The usual advice assumes one of you has something.
Be patient with him. Go first. Take the initiative. Show her what you want to receive. Every one of those requires a reserve, and there is no reserve in that house, in either of you, and there has not been for a while.
He is not being difficult. You are not being cold. There are two people in there who have both run out at the same time, which happens far more often than anybody admits.
And so every piece of advice you have ever been given now reads as an instruction to spend money you do not have.
I want to give you something that does not require a reserve, and there is only one thing in that category that I know of.
I am not going to tell you God fixes this. I do not know what He is doing in your house and neither does anybody else writing on the internet. What I can tell you is what people have done when there was nothing left, and what happened when they said so out loud.
Neither know we what to do
There is a sentence in second Chronicles said by a king in front of a whole nation, and it is the most useful prayer in the Bible for people in your position.
we have no might against this great company that cometh against us; neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon thee (2 Chronicles 20:12, King James Version)
Three admissions and one direction.
No might. No plan. No idea. And then: our eyes are upon thee.
That is a prayer with nothing in it except emptiness and a direction. There is no strategy, no undertaking, no promise of improved behavior. There is a man saying we have run out and looking up.
You are able to pray a prayer with nothing in it, and 2 Chronicles has never once required a person to bring a plan. 2 Chronicles 20:12 has the emptiness stated plainly and the eyes directed upward, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that available to a household with nothing left.
Notice also that he says it out loud, in front of everybody, rather than privately. The admission is the prayer. That is the whole of what he does.
You have permission to say the emptiness rather than fix it, and no verse has ever once made the saying conditional on having something in hand. The passage puts the admission and the direction together with nothing else in between, and the Spirit of God is the one who receives a prayer made of nothing.
Both of you, and what that changes
Let me say something about the fact that it is both of you, because that changes the shape of the problem.
When one person has something and the other does not, the situation is unbalanced and it is hard, and there is a lot of advice for it, most of it aimed at the person with something left.
When neither has anything, the situation is not unbalanced. It is simply empty, and it is nobody's fault, and there is almost nothing written for it.
You are in a house where nobody is short and nobody is failing, and 2 Chronicles has never once required a reserve before a prayer could be prayed. 2 Chronicles 20:12 admits the emptiness with no self accusation anywhere in it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the blame out of a house that never earned any.
That is why every article on the subject has felt like it was written for a different house. It was.
And here is the thing that makes the empty version easier in one specific respect. Nobody is failing. There is no partner falling short, no measurement being taken, no ledger accumulating. Two tired people in a house with a promise still standing over the top of them.
You are in a house where nobody is falling short, and two people running out at once has never once been anybody's failure. 2 Chronicles 20:12 admits the emptiness with no self accusation in it anywhere, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the blame out of a situation that never had any in it.
You made a promise that was never resting on either of you having a reserve, and the covenant has never once run on what is left in the tank. It is written that a man said we have no might and our eyes are upon thee, and the Spirit of God is the one who holds the thing steady while both people are empty.
One sentence, out loud, in the room
Here is the assignment, and it is available to somebody with nothing, which is why it is this one.
Say one sentence of prayer out loud about the marriage, in the room where the two of you actually live.
The written word makes an admission and a direction into a whole prayer with nothing else required, and the Spirit of God is the one who receives it. You are able to pray a sentence that costs nothing, and it has never once needed to be a better one.
And let it be the empty prayer. Something like: we have nothing left, either of us, and our eyes are on You.
Out loud. When he is not in the room, because this one is for you to say and not a thing to ask him for.
That is all. No plan attached. No promise of what you will do differently.
You are able to pray a sentence that costs nothing, and it has never once required a reserve to be said. 2 Chronicles 20:12 puts the whole prayer in an admission and a direction, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a room where somebody says out loud that there is nothing left.
Here is what I believe is going out over somebody this afternoon.
You are not living in a house where somebody is failing, and two people running out at the same time has never once been anybody's fault. 2 Chronicles 20:12 says neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon thee, and it is the Holy Spirit, not my telling you, who takes an accusation out of a house that never earned one.
And this, which is what I came with.
You are able to say one empty sentence out loud, and it has never once needed anything in your hands to be a real prayer. The word puts the whole of it in an admission and a direction, and the same Spirit who moved Chronicles is standing on the path with you.
Say it out loud. In the room.
Declare this over yourself
- House with nothing left in it, you were never outside His hearing. 2 Chronicles 20:12 says neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon thee, so by the Holy Spirit I say the empty prayer out loud tonight, in the name of Jesus.
- Advice written for a household with a reserve, you have no grip in this house. The word makes an admission and a direction into a complete prayer with nothing else required, and by the Spirit of God I am finished being told to spend what neither of us has.
- Father, we have both run out at once and neither of us knows what to do. Your word says neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon thee, so by Your Spirit I say one sentence out loud about this marriage, in the room where we live.
2 Chronicles 20:12
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