Stop Changing It

When my words are no longer enough.

Sometimes when I pray, I keep going, and going, and going. I tell God what concerns me. I explain what I need. Eventually, I run out of things to say, but something within me is still reaching.

So I think my prayers. He knows my thoughts, doesn’t He? Yet I am longing for something deeper than finding another sentence.

I need to find Him. I need to know the God who is actually there, beyond the limits of what I have understood or heard other people describe.

There are moments when I want to reach up, take His face in my hands, and say, “Lord, look at me. This matters to me.”

Of course, that raises a question. If He is the Creator of the universe, surely He has quite a lot to attend to. Why would He turn His attention toward me?

Then I remember what His Word says. He knows me. He knows my thoughts before I explain them. Before a word reaches my tongue, He already knows it.

I have not been trying to attract the attention of an absent God. I am discovering how to give myself to the One who is already attentive.

Still, I keep praying. I want to know Him. Today, I am going to stay here with Him. I am going to pray until—

Until what?

Until I have said enough? Until I have explained myself so thoroughly that Heaven finally understands?

There comes a place where my words seem too small for what is happening within me. And there, I can almost hear my mother.

“Don’t change it.”

My mother was born in 1917. Her first house was a chicken coop with a dirt floor in a farmer’s yard. The Great Depression was all around her. She lived through circumstances I can scarcely imagine, yet living with God was part of her ordinary day.

Simple. She knew Him.

When someone was praying, reaching toward God, and something began to happen beyond their familiar words, she would encourage them: “Don’t change it.”

I understand those words as an invitation to surrender. When my understanding could no longer supply the next sentence, I did not have to pull everything back into something familiar.

I could trust Him with my tongue, too.

Think about that little member of the body. So much of what I intend, explain, defend, and arrange passes through it. My mind forms the words, and my tongue gives them a voice. Now I am offering even that familiar means of expression to God.

“Lord, I am here. I love You. I trust You. Help me yield to Your Spirit.”

For me, this is where praying in tongues belongs: in a relationship with the Living God. Words come that my understanding has not composed. I am speaking, yet I cannot translate what I am saying.

Paul describes praying in a tongue this way: “My spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful.” Then he says he will pray with the spirit and with the understanding also.

There is room for both.

I can tell God plainly about my day. I can ask questions, give thanks, and confess what needs to change. I can also yield in prayer when my understanding is no longer directing every word.

That may feel unfamiliar. It certainly reaches beyond my habit of wanting to understand everything before I participate. But I believe the Spirit can give utterance, just as the account in Acts describes.

I do not need to manufacture a sound or copy someone else. I am offering myself to Him. The gift belongs to God.

Nor have I ceased to pray. My prayer is continuing beyond the sentences I know how to construct. The Spirit helps me in my weakness, and the Father understands what my understanding cannot explain.

What an extraordinary privilege.

Through Christ, we have access by one Spirit to the Father. Jesus gave His life to bring us near. The fellowship I am entering so freely was opened to me at a cost I must never treat casually.

So if you have begun talking to God as you never have before, keep turning toward Him. Bring Him your words, your questions, and your willingness to receive what He gives.

When you reach the limits of your familiar language, you have not reached the limits of His ability to meet you.

I can still hear my mother.

“Don’t change it.”

And I find myself answering, “Lord, help me trust You here, too.”