The Voice That Says God Is Tired of You

She still stands in the same spot to do it, in front of the armchair with her hands loose at her sides, because that is where she has always stood.

Lord, she says. Thank You for.

And that is where it lands. Not a thought exactly. More like a memo that arrives already written, in a tone so reasonable it does not sound like an interruption at all: that is enough for now. You were at it on Sunday. You were at it on Tuesday morning, twice, and again on Tuesday night when you could not sleep, and there is a limit to how often one person can turn up at the same door with the same thing. Give it a rest. Give Him a rest.

So she says amen, which is a strange thing to say after five words, and she goes into the kitchen and fills the kettle.

She is very good at the next part. The kettle is a whole procedure. Water, switch, the mug she likes, the tea bag, the spoon she never puts back in the drawer, and the standing there watching the window while it comes up to the boil, which takes ninety seconds and fills them completely. By the time it clicks off, the room in front of the armchair has closed over like water over a stone.

Here is what nobody sees. She used to pray out loud in that room for an hour at a time, walking the length of it, laughing sometimes, going quiet sometimes, saying whatever came. She did that for years. Nothing happened to end it. There was no falling out, no scandal, no season of grief that closed her mouth. It simply got shorter. Three words. Four. And then the memo, arriving each time a little earlier, until the praying and the interruption were more or less simultaneous.

And she cannot tell you whose voice it is. That is the strangest part and it is the part she would say last, if she said it at all. It does not sound like an enemy. It sounds like an adult being sensible about a child who has asked for one thing too many times. It sounds, if she is honest, a little like the way she talks to herself about everything else.

You know that room. Maybe yours has a different chair in it and a different drink at the end of it, but you know the shape of the thing: the sentence that arrives with the authority of a settled fact, telling you that God has heard plenty from you lately and it would be seemly to stop.

I want to put that voice beside another one, and I want you to hear them at the same time, because they are saying opposite things and only one of them was given to you.

The Spirit you actually received

Paul writes one sentence to the church at Rome that settles the question of what kind of Spirit is in you, and it settles it by naming the two candidates.

For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.Romans 8:15

Look at what he rules out first. Not received. A spirit of bondage again to fear is a real thing, and Paul names it so that it can be told apart from the other one, and then he says flatly that it is not the one you were handed.

So run the test. The voice at the third word does what? It makes you smaller in the room. It puts a limit on the door. It suggests, gently, always gently, that access is a resource you are drawing down and that a wise woman would ration herself. That is fear with good manners on. And Paul has already said that is not what came to live in you.

That is not my opinion about your living room. It is written in Romans 8:15, and the Spirit named in that verse is the one at work in the room you actually stand in: you have received a Spirit who produces a cry, not a hush, and you received Him on the day you were adopted rather than on a day you performed well.

And look at the verb. Whereby we cry. The word Paul uses is not a word for murmuring. It is the word for a shout, the noise a small child makes across a house when they want their father and do not care who else hears it. The Spirit in you is not embarrassed by volume and He is not counting frequency. You were given the loud word and the near word in the same breath, because Scripture puts cry and Abba in one clause, and the Spirit who inspired that clause is the one forming the sound in your chest right now.

A voice with no author is not an authority

Now let us be careful and exact, because this site will not tell you where that voice came from and neither will I. I do not know. It is not mine to guess and a guess would be a story about you that I have no right to tell.

But I can tell you a thing about it that is checkable, and it is the only thing you need tonight. It contradicts the Spirit you were given. That is not a matter of tone or interpretation. One says the door is open and calls God Abba at a shout. The other says the door has a quota. Two voices, one house, opposite sentences, and only one of them arrived with a Name on it.

Jesus dealt with this directly, and He dealt with it by telling a story on purpose. Luke opens the passage by saying why the parable was told at all, and the reason is written down before the story starts.

And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint.Luke 18:1

Always. Not faint. He anticipated the exact discouragement sitting in your kitchen and He legislated against it in advance. Luke 18 says always, and the Holy Spirit has not amended the word since: it is already settled that the door does not close on repetition, and it was settled before you ever turned up at it twice in one night.

And plainly, because I would rather say it and not be needed. If the voice in your quiet hours has moved from telling you God is tired of your praying to telling you He is tired of you, and it has gone somewhere dark, tell one human being today, and if you are in any danger at all reach the crisis line where you live and let a real voice stay with you. That is not weakness and it is not the opposite of prayer. It is one of the ordinary things a free woman does.

He is already carrying the praying you think is too much

There is one more line and it takes the floor out from under the whole accusation.

Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.Romans 8:26

Read that beside the memo. The memo says you have brought the same thing to God too many times and He has heard enough of it. Romans 8 says the praying you manage is already being carried, mid-air, by the Spirit Himself, and that He does it precisely at the point where you do not have the words and are repeating yourself for the fourth night running. The thing the voice calls excessive is the thing He has taken responsibility for.

His word has no clause about a weekly limit, and His Spirit is not keeping a tally behind it. You have a Helper inside your own praying, and that is written in Romans 8 rather than guessed at, so the sound of you is not a burden anywhere in this universe.