It happens most weeks and she is sitting in the room when it does, which is the odd part.
Somebody prays out loud, and at some point they get to it, and the phrasing varies but the shape does not. Lord, we thank You for our pastor. We pray for those you have set over us. Strengthen the leadership of this church. Give our minister wisdom this week.
And she sits there in the second row with her eyes shut being talked about to God in the third person, in a room she is in, by people who love her.
She has never once minded and that is true and she wants it in writing. It is a kind thing to do and most churches do not bother, and the people saying it mean every word and would be horrified to think it landed strangely.
But she worked something out about four years ago that she has never said to anybody.
Not one of those prayers has ever been about her.
They are about the office. Wisdom for the work. Strength for the leading. Protection over the ministry. Every single one of them, going back eleven years, is a prayer for the functioning of a role that she happens to be inside, and if you took her out of that role tomorrow the same prayers would be said, word for word, over whoever replaced her.
Which is entirely proper, and is what those prayers are for, and she would say the same ones about a colleague.
It is just that in eleven years, in that building, nobody has ever prayed out loud about her knee. Or her mother. Or the thing that happened in February. Or her, at all, in any way that could not be transferred to another person along with the job.
She is prayed for constantly and she is not prayed for at all, and both of those are true at once, and there is nobody she could ever explain that to without it sounding like a complaint about people who are being good to her.
The mark of a shepherd is the names
Let me tell you at the top what this is and then keep to it.
Nothing is going to be asked of you here. There is nothing at the end for you to do, nobody to speak to, no hint that you should let somebody know. If a line of this turns into a task then it has failed and you may put it down. You are being handed something and asked for nothing. The Holy Spirit is the One who takes a line spoken in one decade and makes it live in an ordinary room today.
Now, there is a detail in John 10 that people read past because they are hurrying toward the famous part.
Jesus is describing how you tell a real shepherd from a stranger, and the mark He gives is not authority and it is not competence.
To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out.John 10:3
He calleth his own sheep by name.
That is the identifying feature. Not the crook, not the gate, not the arrangements. A hired man moves a flock. A shepherd knows which one is which and says so out loud, and the passage puts that forward as the thing the sheep respond to.
And then, in the same breath: and leadeth them out. The name is not a record. It is what the leading runs on.
So hear this, sitting in the second row with your eyes shut: you are known by name by the One whose defining characteristic is that He uses them. That is not my consolation; it is what His word puts forward as the mark of a true shepherd, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my sentence who takes an identifying detail out of a first century sheepfold and lands it on a woman being prayed about in the third person.
Now let me be plain about the thing you cannot say out loud.
Both are true. You are prayed for constantly and you are not prayed for at all. That is an accurate description of your situation and it is not ingratitude and it is not a complaint about a single person in that building.
There is a real distinction between being covered as a function and being known as a person, and everybody experiences it somewhere, and almost nobody in your position is ever able to name it because naming it sounds like asking for something.
You are allowed to have noticed. Scripture makes the use of a name the distinguishing mark of the good shepherd as against the hireling, which means the difference you have spotted is a real difference and God Himself draws it, and the Holy Spirit is not the one telling you that noticing it is small.
And here is the piece I want you to hold, and it is the one that turns it round.
In eleven years nobody in that building has prayed about your knee.
He knows about your knee. And your mother, and February, and the thing you have not told anybody, and none of it is filed under a job title anywhere in heaven. The knowing that has your actual life in it has been going on the entire time, from the one whose whole identifying mark is that He does not deal with the flock in bulk.
You are held as yourself and not as a post. His word puts the by-name knowing at the center of what a real shepherd is, and the Holy Spirit has never once prayed a transferable prayer over anybody.
Both are true and you may say so.
You are prayed for constantly, in a building full of people who love you, in prayers that are proper and kind and that they mean. And nobody has prayed about your knee in eleven years.
Those two facts have been sitting in you without a word available for them, and the word is now available: covered as a function, known as a person, and they are different, and the difference is one Christ Himself draws in John 10.
And you are on the other side of that line. The mark of the true shepherd is that He calls His own by name and leads them out by it, and the whole of your actual life is what He has, and none of it would transfer to whoever came next.
Nothing is asked of you here. Nobody to tell, nothing to ask for, no conversation with anybody about how they pray. That was the promise at the top and it holds to the last line. You are being told, by somebody glad to tell you, t
You are called by your own name and not by your position, and that has been true every day you were prayed for as a rota entry. It is written that he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out (John 10:3). The Holy Spirit is the One who makes by name a thing a person can hear rather than a doctrine they hold.hat you are known by your own name by the One for whom that is the identifying feature.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in whatever voice you have got. Not one line here is my idea about you. Every one of them stands on His word, and it is the Holy Spirit and never the wording who makes a spoken sentence land in a person. The authority in them was given to you by Christ, who is in you, and it does not run out when you do. Speak to the thing, not about the people, and never against them. And whatever He does in the year ahead, He does in His own way and His own time.
- Every prayer that has ever been said about my position, you are kind and you are not a description of me. John 10 says he calleth his own sheep by name and leadeth them out, and the name is the identifying mark and not a record.
- Idea that noticing the difference between an office and a person is small of me, in the name of Jesus you are put out of this hall. Christ Himself draws that line between a shepherd and a hireling, so the difference I spotted is one God draws first.
- God, You are the Shepherd whose whole identifying feature is that You do not deal with a flock in bulk. Your Spirit has never once prayed a transferable prayer over anybody, and my knee and my mother and February are all in Your hands under my own name.
John 10:3
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