I Drive With The Radio Off

Four in the morning, third on the rank outside the station, engine off, window down two fingers because the heater has started doing something odd as well now.

The radio has been off since Tuesday. He turned it off so he could hear the knock, and now he cannot turn it back on, because not hearing it feels like lying.

It comes on right hand bends. Knock, knock, knock from the offside front, quicker when he is quicker, gone again on the straight. The man at the garage put it on the ramp, took the wheel at ten and four, rocked it, and told him what it was without making a meal of it. He said he would book it in. They both knew.

Two more jobs and he can go home. He watches the doors for anybody coming out with a bag.

He prays while he waits, because he always has. Lord, You know my needs. I thank You that You are my provider. I trust You for Your provision in Your timing, in Jesus' name.

Then he sits in the quiet with his hands at the bottom of the wheel and thinks the other sentence, the one that never gets said. My car is making a noise and I cannot pay to put it right.

He has never once said that out loud to God. Not in four years of nights.

And there is a sentence like it sitting in your chest as well. So let us go and get it.

The word the psalm puts on that prayer

There is a psalm written by somebody who was not managing, and the heading over it in the Hebrew text is not a title added later by an editor. It is part of the psalm. A prayer of the afflicted, when he is overwhelmed, and poureth out his complaint before the Lord.

Then, in the middle of it, this:

He will regard the prayer of the destitute, and not despise their prayer.Psalm 102:17

The word behind destitute is ar'ar. It is not a word about a bank. It is a picture word and it belongs to the desert: a stripped shrub, bare, no leaves on it, nothing hanging off it, the kind of thing that grows where there is no water. Stripped down to the wood. That is the person whose prayer the verse is talking about.

And notice that the psalm does not say God tolerates a prayer with nothing on it. It says He does not despise it, which in Hebrew poetry is the strong way of saying He holds it precious, and it is the only kind of prayer the verse mentions by name.

So hear this in a car at four in the morning. You do not have to put clothes on the thing before you hand it over. You are already carrying the exact prayer this verse was written about, stripped bare and all, and Psalm 102:17 says the Lord does not despise it. That is not my encouragement to you. That is the written word, and the Holy Spirit is the one who put a desert shrub into a psalm so that a man with nothing to bring would find himself named in the Bible.

Why we dress it up

Nobody taught you to do it on purpose. It happens somewhere on the way from the chest to the mouth.

The need arrives plain. A knock on right hand bends. Then, in the two seconds before it becomes a prayer, it gets translated: Lord, You know my needs, I thank You for being my provider. Every word of that is true, and it is a good sentence, and it is not the sentence sitting in your chest.

We do it because somewhere along the way we picked up the idea that God is a room you dress for. That the bare thing is a bit much, or a bit small, or a bit embarrassing to bring into the presence of the One who holds the galaxies in place.

You are not too small to be specific with God, and no need of yours is too ordinary to be named to Him. Jesus put bread in the middle of the prayer He taught, ordinary bread for one day (Matthew 6:11), and the Holy Spirit is the one who helps you in your weakness when you do not know how to put it (Romans 8:26), which He would hardly bother doing if the plain version were unwelcome.

What the verse says He does with it

Go back to Psalm 102:17 and look at the verb, because the verb is where the comfort actually is. The word translated regard is panah. It means to turn, to face toward, to swing round and look.

It is what a person does when somebody says their name across a room. The psalm does not say God notes the prayer, or files it, or takes it under advisement. It says He turns His face toward it. And the prayer He is described turning toward is the bare one.

So this is yours tonight on the rank. You have His face and not merely His patience, and the distance between those two things is the whole of your evening. Psalm 102:17 says He does not despise the stripped prayer, Hebrews 4:16 says you come boldly, and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying your plain words in, rather than your good ones.

It is not a better wording

Now let me guard this carefully, because I have put a plain sentence in your hands and there is a way to ruin it.

The bare prayer is not a technique. It is not the key the dressed-up prayer was missing, and I am not telling you that saying it plainly is what moves the thing you keep asking about. If I told you that, I would only be handing you a fresh formula to fail at, and there have been enough of those already.

There is no arrangement anywhere in which a better wording repairs a car. What the plain sentence does is put the actual you in front of the actual God, instead of a tidier version of you in front of a version of Him who has to be managed.

And that is not a small thing, it is the thing. You are welcome as you are, tonight, in the clothes you have on, with the sentence you have never said. Ephesians 2:18 says that through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father, the Holy Spirit is that one Spirit, and access is a word about a door that is already open and not a door you are being assessed at.