It comes out before they have finished the question and it has done for thirty years.
"How are you?" and he is already saying it. Fine. Sometimes fine, thanks. Sometimes not so bad. It is not a lie, exactly; he is not in any obvious trouble and never has been. It is that the answer leaves his mouth before the question has fully landed, so nothing about the actual state of him is ever consulted, including by him.
His son asked him something in the shed in June. It was a real question and it was asked properly, the way a grown man asks his father a thing when he has thought about it beforehand. And the answer was out before the boy had finished.
He heard himself do it. That is what is different about June. He has done it ten thousand times and this is the first time he heard it, and he stood there with a socket set in his hand and something went through him that he has not been able to name since.
He is sixty two.
His wife died four years ago. He is fine. His knee is bad and he does not tell the doctor the half of it. He is fine. A thing happened in the family last autumn that took a piece out of him and he has spoken to nobody about any of it. He is fine.
There is nobody in his life who has ever got past it. Not because they have not tried; two of them have, and one of them is his sister and she is not easily put off. It is that the door shuts faster than a person can get a hand in it, and after a while people stop putting a hand out, and that is not unkindness, that is just what happens to a door that shuts.
You know the answer. Yours may have different words in it. But you know what it is to have a sentence that leaves your mouth before anybody can get behind it, and to have run it so long that you would not know how to stop it if you tried.
There is nothing in the verse you have to say
Let me name the pit before we go to the book, because if this comes at you as an instruction to open up it will hit the door like everything else.
You are not required to give an account first, and you were heard long before you learned to answer that quickly. Isaiah 66:13 asks nothing at all of the one comforted, and it is the Holy Spirit who comforts.
The pit is not stubbornness. You are not a stubborn man about anything else; you would give a stranger the coat off your back. The pit is that the answer is faster than you are. It is not a decision and it never has been. It is a reflex, and a reflex cannot be argued with, and thirty years of it means that even God has been answered at the door.
That last part is the thing worth stopping on, and it is why we are here. When you pray, and you do pray, the same sentence goes out. You bring Him what is going on with the farm and the family and you tell Him the situation, and somewhere in it, without you noticing, the reflex fires, and what He is handed is a man reporting that he is fine.
So here is a verse in which you do not have to say anything.
As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.Isaiah 66:13
Look at who speaks in that sentence and who does not.
There is one comforting and one being comforted, and the one being comforted has no line. Nothing is asked of him. He does not have to describe his condition, or open up, or say the true version, or get past his own door. The verse is entirely about what the other party does.
And notice who chose the comparison. God did. About Himself. In the first person, in His own words, and nobody put it in His mouth.
Here I draw the line in the same paragraph, because on this ground it never travels separately. God is neither male nor female. Numbers 23:19 says God is not a man, and He is not a woman either; He is spirit. Isaiah 66:13 is a picture God selected to say what His comfort is like. It does not make God a mother, He is never addressed by any title Scripture does not give Him, and the picture stays exactly the shape He made it. Scripture reaches for a father's traits and a mother's both when it tells you who He is, and this is one of the motherly ones, and it is His own.
You are not required to file a report first, and you were heard long before you learned to answer that fast. Isaiah 66:13 asks nothing of the one being comforted, and it is the Holy Spirit who comforts, and thirty years of two quick words has not stopped Him.
Take that on the step, and know it is not my sympathy, it is His own sentence. You are being comforted by God and you do not have to say one word for it to be happening. Isaiah 66:13 gives the comforted man no line at all, and it is the Holy Spirit who does the comforting, and He does not have to get past a door to do it.
The gate is still on the spring and there have been no sheep on that place for years.
You are not required to have an answer ready, and you were heard long before you learned to say the two words fast. Isaiah 66:13 puts the comforting on His side and asks for no report from you, and it is the Holy Spirit who gets past an answer thirty years in the making, and He is not stopped by it.
That is not a failure of yours and it is not a fault. It went on for a good reason, in a year when it was needed, and it has been doing its job ever since without anybody asking it to stop.
And you are not going to take it off by deciding to. A reflex does not come off with a decision, and any article that tells you to be more open with people is asking a sixty two year old man to do something with his willpower that his willpower does not reach.
So do the one thing that gets round it entirely.
Go where there is no question to answer.
You are comforted without having to report anything, right now, and there is no door for that to get past. That is Isaiah 66:13 with the comforted man silent throughout, and it is the Holy Spirit who does that work, and He has been at it in a truck and a shed for four years while a man told everybody he was fine.
Read the verse out loud with your own name in it, and then say nothing at all for one minute. Not a prayer. Not the situation. Nothing. The reflex has no work to do in a minute with no question in it, and it will stand down, because it is not a wicked thing, it is a spring on a gate, and springs only fire when something pushes.
And your son in the shed in June. I am not going to make you do anything about that tonight and it is not the assignment. But it is worth you knowing that the boy asked properly, having thought about it first, and that men who do that generally ask again.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud in the truck. You are in Christ, and the authority to speak over a reflex thirty years old is delegated to you in Him; it does not depend on your being able to stop it, which you cannot by deciding. These stand on what is written in Isaiah and are carried by the Holy Spirit, not by anything you manage to say. When the spring comes off, and how, is His to decide, and He answers in His own way and in His own timing.
- Answer that comes out before the question lands, you are a reflex and you are not the truth about me, and I say so in the name of Jesus. Isaiah 66:13 says God comforts as a mother comforts, and the man being comforted in that verse does not have a single line.
- Gate that has been on a spring since long after the sheep went, you have no business shutting on the Lord. It is written that He chose that comparison Himself and that He is neither male nor female, and His Spirit does not have to get past a door to comfort a man.
- Lord, You comfort me the way a mother comforts, and I do not have to say one word for it. I read it out loud in this truck with my own name in it and then I say nothing for a minute, and I let the answer go past without giving it to You.
Isaiah 66:13
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