He Prayed It With Dread

His grandmother used to say that God is not deceived, and she said it in a particular way, with a small movement of her chin, and it has followed him for forty years.

She was not being cruel. She meant it about people who came to the house and said pious things and were unkind at home. But he took it in as a child takes a thing in, whole and without context, and what settled in him was this: God knows what is in you while you speak. So do not say a thing you do not mean, because He is not deceived.

Eight years ago, at the table after his mother's month's mind, he told God he would keep the prayers going in his house. Not the long ones. Just the thing they had always done at that table before a meal, which had gone quiet since his mother stopped coming.

He did it for maybe a year, and then it thinned, and now it does not happen at all, and that is not really the article either.

Here is the article. He tried to start again about two years ago and he could not, and the reason is precise.

When he prays there is no devotion in it. There is a dry flat obligation, and sometimes there is dread, actual dread, a physical reluctance in his chest when he sits down to do it. And with his grandmother's chin in his memory, he has concluded that to say the words in that condition is worse than saying nothing. God is not deceived. He would know the words were coming out of a dry man. And a dry man performing devotion in front of God is exactly the thing she despised.

So he says nothing, at all, and has for two years, out of what he believes is respect.

You may have inherited a sentence like that. Something true, taken in whole as a child, that has grown into a rule nobody meant to give you.

The most important prayer ever prayed

Now I want to take you into a garden at night, and I want you to notice the state the man praying is in, because the gospel writers go out of their way to tell you and we usually read past it.

Matthew says He began to be sorrowful and very heavy. He says to His friends that His soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. Luke, who was a doctor, adds the detail about the sweat. This is a man in the worst distress recorded of Him anywhere.

And then:

And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.Matthew 26:39

You are heard from inside dread, and Scripture puts the model of all obedience in the mouth of a man on the ground. Matthew 26:39 keeps the sorrow and the sweat in the same passage as the yielding, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carried those words up out of the dirt.

Read the condition He was in

He is on the ground. He is asking for the thing to be taken away. The request itself is a request to be let off.

And in the middle of that, out of a state that could not be further from serene devotion, comes the sentence that carries the whole of Christian obedience: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.

That is the model. Not a calm man in a quiet room with a candle. A man face down in dirt, in dread, asking to be excused, saying the true thing anyway.

You are able to pray the right words from inside real dread, and Scripture puts the model prayer of all obedience in exactly that condition. Matthew 26:39 is where that is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes it out of a garden and puts it at a dining table where a man cannot bring himself to begin.

Now let me deal with your grandmother, because I loved a woman like her and I am not going to contradict her.

She was right. God is not deceived. And that is precisely the sentence that frees you, if you turn it around and let it point the other way.

God is not deceived means He is not fooled by warmth either. A man can pray with tears in his eyes and mean nothing by it, and God is not deceived by that. And a man can pray in a dry flat voice with dread in his chest and mean every word, and God is not deceived by that either.

Your grandmother's rule was never about temperature. It was about truth. And what you say at that table is true. You have simply been checking it against the wrong instrument.

You are not deceiving anybody, because the words are true and the temperature was never the claim. The word puts it plainly, and that is what it means that God is not deceived, read in both directions, and the Spirit of God has been the one bringing that sentence back to you for two years, though you kept hearing it as an accusation.

Dread is not disrespect

And now let me guard this, because in a house like yours there is a real danger of a new rule being handed down.

I am not going to tell you that you should feel devotion, or work toward it, or that if you start again the sweetness comes back. I am not going to schedule anything. That is not mine to give and it is not what this is for.

What I will say is that dread at a table is not disrespect. The most reverent man who ever lived prayed in more distress than you have ever been in, and nobody in the history of the church has suggested He was being casual about it.

You are able to come with dread in your chest and have it count entirely. Scripture records the sweat and the falling and the request to be excused and keeps them in the same passage as the obedience, and His Spirit is the one who carried those words up out of the ground.