I Pray Over It Every Time I Water It

You pray over it.

Every single time. Short, nothing elaborate, a few words while the water goes in, and you have done it since the week you got it.

And I want to say straight away that there is nothing wrong with praying over a plant. Nothing at all. God is not embarrassed by the size of it.

But something has shifted, and you have felt it shifting, which is why you are still reading.

It started as gratitude. It has become a condition.

You would not put it that way out loud, but if you watered it one week without saying anything, there would be a small snag in you afterward, and that snag is the whole subject here.

Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of

Jesus says something about prayer that is aimed directly at repetition, and the reason He gives is the interesting part.

Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. (Matthew 6:8, King James Version)

Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.

You are heard by somebody who already had the information before you opened your mouth, and no repetition has ever once been what made a prayer land. Matthew 6:8 says your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that over a woman with a watering can in her hand.

Look at what He is correcting and what He is not.

He is not correcting people for praying. The whole passage is teaching them to pray, and He gives them a prayer immediately afterward. He is correcting the mechanism they believed in, which was that the saying of it does the work. That more words, more often, more precisely, increases the chance of being heard.

And the reason He gives dismantles it entirely: your Father already knows. Not will know when you explain. Knows, before the asking.

You were never in a system where the saying of it is the lever, and no words of yours have ever once been the thing that made God aware. The Spirit of God is what makes that a relief rather than a discouragement from praying, and Matthew 6 is where the knowing before is written down.

When gratitude becomes a condition

Now the practical half, and it is about the snag.

Here is how the shift happens, and it happens to careful people rather than to careless ones.

A thing is done once out of genuine thankfulness. It goes well, or at least nothing goes wrong. It gets done again. And somewhere around the fifteenth repetition, a quiet association forms: this is what I do, and things have been all right.

And once that association exists, not doing it acquires a meaning. It becomes a small risk, or a small negligence, and now the thing that began as gratitude is running as maintenance.

You are watching a good thing turn into an obligation, and noticing that has never once been the same as doubting it. Matthew 6:8 says your Father knoweth before ye ask him, and the Spirit of God is the one who names the turn without taking the prayer away.

You have watched something good turn into something owed, and that has never once happened because you were superstitious rather than sincere. What is written in Matthew 6:8 removes the lever without removing the praying, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can tell a gift from a payment.

And here is the test, which you have already run in your head and did not like the answer to.

If you watered it in silence next Tuesday and it went downhill the following week, what would you think.

You know what you would think. And you would know, at the same moment, that the thought was not true, and it would not help.

You are able to be sincere and caught at the same time, and the presence of that thought has never once been evidence about your faith. The Spirit of God is the one who names it gently, and Matthew 6 is the ground under the knowing.

Say it afterward instead

So here is the instruction and it is precisely engineered.

Water it this week without praying over it. And then say thank you afterward, once, with the can already down and your hands dry.

Not instead of prayer. The prayer moves.

Because a word said while pouring is attached to the pouring, and anything attached to an action can become part of the mechanism. A word said afterward, with the job finished and the hands empty, cannot be part of the mechanism. There is nothing left for it to influence.

You are free to say the same thing with nothing riding on it, and a word spoken over a finished job has never once been a lesser word. Matthew 6:8 removes the lever and leaves the praying, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that distinction hold.

That is the whole of the change. Same words, possibly. Different place in the sequence. And the difference in where it sits is the difference between a lever and a thank you.

You are keeping every word you have been saying, and moving a sentence thirty seconds later has never once been a loss of anything. Matthew 6:8 says your Father knoweth before ye ask him, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps the prayer and removes the machinery.

You are moving one sentence thirty seconds later in the day, and a prayer said after the work has never once been a smaller prayer than one said during it. Matthew 6:8 says your Father knoweth before ye ask him, and the Holy Spirit is the one standing with a woman drying her hands.