Four fifteen. Two hours. Eleven years. She has not missed a morning that was not a hospital.
And it works, in the sense that things happen. People have been healed after she prayed for them. She knows a woman whose son came home. There is a whole church that would tell you, and mean it, that the morning she stops praying is the morning something goes out of that building.
That is all real and none of it is the subject of this article.
Here is the subject. Somewhere around the third year, she noticed what it is that gets her out of the bed, and she has known it every morning since, and she has never said it to one living person.
It is not love. It is dread.
Not fear of God in the sense the Bible uses, which is awe and weight and a right size. Dread. The specific, flat, familiar certainty that if she does not do this, something will be withdrawn. Not from her exactly, or not only from her. From the people she prays for. From the building. From the thing God does through her, which she has come to believe is on a monthly arrangement and requires her signature every morning at four fifteen.
She is fifty-two.
And she is not in doubt about being forgiven. She settled all of that a long time ago and it has stayed settled and she would tell you so plainly and she would be right.
Maybe your alarm is set for something. It may not be prayer. It may be a reading, or a giving, or a thing you do before you leave the house that you have never once skipped. And you are not in doubt about being forgiven, and the whole shape of your week is a woman meeting terms.
Sit down here where the coffee is. That is deliberate too.
Probation is a legal condition and it ended
Let me say it as the legal thing it is, because it is not a feeling and it will not be settled as one.
Probation means the sentence stands, suspended, and conduct is observed, and the observation is what keeps the suspension in place. A person on probation is not free. She is out on terms, and she knows exactly what the terms are even when nobody has ever written them down.
That is what four fifteen has been for eleven years. Two hours, every morning, so the arrangement holds.
And there is no arrangement. Not renewed. Not up for renewal. It does not exist, and it has not existed since the day you settled it.
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.Romans 8:1
Read the word now, because it covers this morning at four fifteen and it also covers a morning when you sleep until six. You are standing under a verdict that is not renewed daily and cannot lapse, and Romans 8 is where the word now is written into it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who applies a ruling rather than a devotional record.
You were released outright and not on terms, and Romans 8 says you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear but the Spirit of adoption as sons, and the Holy Spirit is the one that verse names as the difference between the two arrangements. A conditional release is reviewed. An adoption is not.
Your praying was never contemptible
Now something said carefully, because a paragraph like that could be used to make eleven years look ridiculous, and it is not ridiculous.
Things happened in those hours. That woman's son did come home. There are people walking around who were prayed for at half past four in the morning by a woman nobody was watching, and none of that is canceled by anything in this article, and God is not embarrassed by any of it.
The praying was good. It is still good. Most of it is not going to stop and it should not stop.
What is coming out is not the prayer. It is the engine underneath it.
You were never holding anything together with those hours, and Colossians 1 says that in Him all things hold together, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can take an engine out from under a good work and leave the work running. Nothing in that building has been resting on your alarm clock. It never was.
This is not a new discipline
And one more, before the turn, because a woman like you is already building the replacement.
There is no new practice here. Nobody is asking you to cut it to one hour permanently, or to alternate, or to institute a rhythm of rest that you will then keep with the same ferocity. You would be excellent at that within a month, and it would be the same probation with the hours renegotiated.
One thing, once. That is all any of this is.
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.1 John 4:18
Read what that verse says fear is actually about, because it is the exact word for your situation. Fear has to do with punishment. Not with reverence, and not with awe, and not with taking God seriously. With punishment, which means the thing setting your alarm has been a sentence you believe is still live.
And read what casts it out. Not effort, and not more hours. Perfect love, and the perfecting is being done to you and not by you.
You are being perfected in a love that casts out exactly this, and 1 John 4 says fear has to do with punishment, and the Holy Spirit is the one doing the casting out rather than a woman doing it with a longer session.
So here is what is happening in this kitchen this morning, with the coffee going and your Bible closed beside you.
You are not being told to stop praying, and nothing here says eleven years was ridiculous. You are being told that the terms ended a long time ago, that no arrangement is being renewed, and that a woman who cannot cut two hours to one is a woman who has never been told her probation is over.
You are not on probation and you never were, and Romans 8 says there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is the one who wrote now into that sentence rather than daily. Nothing is withdrawn on a morning you sleep. Nothing has ever been on that footing.
You have a love that is doing the casting out while you sit still, and 1 John 4 says perfect love casts out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and the Spirit is what makes that happen to a woman rather than by one. Cut it once. Not as a discipline. As a fact about who holds that building together.
And if this goes deeper than an alarm, if you are not sleeping properly, or the dread is doing more to you than getting you out of bed, please get a real person into it: a counselor, your doctor, a pastor. Eleven years at four fifteen is also a sleep matter and a body matters. If you have thought about ending your life, call or text 988 in the United States, or your local emergency number or crisis line, today. That is not weak faith in an intercessor. That is doing for yourself what you have done for four hundred other people, and God is not disappointed in you for needing hands on your own back.
Declare this over yourself
Say these in the kitchen with the Bible closed. You have the standing because Christ is in you, and Scripture says this authority came as a gift and not as a return on eleven years of mornings. The Holy Spirit is what carries them, not the volume, and you of all people know what volume is worth. And whatever He does next, and when, is entirely His, in His own way and in His timing, which is exactly why these get said today.
- Dread that sets my alarm, you are ended in the name of Jesus. It is written that fear has to do with punishment, and there is no punishment pending here and there has not been for a long time.
- Arrangement I have been signing every morning, get out of this kitchen. Scripture says that in Him all things hold together, and not one thing in that building has ever rested on my alarm clock.
- Lord, You have been in this room at four fifteen for eleven years and You never once needed the second hour. It is written that perfect love casts out fear, and I thank You, because Your Holy Spirit is doing the casting out while I sit here, and tomorrow the alarm goes off for a different reason.
1 John 4:18
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.