He Giveth and Upbraideth Not

She has a number in her head and she would be mortified if you knew it.

It is roughly how many times she has asked God for direction about the same situation, and she has been keeping it, informally, the way somebody keeps a running total of what they have borrowed from a friend.

The situation is about her mother and her sister and a house, and it has been unresolved for two years, and every few weeks it comes round again and she takes it to Him again, and every time she takes it she notices the count going up.

She has begun to apologize before she starts. I know I keep coming back to this.

And in the last month she has begun to do something worse. She has begun not to ask, and to make the decisions herself with a kind of forced brightness, on the grounds that she has had her turn and it would be greedy.

Here is the sentence she has never said out loud.

She thinks God is patient with her the way a tired person is patient, and that the patience is running down.

Read the second half of the verse

There is a line in James everybody quotes as far as the comma, and the part after it is the part written for you.

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.James 1:5

And upbraideth not.

To upbraid is to give a thing while making somebody feel the giving. It is the sigh before the yes. It is again? It is the help that arrives with a small reminder of how much help has already arrived.

James thought to rule that out explicitly. He did not need to. He could have stopped at ask of God and it shall be given, and instead he anticipated the exact thing you've been doing to yourself and he closed it off in four words.

And look at liberally, and to all men. Not measuredly. Not to the ones with credit remaining.

Your asking is met without a sigh rather than counted against you, and James 1:5 rules out the upbraiding in writing before you could invent it. That is what the word actually guards, not reassurance I am adding, and the Holy Spirit is the One who carries a question in that has been carried in forty times.

The allowance is your invention

Now the plain thing, and I say it with real affection.

The tally is not from God. It came from somewhere else, and it came honestly. Somebody in your life gave with a sigh once, or many times, and you learned to watch a face for the moment before the yes, and you learned to keep the number low, and that skill kept you safe in a room years ago.

You've carried it into prayer and it has no business there.

And notice what it has already done. It moved you from asking to deciding alone with a bright voice, which is the loneliest way to run a two year problem, and it happened not because you stopped believing but because you were being polite.

And nothing about the number of times has ever changed how you are received. Scripture says He gives to all liberally and upbraids not, and the Holy Spirit is not sighing at a woman who comes back about the same house.

Ask again, out loud, today

Here is the practical piece, and it is one sentence long.

Ask Him again, out loud, today, about the house.

Do not preface it. That is the specific instruction. No I know I keep coming back to this, no apology, no summary of your recent asking history. Those prefaces are the tally speaking out loud, and every time you say one you teach yourself again that the tally is real.

Ask it plainly, the way you would ask somebody who had never once been anything but glad to hear from you.

I am not going to promise you get an answer today, or a formula that produces certainty about your mother and your sister and a house. That would be selling you something. What is on offer is a God who gives wisdom liberally and steers people who ask.

You are able to ask again today, and the asking was never rationed. He promised wisdom to any who ask and ruled out the reproach in the same sentence, and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes an unprefaced question possible in a woman's mouth.