She keeps a rough league table, and she would be mortified to hear it described that way.
It works like this. When something she prays about moves quickly, she concludes it mattered. When something takes years, she concludes, without ever putting it in words, that it was further down a list. And when something takes as long as the thing she asked about five years ago, she concludes it was somewhere near the bottom, which means, by a short and horrible chain of reasoning, that so is she.
She would never say this to anybody. Written out like that it sounds absurd and slightly childish, and she is a woman of forty six who has read a great deal.
But it is running, and it runs every single time she waits.
Here is what she said out loud to nobody, in a hospital corridor in February, waiting for somebody else's news.
If it were important to Him, it would have moved by now.
That sentence has been sitting in her for five years, and it is not really about the request at all. It is a woman scoring her own standing by the clock, and coming last.
The messenger dates the hearing
There is a moment in Daniel where a man has been praying and mourning for three weeks with nothing, and somebody finally arrives and says something very precise.
Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words.Daniel 10:12
Note the date given. From the first day.
Not from the day anything arrived. Not from the twenty first. The words were received on day one, and the whole three weeks happened after they had already been heard.
Now, that passage goes on to describe a specific reason for that specific delay in that specific case, and I am not going to lift it out and hand it to you as an explanation of your five years. That would be me putting words in God's mouth about your life, and it is exactly the sort of thing that gets done to people in this situation and it does real harm. What happened in Daniel's case is Daniel's account. Nobody knows what yours is, and anybody who tells you does not.
What transfers is not the reason. It is the dating.
Your words were heard on the first day, and the length of what followed says nothing about the day they were received. That is what the word actually dates, not a comfort I am inventing, and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes that plain to a woman who has been keeping a league table.
The clock is not a ranking
Now the plain part, sister, and it is the whole of the message.
Speed is not a measure of importance, and you know that everywhere else in your life.
The most important thing that has ever happened in your family took eleven years to become obvious. The fastest response you ever got to anything was a form letter. In every other domain you would laugh at somebody who ranked significance by response time.
You apply it in exactly one place, and it happens to be the place where the ranking lands on you.
And the delay has never once been a statement about your standing. Scripture dates the hearing to the first day and puts everything else after it, and the Holy Spirit is not sorting requests by how much the person asking matters.
Name the day you first asked
Here is the practical piece, and it has an unusual second half.
Ask the old thing out loud, in the present tense.
And then name the day you first asked it. Out loud. The month and the year, as precisely as you can.
That sounds strange and it is doing something specific. The league table works by keeping the start date vague, so that the wait feels like an undifferentiated fog rather than a period with a beginning. Naming the first day puts a date on the hearing, which is exactly what the messenger did for Daniel, and it turns a fog back into a span.
You are able to date the hearing rather than only the waiting, and the dating changes what the years are. Scripture dates it plainly, that the words were heard from the first day, and the Holy Spirit is the One who lets a woman put a beginning on something she has only ever measured by its length.
So here is the turn, and it is today, five years in.
Tear up the league table.
Not by pretending the five years were short, and not by deciding what the delay means, because nobody knows and this message will not tell you. Tear it up because you've been scoring yourself with a clock, and a clock has never once been able to measure the thing you've been using it for.
Your words were heard from the first day, and the years since have said nothing about your standing with Him. He dated it plainly for Daniel, and the Holy Spirit is carrying that dating to a woman who has come last in her own arithmetic for five years.
Now the honest half. Nothing here promises the thing moves now, and nothing here supplies a reason for the five years, because that reason belongs to God and inventing one would be worse than the wait. However He answers, the outcome is His and not ours to sell, and five slow years are never evidence against you. What is settled is the date of the hearing.
Five years of a league table. Go and put a date on the first day instead.
Declare this over yourself
Say them out loud on your own. The standing to speak them is yours because you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the authority is not your own: it is His, delegated and carried in His Name, and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes the word live in an ordinary woman's mouth. However He answers, and however long the years run, the outcome is His, and five slow years are never evidence against you.
- Delay I have been reading as a ranking, you are a length of time and you are not a measure of me. Scripture dates the hearing to the first day that a man set his heart, and puts every week after it on the far side of that date. You are five years, and you are not an estimation.
- Arithmetic that scores my worth by how fast things move, get out in the name of Jesus. You have quietly put me last in my own accounting since a February corridor, and God has never once sorted requests by how much the person asking matters. I would laugh at you anywhere else in my life.
- Lord, my words were heard from the first day I set my heart, and You dated it plainly for a man who had waited three weeks with nothing. The Holy Spirit is carrying that to a woman who has only ever measured this by its length. I do not know what the five years are about, and I am not going to invent it.
Daniel 10:12
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
