For the one on the crew who prays, while the man beside him only ever says thanks.
How many seasons have you been the only person on that crew who prays about the work?
You don't announce it. You do it in the truck at five in the morning with the heater running, and you do it at the tailgate while the others load the seedlings. Nobody out there has ever asked you to stop, and nobody has ever asked you to keep going either.
Tomorrow the two of you drive out to the burned ground on the north side, and it is hard work in a hard place. You asked him last week whether you could pray for him before you started. He said yes, and he took his cap off, which you had not expected at all. When you finished he put it back on, pulled his work glove over his knuckles, said thanks, and asked whether you had the spare chain.
He wasn't humoring you unkindly. That is the part of it that sits in your chest, because unkindness would have given you something to answer.
Your believing is carrying something real onto that ground whether or not the man beside you believes a word of it. Said straight, with no picture on it: you can pray for a man who does not pray, and what you pray counts with God whether he ever agrees with you or not. God's word records a man brought to Jesus on other people's faith alone, and nobody thought to ask him first. The Holy Spirit is not waiting on your crew partner's agreement before He moves.
What Got Written Down That Day
Let me name the load before I say anything about lifting it, because you have carried it a long while without much company.
Praying for a man who doesn't pray is lonely work. You do it with your hands in the soil, or in the truck cab with the windows fogged and the radio off. Nobody checks whether you kept going, and nobody would notice the week you stopped.
Somewhere in these seasons a sentence moved in and made itself at home. It told you that your believing is a private habit the crew is kind about, and that nothing can really move while the man it is for stays exactly where he stands.
Here is the line Mark wrote down about a crowded house.
When Jesus saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.Mark 2:5 (KJV)
Put your thumb on the word their and leave it there a moment.
Four men had carried a paralyzed man across a town on a mat. The crowd had the doorway blocked solid, so they went up the outside stair onto a flat mud roof and opened it with their hands. Then they lowered the man they loved through that hole into the middle of somebody else's meeting.
Notice what is missing from the account. The man on the mat never speaks at all: he doesn't ask, he doesn't argue, he promises nothing about afterward. He is carried, he is lowered, and the Lord is the first voice he hears.
The roof was not his idea. What Jesus saw in that house was in the shoulders of four men holding the corners of a mat.
You are holding one corner, and a corner is a real job to be holding. The Holy Spirit keeps your love from climbing onto the mat and renaming control as faith. Scripture gives that corner its whole weight, and it never asks the rest of the crew to approve it.
Stay with that a while, because it is nearly all I have to give you today. The four men are never named. Nobody wrote down their trade, their village, or what they believed about anything else, only what they did with their arms and where they chose to set the man down.
Mark tells us nothing about what the man believed on the way there, and I won't build past that silence. Nothing in those verses hands one person the right to steer another person's will, to override a plain no, or to decide how the story ends. They give one clear picture instead, of people bringing somebody they love to Jesus.
So set this down off your shoulders. He isn't a piece of ground you have fallen behind on planting, and his politeness isn't a sin. Whatever he wonders about is his own to wonder, and it is not a case waiting on your answer before the truck rolls out. Your prayer was never meant to be persuasion in work boots.
You are free to bless a man without taking hold of his will. Friends brought a need to Jesus and stopped right there, which is everything the written Word of God records them doing. The Spirit stays open-handed at the edge of another man's freedom, in the place your hands were never built to reach.
Where Blessing Ends and Grasping Begins
The tiredness didn't start in the praying. It came from reading every decent thank you as another acre lost off your praying, and then keeping the tally all season long.
Drop the tally at the tailgate and leave it lying there. Where you stand with God was never put to that crew for a vote, and the burned ground has no say in it either.
You bless the man, never take hold of him. The Holy Spirit does in a grown man what no good argument of yours has ever managed, and Scripture hands you the corner and then deliberately stops.
Here is how far blessing goes. You may speak his name to God on every drive out, offer to pray when he is willing, and let it go when he isn't. You may watch his footing on bad ground, carry the heavy end, and be the safest man on that crew to work beside.
Here is where blessing stops. You don't script what he believes, you don't go around a no he has given you, and you don't read a hard day on the burn as a mark on your praying. What he does with God is his own, and the timing of it belongs to God alone.
That one matters, so let me say it plainly rather than let the wind carry it off. A hard day out there is not a verdict on your faith. Your standing is never tied to how a job turns out anywhere in God's word, and the Spirit keeps your heart out of a courtroom that nobody called.
Declare this over yourself
You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so what follows is not a claim made out of your own authority. It is agreement, said back to God in His own words, while the Holy Spirit carries it. How He orders the rest of it is His to decide, and He answers in His own way and in His own time.
Nothing is being traded out here. You were put into Christ before you had done one thing to deserve the holding, and how strong you feel at five in the morning does not come into it. So say this the way you read a work order off the dash, evenly and without pressing. It gives God no schedule, and it settles nothing about what tomorrow does on that burn.
I bless this man, and I do not own him. Scripture sends a mat down through a torn roof and then lets the carriers stop, so I hold a corner and his will stays in his own hands. What I pray at the tailgate is enough for the day ahead, and his plain thanks is not a grade on my praying. What he wonders about is not a case I have been handed to win. I am finished tallying the men on that crew who see it my way, and a hard day on the burn is no score on my believing. The Holy Spirit was out on that hillside before either of us drove up, and nobody cleared Him onto that ground. I hold the corner that is mine, and his choices, his safety and how that slope comes back belong to God.
Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.
This message is free. Nothing here is locked, nothing is for sale, and nothing is being asked of you.
Mark 2:5
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