He Cannot Pray Past One Name

The name arrives at about the fourth sentence.

He starts properly. He is not distracted and he is not being casual about it; he has been doing this since he was small and he knows how. And somewhere around the fourth sentence, without being summoned, a name arrives, and after that nothing else happens.

It is not that he then prays about the person. He does not. He does not pray at all after that. There is a kind of stall, and he sits in it for a while, and then he gets up and does something useful.

He has tried starting differently. He has tried praying out loud, praying from a list, praying in the other language, praying at a different time of day. The name arrives at about the fourth sentence in all of them.

And what he has concluded, because it is the obvious conclusion, is that the name is a blockage and that he will not be able to pray properly until he has dealt with it, and he does not know how to deal with it, so he has largely stopped.

Jesus attaches one instruction to praying in Mark 11 and it is about somebody else, and the first word of it is worth the whole article.

The word is when, not if

Here is the verse, and everything is in how it opens.

And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. (Mark 11:25, King James Version)

And when ye stand praying, forgive.

Not: forgive, and then come and pray. Not: sort this out first and then you will be able to. When ye stand praying is the setting, and the forgiving happens inside it.

That reverses the whole arrangement in the man's head. He believes he has to get past the name in order to pray. The verse has him praying, standing there, and the forgiving happening as part of what he is already doing.

So the stall is not a locked door in front of the prayer. It is the point at which the prayer arrives at its subject.

You are already praying when the name arrives, and the verse places the forgiving inside that. Mark 11:25 opens with when ye stand praying rather than with a precondition, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:26, who helps our infirmities when a person does not know what to pray as they ought.

Standing is the ordinary posture

There is a small detail worth having, which is the posture named.

When ye stand praying. Standing was the ordinary posture for prayer in that world. It is not a word about intensity; it is a word about the normal daily thing.

So this instruction is not attached to a crisis or to a special occasion. It is attached to the ordinary business of praying, which happens repeatedly, which means the forgiving described here is also expected to happen repeatedly, in the ordinary way, at the point where it comes up.

That takes the size down considerably. A person who believes they must produce a single large act of forgiveness before praying again is contemplating something enormous. A person who is told to do it in the middle of an ordinary prayer, when it arrives, is contemplating something about four seconds long.

You are given something four seconds long inside an ordinary prayer. Mark 11:25 attaches it to the standard posture for daily prayer rather than to an occasion, and it is by the Spirit, Galatians 5:22, whose fruit is longsuffering, which is a word about the ordinary and the repeated.

The verse before it is the famous one and they belong together

What sits immediately before that instruction is the verse everybody quotes about believing.

Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. (Mark 11:24)

And then verse 25 begins and when ye stand praying, forgive, which means the two are one paragraph and are usually preached apart.

I think they are together for a reason and it is not a threat. It is that a person who is stalling at a name every time they pray is not going to be able to do anything the previous verse describes, not because God is withholding but because they have stopped praying at sentence four.

The instruction is therefore practical rather than punitive. Deal with it where it arrives, in the prayer, so that there is a prayer.

You are being handed the thing that lets the praying continue. Mark 11:24 and 11:25 sit in one paragraph, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:26, that a person prays at all when they do not know how.

The petition He taught has it inside it

If any doubt remains that this belongs inside prayer rather than before it, look at the prayer He gave people to say.

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. (Matthew 6:12)

It is a petition. It is one of the lines, in the middle, between the bread and the temptation.

Which means that in the model prayer, the forgiving of somebody else is not a qualification a person completes beforehand. It is a thing said in the middle, out loud, as part of the ordinary daily list, alongside asking for food.

And it is worth noticing that He expected this to be a daily item. Nobody puts something in a daily prayer unless it comes up daily.

You are saying it as a daily petition rather than completing it as a qualification. Matthew 6:12 puts it in the middle of the model prayer beside the request for bread, and it is by the Spirit of adoption, Romans 8:15, that the whole prayer is addressed to Him as Father at all.

What the name is not

I want to say clearly what the stall is not, because a person who has been at this for years has usually decided something about themselves.

It is not evidence that the prayer is unwelcome. It is not evidence that God is waiting for something before He will listen. Romans 8:34 says Christ is at the right hand of God making intercession for us, in the present tense, continuously, which means there is prayer going up about the person who has stopped praying, by somebody with better standing, at the exact moment they are sitting in the stall.

And it is not evidence that the person is unforgiving in the sense they suspect. A name that arrives uninvited is a fact about memory. What is done with it in the four seconds after it arrives is the part that belongs to them, and that is a much smaller thing than they have been holding themselves to.

Nothing here asks anybody to contact the person, or to raise anything with somebody it is not safe to raise it with, or to feel differently. If what happened is still happening, or if it has got to the place where you do not want to be here, say it out loud to a doctor, a counselor, a social worker, or a pastor you trust, and in the United States the 988 crisis line is answered by a real person at any hour.

You have Somebody praying for you at the moment you cannot. Romans 8:34 says He maketh intercession for us in the present tense, and it is the Spirit who also maketh intercession, Romans 8:26, which puts two on that side while a person is stalled.

What to actually do at sentence four

Since the instruction is short, the practice can be short.

When the name arrives, say it. Out loud, if nobody else is in the room. Say the name, and then say one sentence that is both kind and true about that person, and then carry on with the prayer.

Not a resolution. Not a declaration that everything is settled. One sentence, kind and true, and then the next thing.

The reason it has to be kind and true both is that a kind sentence which is not true is a lie and will not hold, and a true sentence which is not kind is the thing that has been running in the stall for years already.

You are able to say one sentence and carry on rather than having to finish anything. Mark 11:25 has the forgiving happening inside a prayer that continues, and it is by the Spirit, Galatians 5:22, whose fruit is gentleness rather than a resolution.