Twenty To Six

Twenty to six, and the lamp goes on.

That is the hour it happens, in this house, in this season. Not the morning, which she can manage, because the morning has a shape and the shape carries her. Twenty to six is when the light goes flat and gray outside the kitchen window and everything that was standing up in her all day sits down at once.

She puts the lamp on. It helps a little, in the way a lamp helps.

Then she stands with one hand on the back of a chair for a while, which is not resting and is not working, and she thinks the thing she thinks at twenty to six most days.

If He is in me, why is there nothing in me?

Because they told her. They have told her since she was nineteen, and she believes it, and she has no argument with the doctrine at all. The Holy Spirit lives in her. She has read the verses, she has sung the songs, she has stood in rooms with her hands up and meant every word of it.

And it is the ninth month of whatever this is. Not sadness. Not a crisis. Nothing anybody could point to and name. Just a tiredness with no bottom to it, that sleep does not touch, that a holiday did not touch, that came in slowly and has not moved.

So there are two things she holds, and they will not sit down together.

The first is that God the Holy Spirit dwells in her.

The second is that at twenty to six she has nothing.

And because she cannot make the two agree, she has quietly decided which one must be wrong, and it is not the doctrine. It is her. Somewhere in the ninth month she has begun to carry the exhaustion as evidence.

Stop there, because that is the sentence I came for, and it is not true.

Weakness is not the objection. It is the address.

I want to hand you one line from Paul, and I want you to notice where he puts the weakness, because that is the whole thing.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.Romans 8:26

In our weakness.

Not despite it. Not after it is dealt with. Not once the reader has sorted out their sleep and their prayer life and their diet and got the tank back up. The verse names the condition and then says that this is precisely where the help operates.

And look at what the weakness actually is in that sentence. It is not moral failure. It is not backsliding, and it is not a warning. It is this: we do not know what to pray. That is Paul's example of human weakness, and it is the most ordinary and least dramatic thing in the world, and it is exactly your twenty to six.

You stand there with a hand on a chair and you do not have words. That is the verse. You are not outside it, you are the case study in it.

You are the exact person that verse was written about, standing at a chair with nothing to say. It is written that the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought (Romans 8:26), and not knowing what to pray is the example Paul reached for. The Holy Spirit is helping in the weakness rather than waiting on the far side of it.

Now here is the part that undoes the arithmetic you have been running for nine months.

The Spirit himself intercedes. Himself. Not "helps you to pray better once you are rested". The praying is happening in you at an hour when you are producing nothing, and it is being done by Someone who has not gone quiet just because you have.

Groanings too deep for words. That is a strange phrase and it is a gift. It means the communication going on between the Spirit in you and the Father does not run on your vocabulary, your energy, or your feelings about any of it. There is nothing for you to supply. There is nothing you are currently failing to supply.

You have prayer going on inside you at twenty to six that does not run on your vocabulary or your energy. It is written that the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words (Romans 8:26), and Himself is Paul putting the work into another pair of hands. The Holy Spirit has not gone quiet just because you have.

So let me say the two things you are holding, and let me say them in one breath, which is where they have belonged the whole time.

The Holy Spirit is in you. You are tired. Both true. Neither one is arguing with the other.

You are indwelt and depleted in the same body, and Scripture holds both without asking you to reconcile them. It is written that He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead gives life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you (Romans 8:11), and mortal is the word chosen for the body He lives in. The Holy Spirit is in a tired person at the end of an ordinary day.

Now let me name your pit properly, because nobody has, and you have not been able to say it without it sounding like a complaint about God.

The lonely part is not the tiredness. It is that the tiredness has quietly become a question about whether any of it was real. Every flat evening is a small piece of evidence in a case you did not choose to open, and you cannot bring the case to anybody, because saying "I am full of the Spirit and I have nothing" out loud in most rooms gets you either a prescription or a worried look.

Hear this plainly. He has not left, He has not withdrawn, He is not disappointed, and He is not waiting at the far side of a better week to resume. The indwelling has never once been fastened to your energy. He came in on Christ's finished work and He stays on the same ground He came on.

You have an indwelling that was never fastened to your energy and cannot be loosened by nine flat months. It is written that you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance (Ephesians 1:13-14), and a guarantee is kept by the party who gave it. The Holy Spirit came in on ground you did not lay and stands on it still.

And I am not going to prescribe you anything today. Not more prayer, not more time, not a deeper surrender, not an early start. A person in the ninth month cannot be helped by being asked for more, and anyone asking you for more right now has misread the room. Nothing in this message is a technique, and there is nothing here you can do incorrectly.