I Prayed For Him To Change First

You have prayed the same prayer for about four years and last month you heard it.

Not a new prayer. The same one you have prayed since he was five, in the car, at night, in the ten seconds before you open a door. Lord, help him with this. Make it easier for him. Take this away.

And last month, somewhere in the middle of it, you heard what you were actually asking, and you stopped in the middle of a sentence.

You have been asking God for a different child.

Now, before that lands too hard, let me say the thing that has to be said first. That prayer was not wicked and it was not selfish. It came out of watching somebody you love find ordinary things hard. Any father who watched that and did not ask for it to stop would be a stranger to his own son.

So this is not a rebuke. Nothing in this article is a rebuke.

But there is a passage that answers the question you have been unable to ask out loud, and it answers it more directly than you may want. Let us go and look at it.

Who hath made man's mouth

There is an exchange in Exodus between God and a man explaining why he is the wrong person, and the answer he gets is one of the most startling sentences in the Bible.

Moses says he cannot speak. And this is the reply.

And the LORD said unto him, Who hath made man's mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the LORD? (Exodus 4:11, King James Version)

You have a verse in the written word where God claims the making of every kind of person, and no part of how your son is put together has once been outside that claim. Exodus 4:11 has God asking who made the mouth and answering it Himself rather than offering to fix anything, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a father sit inside a sentence like that without flinching away from it.

Read what it does not say. It does not say Moses will be given a better mouth. It does not explain. It does not soften. It asks a question about who is responsible for how people are made and then answers it.

And then the next verse tells him to go, and to speak, as he is.

You are not waiting on a repair before this family is allowed to go anywhere, and no part of your son has ever once been a thing that had to be fixed first. It is written that God asks who made the mouth and then says go, in that order, which is why the going does not wait on the mending, and the Spirit of God is what puts those two verses together in a father's head.

Now, this is the place to be careful, because that verse has been used badly. It is not a sentence about how difficulty is good. It is not a sentence telling you to be at peace with everything hard in your son's life.

What it does is settle the question of standing. He is not a mistake awaiting correction. That is not the frame God is working in.

You are not raising a project, and no year of praying for it to be taken away has once meant you thought he was one. The Holy Spirit is the one who can hold both a father's honest prayer and the plain claim of that verse at the same time, and Exodus 4 has God claiming the making and then giving the assignment.

The prayer had a consequence you did not intend

Now the practical part, and it is about what that prayer has been doing to your Saturdays.

The prayer had a condition in it. Not deliberately. But every request for him to be easier so that this family could do things carried a quiet agreement inside it: that the doing waits on the change.

And the change has not come. So nothing has gone anywhere for four years, and the prayer has functioned as the reason.

You are able to see what the condition in that prayer has cost, and seeing it has never once made the prayer a sin. The Spirit of God is what shows a man the shape of his own asking without condemning him for it, and it is written that God said go before anything about Moses had changed.

And here is the second thing, which is heavier and which I think you already suspect. He can hear it.

Not the words. Children do not need the words. A child raised in a house where somebody is waiting for him to become different can feel the waiting, and he will interpret it, and the interpretation will be about whether he is currently all right.

You are able to stop waiting for him in front of him, and stopping has never once been you giving up hope for anything. It is written that the LORD claimed the making of the deaf and the seeing alike, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes an expectant weight out of a house.

So the change is not to stop praying. It is to change what the prayer asks for, and to keep asking for the rest privately if you want to, which you are entirely free to do.

You are able to ask for the day rather than for the boy, and changing the request has never once been you giving up on him. The Holy Spirit is the one who reshapes a prayer in a man without making him ashamed of the old one, and Exodus 4:11 puts the making in God's hands and then sends the man out as he is.

Pray for the day

So here is the assignment.

Pray one prayer this week that asks for the day rather than for the child to be different.

Say it out loud, on your own, and be specific about the day. Not: Lord, make him easier. Instead: Lord, we are going to the water on Saturday, and I am asking You for that afternoon, for him as he is and for me as I am.

You are able to ask for a specific Saturday, and asking for one afternoon has never once been a smaller prayer than asking for a whole person to change. Exodus 4:11 has God claim the making and then send the man, and the Spirit of God is with a father praying about a date rather than about a condition.

And notice what happens in you when you pray it. My guess is it will feel strange, and slightly like a surrender, and that under the strangeness there will be something like relief, because a prayer with a date in it can be answered on Saturday and a prayer for a different child cannot be answered ever.

Then, and this is the second half: tell him about Saturday and do not put a hope on it. No I think you will manage really well this time. No let us see how you do. Just the plan.

You are able to tell him the plan without attaching an expectation to it, and leaving the expectation off has never once been you expecting nothing of him. It is written that God asks who maketh the dumb or the seeing and claims both, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a father speak about a Saturday with nothing riding on it.