I Never Asked Him a Question

She talks to God the whole way home. Twenty two minutes, most days, out loud in the car.

It is not performance and it is not a habit she has to maintain. It is genuinely how she processes her life, and it started at about nineteen and it has never stopped. She tells Him about the meeting. She tells Him about the thing her friend said and how it landed and why she thinks it landed that way. She thanks Him for specific things by name and she is not being nice, she means it.

Anybody watching her from outside would say she has an unusually alive prayer life, and they would not be wrong.

Here is what she noticed on a Thursday in June, sitting in the car in the drive with the engine off.

Twenty two minutes, and not one question mark.

Not one. She had been going for six years and had never once asked God anything and then stopped talking to find out. She had asked for things, constantly, which is different. She had said what do I do in the rhetorical way people say it. But an actual question, put down and left there, with a silence after it big enough for something to arrive in?

Not once. Six years of the most sincere monologue you have ever heard.

And the strange part, which she has told nobody, is that when she tried it that Thursday she got about four seconds into the silence and put the radio on.

The verse has two halves and one of them is His

There is a line in Jeremiah that gets printed on a great many things, usually only as far as the comma.

Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.Jeremiah 33:3

Call unto me. That part you’ve entirely covered. Twenty two minutes a day for six years is a person who calls.

And I will answer thee. That is the half you've never been in the room for.

And look at the last clause, because it is the reason the second half matters. Which thou knowest not. The whole point of the answering is that it contains something you did not already have. A monologue, however sincere, can only ever contain what is already in you. The verse is offering the other thing.

God answers when He is called, and the answering half of that verse has your name on it exactly as much as the calling half. That is what the word plainly says, not encouragement I am offering you, and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes that real to somebody sitting in a car with the engine off.

The four seconds are the whole difficulty

Now the kind part, because that radio moment is not a character flaw and I do not want you carrying it as one.

Silence after a question is a strange, exposed thing. There is nothing to do in it. Sincerity has nowhere to go in it, processing has nowhere to go in it, and every skill you've got for being present with God is a talking skill, because talking is how this has been done since the age of nineteen.

Four seconds is not a small failure. Four seconds is a person discovering that the entire structure of her prayer life has no room in it for a reply, and reaching for the nearest thing to fill the gap.

That is not spiritual weakness. That is what happens when a real relationship has been conducted, sincerely and warmly, in one direction for six years.

And nothing about the twenty two minutes has ever been wrong. Scripture calls the calling good and puts the answering on God's side, and the Holy Spirit is not annoyed with a young woman for reaching for the radio.

Ask one thing, and let it be a real one

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

Ask Him something you do not already know the answer to.

That is the filter. Not help me with the thing, which is a request. Not why is this happening, which is usually a protest and is allowed but is not what we are doing here. A genuine question, about something specific, where you would be interested in the reply.

Then stop, and stay there for two minutes rather than four seconds.

You are able to sit in the silence after a question, and the silence is not empty and it is not a test. He promised to answer the one who calls, and the Holy Spirit is the One who holds a talker still long enough for a reply to arrive.

And a plain word: very possibly nothing comes. That is ordinary, it happens to everybody, and it is not a verdict on you or a sign He is not there. Ask again another day. Most of the people you would call good at this got there by asking a great many times into a great deal of quiet.