I Do It From Duty And I Stopped Praying

You cannot remember the last time you prayed and meant it.

Not the mealtime one. Not the one at the end of the day that has become four words and a yawn. An actual prayer, where you said something to God and something happened in your chest.

Somewhere around March it went quiet. And what came in to replace it was duty, which is a genuinely functional fuel, and which has got you out of bed at six for eleven months.

But you know something is wrong. A man who is doing all the right things and feels nothing is a man running an engine on the wrong fuel, and you can hear it.

And the conclusion you have reached, which you have never said out loud, is that God has probably moved on. Not angrily. Just that you stopped keeping your end of it somewhere around March, and this is what that looks like.

What duty is actually for

Let me say something in defense of duty, because it has been treated as a failure here and it is not one.

Duty is what carries a person when feeling cannot. It is the reason your father is clean and fed and not alone. Every single day for eleven months, something got you up at six, and that something was not warmth and it was not inspiration, and the work still got done.

That is not the lesser version of love. In a long enough season it is the only version that keeps functioning.

You have been held up by something God Himself provided, and duty has never once been the mark of a man whose faith has gone cold. Isaiah 40:29 says he giveth power to the faint and to them that have no might he increaseth strength, which is the written word describing the exact supply you have been running on, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been getting a man out of bed at six for eleven months without him noticing who was doing it.

And your father is a whole man in that house, whatever state he is in. He has his own reasons for how he handles it, and he is right about something you have never conceded to him.

None of that requires you to feel anything in particular in order to keep carrying him.

You are able to serve somebody well while feeling nothing at all, and the absence of warmth has never once made an act of care less real. The Spirit of God is what keeps a thing going when the person doing it has nothing left, and it is written in Isaiah 40 that He gives power to the faint.

He giveth power to the faint

He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. (Isaiah 40:29, King James Version)

Look at who that verse is addressed to, because it is not addressed to the strong on a good day.

The faint. Them that have no might. That is not a description of somebody having a hard week. It is a description of a person at the bottom of their reserves, with nothing in the tank, going anyway.

And the promise is not that they will be restored to enthusiasm. It is that power gets given, into that condition, without the condition having to change first.

You are being supplied in exactly the state you are in, and no verse anywhere has ever once required a man to feel something before God would strengthen him. It is written in Isaiah 40:29 that he giveth power to the faint and to them that have no might he increaseth strength, which is the written word putting the supply where the emptiness is, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been increasing strength in a man who assumed he was running on his own.

And the chapter around it is worth knowing. Isaiah 40 is written to a people who said their way was hid from the LORD and that their cause was passed over by God.

That is close enough to your sentence about March to be worth noticing. The chapter is God's answer to people who had concluded exactly what you have concluded.

You are inside a chapter written for people who thought God had moved on, and that conclusion has never once been correct about anybody. The Spirit of God is the one who answers a wrong conclusion with a supply rather than a rebuke, and Isaiah 40 puts the giving of power at the end of the argument.

Praying with nothing

Here is the practical part, and it is the smallest instruction in this whole article.

Stop trying to pray the way you prayed in February. That man had capacity. He had time and a chest that responded. He is not available and he is not coming back this year.

Pray as the man who exists. Which means short, and out loud, and probably in a lane at dawn rather than in a chair.

You are able to pray as the man you currently are, and no prayer has ever once been graded on the state of the person praying it. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes four words at six in the morning as seriously as an hour, and it is written that He gives power to the faint and increases strength in those who have no might.

And here is a version that works when nothing else does. Name what you did that day. Out loud. I got him up. I did the forms. I sat with him for twenty minutes.

That is not a report. It is an offering, and it is the truest prayer available to a man in the eleventh month, and God receives a list of ordinary jobs from a tired son as worship.

You are able to offer a list of ordinary jobs and have it received as prayer, and a tired man's account of his day has never once been beneath God's notice. The Spirit of God is what turns a list into an offering, and Isaiah 40:29 puts the strength into them that have no might.