave anybody the right to speak, and it will hold that place until you notice.

And it is exhausting. That is the part nobody says. A man who prays on the strength of his own record has to keep the record current, which means his praying gets harder every year of his life instead of easier.

You have a standing that was handed to you and has never once been reviewed. That is Romans 3:24, not my encouragement to a tired man, and His Spirit is what makes it land in somebody who has been keeping the ledger current since he was twenty-two.

Before anything else, the part that outranks it

I am going to stop here, because this is a page about praying with your whole self and it would be careless not to say the next paragraph plainly.

Some people must not go without food. If you live with diabetes, if you are pregnant or nursing, if you take medication, if you have ever had a hard relationship with food or with eating, if you are underweight, unwell, frail or elderly, or if you are simply not sure, speak to your doctor before you go without anything, and let their answer be the answer. There is no length on this page, no kind of fast, no plan, no schedule. There will not be one.

And the privacy of any of it is about audience, not about hiding. Telling your doctor is right. Telling your wife is right. Telling whoever cooks in your house is right and it is ordinary decency. None of that is a failure of anything.

You have not been placed one step behind anybody by what your body will and will not allow. You have that on the word of God rather than on mine (2 Corinthians 8:12), and the Holy Spirit was never handed out on the basis of what a man is cleared to eat.

If today has more weight in it than a page can hold, call somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, or a crisis line, and the emergency services if you or anybody near you is in danger tonight.