They Said It Was Something In Me

Wade was told in a car park and he has been looking for it ever since.

It was eleven years ago. He had prayed for somebody, over a long stretch, and it had not gone the way anybody wanted, and a man he respected said something to him afterwards that was meant as help.

He said there was probably something in Wade's life that needed dealing with. Not accusingly. In the tone of a man handing over a diagnosis, with real concern in it, as though he were doing Wade a service by being honest with him.

And Wade said thank you.

That is the part he thinks about most, actually. He said thank you.

Eleven years.

And what those eleven years have been, underneath everything else, is a search. Not obsessive; he has a job and a family and he is not a haunted man. But there has been an ongoing background process, running since that car park, examining his life for the thing.

He has found plenty. Everybody would. He is not a perfect man and he could hand you a list.

The trouble is that none of it ever seems like the one. He deals with something, and time passes, and the process starts again, because there is no way to know when you have found the item that was blocking something eleven years ago. There is no confirmation available. The search cannot end.

He is fifty-eight.

You may know that car park.

Maybe somebody handed you a diagnosis too. Maybe they meant it kindly. And maybe you have been running the same background process ever since and have never been able to close it.

The sentence is refused here

Before the text, let me say the thing plainly, because it has had eleven years and it needs answering rather than contextualizing.

What that man said to you is not true, and it is not taught here, and it is not something this site will carry in any form.

Not softened into a principle with exceptions. Not reframed as something to consider prayerfully. The idea that an outcome did not arrive because of an unidentified fault in the person praying puts the weight of what God does or does not do onto somebody who has already lost something, and it is the exact thing we do not do.

There was nothing in you blocking it.

I want that stated flatly rather than argued toward, because you have been arguing toward it for eleven years and argument has not closed the search.

And there was nothing in you that determined what happened. The written word never once makes an outcome contingent on an undisclosed fault in the one who prayed, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my paragraph who makes that reach a man who has been searching himself since a car park.

And you did not fail at something that was never yours to guarantee. The word says casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you, and the Spirit is the one who takes a weight off somebody rather than assigning them a mechanism they should have operated.

The question and the answer

There is a moment in John where somebody asks that exact question out loud, and it is worth having the whole exchange.

And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents.John 9:2-3

Look at the shape of the question. It offers two options and assumes the framework: somebody is at fault, and the only live issue is which of the candidates it is.

That is precisely the framework you were handed in a car park. Not whether there was a fault. Which one, and go and find it.

And look at the answer. Jesus does not choose between the options. He rejects the question. Neither. He declines the entire frame in one word, before saying anything else at all.

Which means the search you have been running for eleven years was set going by a question that Jesus answered with neither the one time it was put to Him directly.

And the question you were handed was answered with neither the one time it was asked. The word has Him reject the framework rather than pick an option within it, and the Spirit is the one who makes a single word close a search that argument could not.

And nothing about you is under review for eleven years of looking. The word says there is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, and the Spirit supplies that to a man who said thank you and has thought about that more than anything.

Why the search cannot end

One more thing, because you named it yourself and it is the mechanism that has kept this running.

There is no confirmation available.

That is what makes this particular sentence so damaging compared with an ordinary accusation. An ordinary accusation names something, and you can look at it, and either it is true and you deal with it or it is not and you set it down.

This one names nothing. It asserts the existence of an item without identifying it, which means every fault you find is a candidate and none of them is ever the one, and the search has no possible completion.

That is not a spiritual discipline. It is a loop with no exit, and eleven years is exactly what a loop with no exit produces.

And you are not required to find something that was never specified. The word says search me, O God, and know my heart, which puts the searching in His hands as a request rather than a task, and the Spirit is the one who does that rather than leaving a man to audit himself indefinitely.

And nothing here discourages anything

One plain note, because it matters in this category.

Nothing in this article suggests that prayer replaces care, or that anybody should stop anything they are doing, or that asking God about a body is an alternative to the people whose work that is. Ask, and also do the ordinary sensible things, and let those two sit alongside each other the way they always have.

And healing is His and the asking is yours. The word puts the healing in Him and leaves the asking with you as your whole part in it, and the Spirit bears witness with your spirit rather than making you responsible for a result.