You pray in the car on the way to work, out loud, with the radio off.
You pray at church, obviously, and sometimes in a room with three other women where you all take a turn.
You have prayed in a hospital corridor, in a supermarket, and once, memorably, in a bathroom at a family funeral.
And you have never prayed out loud in your own front room about your own marriage.
Not once, in however many years it has been. And when you noticed that, about a month ago, it landed with a weight you were not expecting.
I am not going to make that mean something dramatic. It probably does not mean anything dramatic. But it is worth understanding, and then it is worth changing, and the changing takes about eleven seconds.
Where two or three are gathered
There is a line in Matthew that gets used for prayer meetings, and I want it for a front room.
For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them (Matthew 18:20, King James Version)
Two or three. That is a very small number, and it is chosen deliberately in a passage about how a community handles something difficult.
And in the midst of them. Not near them, not over them. Among.
Now here is the thing about your house. There are two of you in it. Two is the number in the verse, and the room you live in is the one place you have decided is not for this.
You are living in the exact arrangement that verse describes, and Matthew 18 has never once required a church building for the promise to hold. Matthew 18:20 puts Him in the midst of two, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a front room the same kind of place as a prayer meeting.
I am not going to tell you to get your husband to pray with you. That requires him, and this site does not build assignments that need somebody else to cooperate. But the number in that verse is small enough to be worth noticing, and the room qualifies.
You have somewhere in your own house that has never once been outside the promise, and the word has never made a building the condition of it. The passage sets the requirement at two or three and the location anywhere, and the Spirit of God is the one who is in a front room whether anybody has ever said anything there or not.
Why the room got excluded
Let me guess at the mechanism, because I have seen this in a lot of people and the shape is usually the same.
The car is neutral. Church is designated. A hospital corridor is a crisis and crises suspend the ordinary rules.
Your front room is none of those. It is where the actual marriage happens, which means it is where the disappointment lives, and praying there would put the two things in the same place at the same time.
So without deciding anything, you have kept the praying in locations where the marriage is not, and the effect has been that you pray about your life in every room except the one your life is in.
You have been praying around a room rather than in it, and the exclusion has never once been something God required. Matthew 18:20 makes the location entirely open, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman notice a rule she never agreed to.
You are permitted to say something to God where the disappointment lives, and no verse has ever once fenced a room off. It is written that where two or three are gathered He is in the midst, and the Spirit of God is the one who is already in the place a person has been avoiding.
Eleven seconds in the front room
Here is the assignment and it is short on purpose.
Say one sentence of prayer out loud about the marriage, in the room where the two of you actually live.
Out loud, because out loud is what makes it a spoken thing in a place rather than a thought carried through it.
It is written that where two or three are gathered He is in the midst, and the Spirit of God is the one who has been in that front room the whole time. You are speaking in a room that already qualifies, and no building has ever once been the condition of it.
Something like: God, this room is Yours and this marriage is Yours, and I am saying that out loud in here.
When he is not in. Do not ask him to join. Do not tell him afterward.
You are able to say one sentence in the room you have been going around, and it has never once needed to be longer than a sentence. Matthew 18:20 puts Him in the midst wherever the two or three are, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a front room the first time anybody says anything out loud in it.
It will feel strange. Everybody says that. Say it anyway and then go and do something else.
Here is what I believe is going out over somebody this evening.
You are not a woman who prays badly, and years of praying everywhere except one room has never once been a fault anybody was holding against you. Matthew 18:20 says where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them, and it is the Holy Spirit, not my telling you, who takes a rule off a room.
And this, which is what I came with.
You have a front room that has never once been outside the promise, and He has been in the midst of it the whole time. The word sets the number at two or three and leaves the place completely open, and the same Spirit who moved Matthew is standing on the step with you now.
Say one sentence. In that room.
Declare this over yourself
- Rule that keeps my praying outside these walls, you were never mine. Matthew 18:20 says where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them, so by the Holy Spirit I say one sentence in this room tonight, in the name of Jesus.
- Avoidance of the place where the disappointment lives, you are finished this evening. The word sets the requirement at two or three and leaves the location entirely open, and by the Spirit of God I am done praying around a room instead of in it.
- Father, You have been in the midst of this house the whole time and I have never once said anything to You in it. Your word says there am I in the midst of them, so by Your Spirit I say one sentence out loud about this marriage, right here, tonight.
Matthew 18:20
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