Not Standing In The Doorway

Here is the picture you have been carrying, and I doubt you have ever looked at it directly.

God is in the hall. Just outside the room. Watching what happens in there with a settled view about it, mostly disappointed, occasionally encouraged, and entirely uninvolved.

Not hostile. That is important. In your picture He is not angry. He is something worse, which is a spectator with an opinion about a promise He is supposed to be inside.

And you have lived under that for years, and it has done two specific things to you.

It has made you tidy up before you pray, because you would not want to be seen in the middle of it. And it has made prayer feel like a report to somebody who already knows and is waiting to see whether you will be honest.

I want to take that picture apart, because it is not what scripture describes, and it is doing damage that the marriage itself is not doing.

A very present help

There is a line in Psalm 46 that puts God in a location and a role at the same time, and both halves matter.

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble (Psalm 46:1, King James Version)

Very present. Not present in the general sense in which He is everywhere. The word is doing emphatic work: intensely, closely, right here.

And help in trouble. Not observer of trouble. Not commentator on trouble. Help, which is a word about involvement.

You are living with a very present help rather than an observer with a view, and Psalm 46 has never once put Him at the edge of a room. Psalm 46:1 makes Him a help in the trouble rather than a watcher of it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves a picture out of a hallway.

Read the word refuge alongside it. A refuge is a place a person gets inside. You cannot get inside somebody standing in a doorway.

You have somewhere to get inside rather than somebody to be seen by, and no verse has ever once described Him as an audience. The passage names Him as refuge and strength and a very present help, and the Spirit of God is the one who turns a spectator back into a participant.

Where that picture came from

Let me say something about the source, because pictures like this are almost never chosen and almost always inherited.

Some of it is childhood. A God who watches is what a certain kind of teaching produces in a certain kind of child, and it survives long after the theology is corrected, because it lives in the imagination rather than in the beliefs.

Some of it is that a marriage feels private in a way almost nothing else does, and the idea of anybody being in the room with you feels like exposure rather than help.

And some of it, honestly, is that a watcher is easier than a participant. A watcher can be managed. You can perform for a watcher. A participant is in the room with you and cannot be handled.

You have been managing an audience rather than living with a help, and the word has never once handed anybody a God who could be performed for. Psalm 46:1 puts Him inside the trouble as help, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a picture apart that a person has been running since they were nine.

You made that promise in front of somebody who came into the room and stayed, and the covenant has never once had a spectator at the top of it. It is written that God is a very present help in trouble, and the Spirit of God is the one who is in the middle of the thing rather than at the edge of it.

One sentence, in the middle of the room

Here is the assignment, and where you stand while you do it is part of it.

Say one sentence of prayer out loud about the marriage, in the room where the two of you actually live. And stand in the middle of the room while you say it, not by the door.

You are standing in the middle of a room He is already in the middle of, and Psalm 46 has never once put Him at the edge of anything. Psalm 46:1 makes Him a refuge and a very present help in the trouble, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is on the floor with somebody who has stopped tidying.

That sounds like a small piece of theater and it is not. The body knows things the head is still arguing about.

Something like: God, I have had You in the wrong place, and this marriage belongs to You.

Out loud, when he is not in. Do not tidy anything first. Do not phrase it well.

You are speaking to somebody already standing in the middle of the room, and it has never once been necessary to be presentable first. Psalm 46:1 makes Him a very present help rather than an observer, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in the middle of a front room while a woman says one sentence badly.