The Word He Put in Their Mouths Is the One a Baby Says First

He can read the word fine. On a page it is nothing. It is six letters and he has read it ten thousand times.

Out loud is a different machine. Out loud, addressed to somebody, it stops about an inch behind his teeth and will not come.

He has tested it. Alone in the apartment, no one home, nothing to be embarrassed about. He gets to it and his jaw does something he did not authorize.

He is not sad when this happens. That is the part he cannot explain to anybody. He does not feel anything at all. It is more like a door that has been painted shut for so long that the paint is now structural.

And everybody around him says it easily. Says it in songs. Says it in a sentence and moves on. He has been mouthing it for years and hoping nobody notices.

He did not give the word as an instruction

Here is the thing about that word that almost nobody is told. It was not handed down as a rule about how to address God. It was put into people.

For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. (Romans 8:15, King James Version)

Read the mechanism. The word is not something a person works up. It is described as coming out of something that was put in.

And look at the verb. Cry. Not recite. Not declare. Cry is what a person does when the sound gets ahead of the vocabulary.

He is not describing a man who has mastered the address. He is describing a man who has something inside him that says it before he has decided to.

You have received something that says the word before you can. Romans 8 puts the crying inside the Spirit of adoption and not inside a man's confidence, and it is that same Spirit who is the reason the sentence is about receiving rather than performing.

The same verse says what was not given

The first half of that verse is usually skipped, and it is the half that answers the door painted shut.

Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear.

Whatever is stopping the word, Paul says it is not what was handed to you. He rules it out by name before he says what was handed over instead.

And he says something like it in a letter to Timothy:

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. (2 Timothy 1:7)

Not given. That is a strange thing to have to write down, and Paul wrote it down twice, which suggests he had met people who needed to hear it.

You were not handed the thing that is stopping you. Romans 8 and 2 Timothy 1 both rule it out by name, and it is the Holy Spirit who is what was handed over in its place.

He put it in a mouth that had no history with it

There is a second place Paul says this, and it is the clearer one, because he says who does the speaking.

And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. (Galatians 4:6)

Look at who is crying in that sentence. It is not the man. It is the Spirit, in him.

That is not a technicality. It means the word does not have to start with a man's own relationship to it. It starts somewhere else and comes out through him.

The word itself is worth knowing. It is the one a small child says. It is not formal, and it is not the word you would use in a document.

You are not being asked to produce a word you have no history with. Galatians 4 says who is doing the crying, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a man's own supply who does it.

He used it out loud on the worst night He had

There is one place in the Gospels where Jesus is recorded saying that exact word, and it is not a calm scene.

And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt. (Mark 14:36)

He is on the ground. Mark says a few verses earlier that He was sore amazed and very heavy, which is about as undignified as the Gospels ever describe Him.

And that is when the word comes out.

Not in the temple. Not in a sermon. On the ground, at night, asking for the thing He was not going to get.

Whatever that word is, it is not a word for people who are doing well.

You are holding a word that was used in the worst hour anybody ever had. Mark 14 puts it in that scene and not a tidier one, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a word from that night usable in an apartment with nobody home.

And when it will not come at all, somebody else asks

This is the part that takes the pressure off, and it is only two verses further on from where we started.

Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. (Romans 8:26)

Which cannot be uttered. That is the phrase.

Paul is describing a situation where the words are not available. Not where they are wrong, and not where a person is being lazy about them. Where they are not there.

And his answer is not try harder. His answer is that somebody else is handling the asking.

You have somebody doing the asking on the days nothing comes out. Romans 8 says the words are unavailable and does not treat that as a failure, and it is the Spirit Himself who is named as the one making the request.