Nine Years In The Same Car

It is twenty-two minutes if the lights are kind and twenty-nine if they are not, and he has been doing it since 2017.

He prays the whole way. Out loud, in the car, on his own, which is a habit he picked up from a man he respected and has never seen a reason to drop. He is not embarrassed about it. He has been seen doing it at a junction by somebody from work and he did not mind.

And he is good at it. That is worth saying, because this is not going to be an article about a man who does not pray.

He prays for his wife by name and for each of the children by name and for the one at university by name twice, because of the thing that happened in February. He prays for the two people at work who are having a hard year. He prays about the meeting. He thanks God for the road being clear when it is clear.

Twenty-two minutes, four or five days a week, for nine years.

And last Thursday, at the roundabout by the retail park, a thought landed on him sideways and he has not been able to put it down since.

He realized that in nine years of talking out loud in that car, he has never once said anything to the Holy Spirit.

Not once. Not a sentence. Not by accident.

He has talked to God the Father. He has talked to Jesus. He knows the doctrine, he could set out the three Persons on a whiteboard and get it right, and if you asked him whether the Holy Spirit is a Person he would say yes without hesitating, because he believes it.

And he has been driving for nine years with somebody in the car he has never spoken to.

He is not distressed about it exactly. It is stranger than that. It is the particular embarrassment of finding out you have been sharing a room with somebody and treating them like the furniture, and knowing perfectly well that they were not offended, and somehow that makes it worse.

And that is you at your own roundabout, or you would have stopped reading at the second paragraph.

Somebody has been talking in there the whole time

Here is the thing I want to hand you first, because it takes the sting out of the rest.

You have not been ignoring Him. You have been praying in Him for nine years without knowing that is what the Bible calls it.

Look at what Paul says is happening when a person prays and when a person cannot.

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.Romans 8:16

Bears witness with. Not to. With.

That is two voices in the same car saying the same thing at the same time, and one of them is His. Every morning you have driven that road saying Father, the reason you were able to say it, and the reason it did not feel absurd, is that Somebody in the passenger seat was saying it alongside you.

You have not been alone in that car for one of those nine years, and you have never once prayed without Him. It is written that the Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God (Romans 8:16), and with is the whole word. The Holy Spirit has been the other voice in that vehicle since 2017.

Now the second thing, which is the one you are actually worried about.

You think you have been rude.

You have not. And I want to be careful here, because a man in your position will take a correction off a page even when nobody has written one.

You are not being told off, and there is no debt here to clear. It is written that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1), and that sentence sits four verses before the one about the Spirit bearing witness, in the same chapter, on purpose. The Holy Spirit is not the member of the Trinity who keeps score of how often He gets addressed by name.

And He has not been sulking in the passenger seat. That is a picture we import from people, and it does not survive one honest look at what He has actually been doing, which is holding your prayer up for nine years while you thought you were doing it on your own steam.

Here is the third thing, and it is the whole message.

You are able to speak to Him, and it is not strange, and it does not require anything special. It is written that the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all (2 Corinthians 13:14), and fellowship is a word for two people in company rather than a word for a supply line. The Holy Spirit is somebody a man may simply talk to on the way to work.

You do not need new words. You do not need a form of address you were never taught. You do not need to feel anything different at the roundabout tomorrow, and if you feel exactly the same as you have felt for nine years, nothing has failed.

You are just going to stop driving past Him.