The vet got there about half past midnight and he told her everything.
Every bit of it. What the mare had eaten, and when, and how much, and what he had thought about it at the time and been wrong about. The feed he had changed in April and had not mentioned to anybody because it was cheaper and he had been embarrassed about the reason. The gate he had meant to fix. The two days he had noticed something was off and told himself it was the weather.
He stood in that barn under a bare bulb at half past midnight and gave a full and unflattering account of himself to a woman he had met three times, because the mare needed her to have all of it, and a partial account would have cost the mare.
That is a man who can tell the truth. Nobody who watched him do it would say otherwise.
And that same man has been unable, for six years, to say one plain sentence to God.
He prays. Do not misunderstand. He prays at the table and he prays in the truck and he prays properly, the way he was taught, and it is not empty. But there is a thing he has never brought, and when he gets near it in a prayer he does something he does not even notice: he goes formal. The language lifts. It gets older and more respectful and further away, and by the time he has finished being reverent, the moment has passed and the thing is still in his chest where it was.
If you asked him why, he would tell you it is out of respect. That some things ought not to be said casually to God.
And I understand that, and I have felt it, and I want to tell you what I think is actually going on, because it is not respect. Respect would be the barn. Respect is what he gave that vet: everything, plainly, including the part about the feed, because the situation was serious and a serious situation deserves plain speech.
What he has been giving God is the opposite of the barn. He has been giving Him a partial account in good language.
That is you, going formal.
You can be straight with a doctor, a mechanic, a bank, a stranger at half past midnight who needs the facts. And with God you reach for the higher register, and the register is a fence, and you have been standing on the far side of it calling it reverence for six years.
Truth in the inward parts is what He asked for
David is writing the psalm people go to when they have got something to bring, and in the middle of it he says what God actually wants, and it is not eloquence.
Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.Psalm 51:6
Truth in the inward parts. Not truth in the phrasing. Not truth arranged well. The inward parts, which in the Hebrew is as blunt as it sounds: the guts, the place a thing actually sits.
You are wanted plainly, in the register you use in a barn at midnight, and the higher language was never what He was after, and I am not lowering anything: Psalm 51:6 says the inward parts in writing, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than my saying so who can bring a man down off a formal register he has stood on for six years.
Now here is a thing worth knowing about plain speech and God. The men in Scripture who spoke to Him most bluntly are not the ones He rebuked. Job said things his friends were appalled by, and at the end of it God told the friends they had it wrong and Job had it right. Jeremiah accused Him outright. The psalms are full of sentences no one would put in a hymn. There is not one instance anywhere of God correcting somebody for being too direct with Him about their own life.
You have never once been asked to dress this up, and the dressing up has cost you six years of the very thing you are best at, which is written into what God says He desires rather than into my opinion of your prayers, with the Spirit of God able to take a fence down that habit built.
And look at the second half of the verse, because it is the promise attached. In the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom. The hidden part is where He teaches. Not in the presentable part. Which means the very place you have kept curtained off is the room He does His teaching in, and a man who keeps that room shut is not being reverent, he is holding the lesson out of reach.
This is yours right now, in plain words, in the register you would use if the mare were down, because Scripture asks for the inward parts, and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying that into a barn instead of leaving it in a pulpit.
Say it the way you said it to the vet. All of it, including the part about the feed.
You already know how to do this.
That is what I most want you to have. This is not a skill you lack. You gave a full and unflattering account of yourself to a stranger in a barn at half past midnight, and it was one of the more honorable things you have ever done. Psalm 51:6 asks for exactly that register, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings a man down into it.
God has asked for exactly that, in exactly those words: truth in the inward parts. Not a better register. Not the old language. The barn.
You are able to say it plainly this morning, and plainly is the form He named, because Psalm 51:6 puts the desire on the inward parts, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a thing a man can actually do rather than a thing he agrees with.
The formality was never respect. Six years of it never got one inch closer than the twenty seconds will.
Declare this over yourself
Say them out loud, in whatever voice this morning has left you, and a plain one is the point. The standing to say them is not something a man works up to and it is not on loan from a good stretch: 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 the register. 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 thing itself. It is the formality. Speak to that. What He does with the rest of it He does in His own way, and the opening of the hand is yours to do this morning.
- Silence I have been calling respect, you are not reverence, and in the name of Jesus I set you down. Scripture says God desires truth in the inward parts, and the inward parts have never once spoken in an older register.
- Fear that plain words would be irreverent, you have kept the best thing about me out of my own prayers for six years. Scripture says He teaches wisdom in the hidden part, so the room I curtained off is the room the lesson was always in.
- Lord God, You have had the whole account for six years and You never once asked me to improve the language, and I am opening my hand to You now in the words I would use in a barn. I thank You, because Your Holy Spirit did the drawing and Your word asked for the inward parts, and I am received in plain speech and not at the end of a better sentence.
Psalm 51:6
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