I Can Defend Him to Anybody

Somebody at work had a go on Thursday. Not aggressively; he was curious and slightly combative in the way people are when they have read one book.

You handled it well. You did not get defensive, you conceded the two things that ought to be conceded, and you answered the rest, and he went away thinking about it. Somebody else in that room told you afterwards that it was impressive.

It was. You are good at this and you have worked at it for years.

And on the walk home you tried to say something to God and could not.

Not a crisis; nothing dramatic happened. You started, and about four words in, it turned into a sentence about Him rather than to Him, and you noticed, and you stopped, and then you thought about the conversation at work again for the rest of the walk.

It has been about six weeks since you said anything directly.

Six weeks in which you have talked about Him constantly. Explained Him, defended Him, taught something on Him, recommended a book about Him.

All of it in the third person.

What this page will not do

I am not going to tell you the defending was a mistake. It was not. Somebody left that room on Thursday with a genuine reason to think again, and that happened because you had done the work, and nobody who dismisses that has ever actually helped a doubting person.

I am not going to tell you to stop. The people who set intimacy against study produce a Christianity that feels a great deal and cannot answer a fifteen year old.

And I am not going to tell you the six weeks means you have lost something. You have not. Nothing has gone. Scripture holds that ground in John 15:15, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries it into a room like this one.

What I am going to name is a grammatical habit that has quietly become a spiritual one.

You are not further from Him for having spent six weeks explaining Him. Scripture says the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, Psalm 34:18, and nearness is not adjusted by how much of your speech was in the third person, and the Holy Spirit is in a courtyard with a man who could answer anything on Thursday.

The verse changes the category

There is a sentence Jesus says in John 15 that is doing something more radical than people usually notice.

Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.John 15:15

Look at the reason He gives for the change.

Not that they had become more devoted. Not that they had passed something. For all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.

The distinction He draws is about information. A servant carries out instructions without being told what is going on. A friend is told what is going on.

So He is not saying they have graduated from working to feeling. He is saying they have been let into the reasoning, and that being let in is what friendship is.

That should sit very well with somebody like you, because it means the knowing is not the obstacle. The knowing is what He gave them.

But notice what a friend does with it. A friend talks back. That is the whole of what distinguishes the two categories in practice: the servant receives and executes, the friend receives and replies.

You have been receiving beautifully for six weeks. You have not replied.

You are not in the wrong category. Scripture says I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you, John 15:15, and the friendship is grounded in having been told rather than in having felt, and the Holy Spirit is not asking you to know less in order to speak.

Why the third person is easier

Here is the mechanism, and it is not a character flaw.

Speaking about God is a performance with a known audience. There is a room, there are stakes, and you are good at it, and you get feedback within seconds about whether it landed. This rests on Scripture in John 15:15, and on the Holy Spirit who makes what is written a living thing.

Speaking to God has none of that. No audience, no feedback, no immediate confirmation that anything arrived. It requires you to say something into what feels, in the moment, like an empty room.

For a person who is fluent, the second one is much harder, because fluency is no help at all. There is nothing to be good at.

So without deciding, over some months, your speech about Him crowded out your speech to Him, because one of them had reinforcement in it and the other did not.

That is not backsliding. It is what happens to a skill when only one of two related activities is rewarded.

You are not being avoided by God in the second person. Scripture says thou hast searched me, and known me... thou understandest my thought afar off, Psalm 139:1-2, and it describes being received rather than assessed, and the Holy Spirit is present in a sentence said into what feels like an empty room.

What one sentence would do

The remedy is embarrassingly small and it will feel disproportionate to a man who can answer anything.

Say one thing to Him. Out loud, in the second person, addressed.

Not a prayer in the composed sense. Not something you would be happy to have overheard. One sentence with the word You in it, about something actually true right now.

You know I have not spoken to You in six weeks. That would do. It is accurate, it is addressed, and it does not require you to have arrived anywhere first.

And notice what that sentence does that six weeks of excellent explanation has not. It puts you in the room as a person rather than as an advocate. Advocates speak about their client. Friends speak to each other.

You are not required to compose anything. Scripture says out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh, Matthew 12:34, and the direction is from the inside outward rather than from a prepared position, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries a plain unrehearsed sentence the distance.