The Pit Was Not a Ladder Problem

She has been getting ready to be rescued for three years, which is not a thing anybody has ever needed to do.

Here is her reasoning, and it is not stupid. She is in something. She would not use the word pit because that seems overdramatic, but there is a thing she is in and she has been in it a while and it has a shape. And she has decided that before she asks God to get her out, she should get herself to a point where she could reasonably be got out.

That means, in practice, a period of doing better. Some evidence of movement. Some stretch where the thing is under control enough that asking would not be embarrassing.

So she has been training. Not calling. Training. She has been trying to build the strength for a climb she believes she has to make, on the theory that God helps those who have got themselves within reach.

Three years of that. And here is the cruel arithmetic of it: the thing she is in is the exact thing that takes her strength, so the training happens on a diminishing supply, and she is further from being able to climb than she was in the first year.

She is not waiting because she does not believe. She is waiting because she believes she has to arrive at the rim.

That is you at the bottom.

You've been getting fit for a rescue. Building up to the point where you could be reasonably helped. And the whole time, the thing you are in has been taking exactly the strength you were trying to accumulate, so the fitness has never arrived and the calling has never happened.

Every verb in the rescue belongs to Him

David describes what happened to him in one verse and the striking thing is how much of it he does not claim.

He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.Psalm 40:2

Four actions. Count who does them.

He brought me up. Not I climbed. Out of the miry clay. The mud, the part where footing does not exist, which is the reason a person cannot climb in the first place. Set my feet upon a rock. He did the placing. Established my goings. Even the walking afterwards, the part you would think a rescued man could manage himself, is credited to Him.

There is no verb in that sentence belonging to David except the implied one at the start, which is that he cried out. That is the whole of his contribution and it is the only part that ever was.

You are in a situation Scripture describes as one nobody climbs out of, and every verb in the rescue was assigned to Someone else, and I am not making this easier than it is: Psalm 40:2 gives all four actions to God, in writing, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than my saying so who can get that to a woman who has been training for three years.

Look particularly at the miry clay, because it is chosen deliberately. A pit with walls you could climb is a different kind of pit. Clay is the detail that makes self rescue impossible: there is no grip to be had, and every attempt takes more out of you than it gains. Which means the strength you have been building was for a maneuver the psalm says cannot be performed by the person in the mud.

You have not been failing to get strong enough, and the climb you have been training for is not a climb that exists, which is written into the image rather than into my sympathy for you, with the Spirit of God able to reach three years of preparation that argument has not touched.

And the last clause is the one I would not want you to miss. Established my goings. After the lifting, the walking is also His work. So there is no phase of this where you have to become self supporting to keep what you were given. He does not lift a person out and then set a fitness test at the top.

This is a rescue rather than an assisted climb, and it does not require you to be within reach first, because Scripture puts all four verbs in His hands, and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying that down to the bottom rather than waiting at the rim.