He knows the exact day he started, because he wrote it in the front of a notebook, along with the thing he was asking about, in one line, in capitals.
That was two years ago. The line is still true. The thing is still not resolved and he still wants it resolved, and he would tell you that flatly, and anybody who suggested he had moved past it would be wrong and slightly annoying.
But something else has happened alongside it, and he does not have language for it, and he has certainly not said it out loud.
He has started looking forward to the mornings.
Not the answer. The mornings. The particular quiet, the chair, the strange steadiness that has turned up somewhere in the middle of two years of asking about something that has not changed. And now, when he sits down, he notices that he does not always start with the request any more. Sometimes he gets four or five minutes in before he remembers it.
And then he feels guilty, because it feels like he is letting the thing go, and he is not letting it go, and he does not know how to hold both.
If both of those are true for you, come and sit down. Neither of them is going anywhere on this page.
Wanting the answer is not immaturity
Let us get this settled before anything else, because a certain kind of teaching would take your notebook off you here and I am not going to.
The thing you came asking about matters. It matters to you and it matters to God, and wanting it resolved is not a lower form of prayer that you should be growing out of. The book is full of people asking God directly and repeatedly for specific things, and none of them are scolded for the asking.
Anybody who tells you that a mature believer stops wanting outcomes has not read the Psalms, where grown men ask for very concrete things at considerable volume.
You are not being asked to give up what you came for, and God has not been waiting for you to stop wanting it. The written word says in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God (Philippians 4:6), and in every thing is deliberately without limit, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a permission rather than a technicality.
So keep the notebook. That is not what has changed.
What David asked for when he could have asked for anything
Here is the verse that describes what has happened to your mornings, and it is not a rebuke.
One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to enquire in his temple.Psalm 27:4
Read the situation around it. That psalm is not written by a man with nothing on his mind. There are enemies in it, and a war, and a father and mother who might forsake him, and real fear that is named plainly.
He has plenty he could be asking for. And in the middle of the trouble, he says one thing, and the one thing is not deliverance. It is nearness. To dwell, to behold, to enquire.
He does not stop having the other problems. He simply names what has moved to the front.
You are not losing the request. You are finding out what was underneath it the whole time. The written word puts it as one thing desired in the middle of a crisis that is still fully in progress (Psalm 27:4), and the Spirit is the one who has been quietly doing that in you across two years of mornings you did not think were producing anything.
What this is not
Let me be careful here, because there is a version of this page that would do damage.
I am not telling you that God is the answer you get instead of the one you asked for. That is a trade, and it makes Him a consolation prize, and it is not true. The thing in your notebook is not canceled and He has not swapped it for Himself.
And I am not closing your question. It is open. It is allowed to stay open. Nothing on this page tells you what God is doing about it or when, and I do not know.
What has happened is smaller and better than a trade: the Person you were asking has become someone you would want to sit with even on a morning when there was nothing to ask for. That is not the end of your request. It is the thing your request was always leaning on.
You are not being offered a substitute, and you are not being asked to close anything. The written word says as the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God (Psalm 42:1), written by somebody in genuine distress who is not pretending the distress has gone, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes both of those true at once without either canceling the other.
And a plain word, because this site is what it is: some people must not go without food at all, and if you live with diabetes, are pregnant or nursing, take medication, have ever had a hard relationship with food or eating, or are unwell, underweight or unsure, speak to your doctor first and let their answer be the answer. Nothing on this page is a treatment, a plan or a length, and none of what has grown in your mornings required you to go without anything.
If today is heavier 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.
So here is the turn, and it takes nothing off the table.
You came for an answer and you have found the One who holds it, and the thing you asked for still matters to Him. The written word says that the Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him (Lamentations 3:25), which puts waiting and seeking in the same sentence without resolving either one, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been growing the second in you while the first has stayed exactly where it was.
Your question is still open. Your mornings are not nothing. Both of those are allowed to be true today, and the guilt about the four or five minutes can go.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in the chair where the mornings happen. The standing to speak like this is yours in Christ and it is not issued on the strength of how spiritual your wanting has become. Scripture is the ground under it, the Holy Spirit is what makes it living rather than merely thoughtful, and what God does about the thing in the notebook and when is His, however He answers, and nothing on this page pretends to know.
- Thing I wrote in the front of the notebook, you still matter and you are not being taken off the table. In every thing by prayer and supplication let your requests be made known unto God, and in every thing was written without a limit on it. In the name of Jesus I say you out loud again and I keep you open.
- Guilt about the four or five minutes, you are not God's word about me and you are not sitting in this chair with me in the mornings. David said one thing have I desired (Psalm 27:4) in the middle of a crisis that was still fully in progress, and he did not lose the crisis by naming the one thing, and His Spirit has been growing that in me for two years while I thought nothing was happening. I am not letting the thing go, and I am not pretending either.
- Father, You are the One I came to about something, and You have become the reason I come. I thank You that the Lord is good unto them that wait for Him and to the soul that seeketh Him, and that You have never asked me to choose between the two. Here is what I came asking for, and here is one sentence that asks You for nothing.
Psalm 27:4
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
