He Has Been Saying the Same Sentence for Four Years

It is eleven words. He has counted them, which tells you something about where he is with it.

Four years, most days, sometimes twice, in the same two or three places, and it comes out now in the flat voice a man uses for a phone number he has said too many times.

Nothing has moved. Not slightly. If you laid a photograph of the situation from four years ago next to one from this week you could not tell which was which.

And the part he cannot say to anybody is that he has started to feel embarrassed about it, and the embarrassment is not about God. It is about himself. There is a version of him watching from somewhere and thinking that a sensible man would have stopped by now, and that continuing is a bit sad.

He keeps saying it anyway, and he could not tell you why, and that not being able to say why has started to feel like the only honest part of the whole thing.

Jesus told a parable and Luke tells you why up front

There is a story in Luke where the writer, unusually, states the purpose before the story starts.

And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint. (Luke 18:1, King James Version)

To this end.

Luke does not usually do this. Most parables are given without an explanation attached, and the reader works it out or does not.

Here he says outright what it is for, which suggests he expected people to need it identified.

And the thing it is for is a specific danger, and the danger is not unbelief. It is fainting, which in that word means losing heart, running out, giving up from tiredness rather than from a change of mind.

You are inside the exact situation a parable was told for. Luke 18 names the purpose before the story begins, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old preface land on a man who has counted his own words.

The woman in it has no argument and one method

The story is about a widow with no standing in front of a judge who does not care.

She has nothing. No influence, no money, no advocate. And she has one method.

And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? (Luke 18:7)

Which cry day and night unto him.

That is repetition described as the thing itself rather than as a failure of the first attempt.

And read the clause on the end. Though he bear long with them. Jesus puts the delay in the sentence Himself. He does not pretend it is quick and He does not explain it.

You are doing the thing the story describes rather than failing at it. Luke 18 names crying day and night and keeps the bearing long in the same sentence, and it is His Spirit who makes a description of repetition stop sounding like desperation.

The prayers are kept in containers

There is an image in Revelation that says something about what happens to the ones that seem to go nowhere.

And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints. (Revelation 5:8)

Golden vials full of odors, which are the prayers of saints.

Vials are containers. Something is being collected, and the collecting implies a quantity, and a quantity implies that individual ones were kept rather than evaluated and discarded.

A man saying eleven words four hundred times has, on that picture, put four hundred somethings into a container rather than sent four hundred somethings into an empty room.

You have four years of something that went into a container. Revelation 5 describes them as collected and kept, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old picture reach a man saying the same words in a flat voice.

And the tears are counted the same way

There is a verse in the Psalms with the same shape of image and it is stranger.

Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book? (Psalm 56:8)

Tellest means counted. And then a container, and then a book.

Whatever that picture is exactly, the point of it is that nothing is being lost, and the writer says it about the least useful thing a person produces.

If tears are kept, eleven words said four hundred times are not being disposed of.

You are not producing something that goes nowhere. Psalm 56 has Him counting and containing rather than assessing, and it is His Spirit who makes an old image do something to four years of the same sentence.

Paul names the exact danger

There is a sentence in Galatians that describes the risk in this situation, and the word he uses is the same one Luke used.

And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. (Galatians 6:9)

If we faint not.

Weary is the word. Not wrong, not faithless, weary, which is what happens to a man who has been doing something for four years without a result.

He does not tell anybody to feel less tired. He names the tiredness accurately and says what the risk actually is, and the risk is stopping from exhaustion rather than from a decision.

You are being warned about tiredness rather than corrected about faith. Galatians 6 names weariness and fainting rather than unbelief, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an accurate diagnosis feel like being understood.