Something left about two years ago and he has been waiting for it to come back by itself.
He would struggle to name it precisely, which is part of the problem. It is not faith; he has that, in the sense of assenting to what is true, and he would defend every line of it in an argument. It is not practice either. He does the things. He turns up, he reads, he keeps the days.
What went is the gladness.
There used to be a particular quality to certain ordinary moments. A phrase in a psalm would land and something in his chest would answer it. Music did a thing to him that he could not have explained to somebody who had not felt it. He would find himself, at odd hours, simply pleased about God, in the way a person is pleased about a friend.
Two years ago that quietly stopped, and everything else carried on.
And here is what he has done about it, which is the reason I am telling you: he has waited. He has assumed that this is weather, and that weather passes, and that one morning it will be back the way it went, without announcement.
He has never asked for it.
It has not occurred to him that it could be asked for. Joy has always seemed to him like a byproduct rather than a request, the sort of thing that arrives when other things are right and cannot be summoned directly. Asking for it would feel like asking for a mood, which is close to asking for weather, which is not a thing a serious person prays.
So he has waited two years for a thing that has an address he has never written to.
That is you, waiting on the weather.
You've been treating the missing gladness as a condition to be endured until it lifts, and the whole time it has been the sort of thing a man can ask for by name, and nobody ever told you.
David asks for it directly, and asking is the whole verb
In the middle of the psalm people go to when they have something to bring, there is a request that changes what a person can pray about.
Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.Psalm 51:12
Restore unto me the joy. He asks. Directly, by name, as a specific request, in the middle of the most serious prayer in the psalter.
Now hold that against your two years. You have believed joy to be a byproduct. David treats it as an object: something that was had, that is now absent, and that can be handed back on request by the One who gave it in the first place.
You are able to ask for the gladness itself, by name, this evening, and asking is the whole of what the verse does, and I am not stretching a psalm: Psalm 51:12 makes it a direct petition, in writing, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than my telling you so who can get that to a man who has been waiting on weather.
Let me be exact about what he asks for, because the wording repays it. He does not say restore unto me joy. He says the joy of thy salvation. Not a general good mood. Not cheerfulness. The particular gladness that belongs to being saved by God, which is a specific thing with a specific source, and which nobody could manufacture out of a good week.
And note what he does not ask for. He does not ask to have his position restored, because his position was never lost. What he asks for is the enjoyment of a thing he still has, which is precisely your situation: nothing has gone from your standing, and something has gone from your experience of it.
You have not lost the salvation and you have lost the joy of it, and the psalm knows the difference and asks about the second one, which is written into the exact wording rather than into my sympathy for two flat years, with the Spirit of God able to carry a request a man has never thought to make.
Then the second clause, which nobody quotes. Uphold me with thy free spirit. Free, there, carries the sense of willing, generous, freely given. He is asking to be held up by something that is not extracted or earned but handed over gladly, which is a striking thing to ask for in the middle of that particular psalm.
This is a request rather than a season, and it has been available every one of those two years, because Scripture puts restore in the imperative, and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying that into a courtyard at dusk.
Ask for it.
Not as a last resort, and not as an accompaniment to the real prayer. As the request itself, in the words David used, because he used them in the middle of the heaviest prayer in the book and nobody has ever suggested he was being frivolous.
Two years of waiting on weather has produced two years of weather. There is an address, and you have never written to it, and the letter is four words long.
You are able to ask for the joy of His salvation to be restored, and restoration is a thing that gets asked for rather than waited out, because Psalm 51:12 puts it in the imperative, and the Holy Spirit is the one making that a thing you can say this evening rather than a verse you underline.
Ask plainly. Then go and eat something at a long table with people.
Declare this over yourself
Say them out loud, in whatever voice this evening has left you, and a flat one is welcome. The standing to say them is not something a man works up to and it does not come off his record: Christ is in you, and the authority in these words belongs to Him and has been given to you in Scripture, made living by the Holy Spirit rather than by what you feel while you speak. Jesus put the faith required at a mustard seed, which is His way of setting it under the line where anybody would trouble to measure, and then He said the part that carries: speak to the mountain. The mountain here is not the flatness. It is the waiting. Speak to that. What He does with the rest of it He does in His own way, and the step is yours to take this evening.
- Waiting for the gladness to come back on its own, you are not a plan, and in the name of Jesus I ask instead. Scripture says restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation, which is an imperative and not a forecast.
- Fear that asking for joy is asking for weather, you have kept me two years from a request that takes four words. Scripture puts that petition in the middle of the heaviest prayer in the book, so nobody has ever called it a frivolous thing to want.
- Lord God, You gave the joy in the first place and You are the one who restores it, and I am standing one step further on than I was a minute ago and I am asking rather than waiting. I thank You, because Your Holy Spirit did the drawing and Your word made this a thing that can be asked for, and I am received flat and asking and not at the end of a season that lifted on its own.
Psalm 51:12
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