Nine years, and she can still say it in one sentence, which she thinks is probably a bad sign.
It is not a fashionable question and it is not a clever one, and it is not the sort of thing that gets asked at the front of a room. It is one plain hard thing that she does not understand about God, and it arrived during something that happened to somebody she loves, and it has not moved since.
She has done the reading. Three books properly, and about nine partly, and one of them helped for about a fortnight in a way she could not reproduce afterwards.
She has asked four people. Two gave her an answer that was clearly assembled before she finished the question. One was honest and said he did not know and that was the best of them. And one was gentle and slightly worried and asked her, twice, whether everything was all right at home.
She stopped asking after that.
Here is what has actually developed over nine years, and it is not doubt, and she wishes people would stop using that word.
It is a countdown.
Somewhere along the way she started treating the question as a clock. As though there is a certain amount of unresolved you are allowed to carry, and she has been carrying hers for nine years, and therefore something must be coming: a leaving, a collapse, a quiet stopping of the whole thing.
She sings on a Sunday. She means it. She teaches a group on a Wednesday and she is good at it and she has never once taught anything she does not believe.
And underneath all of it, at a low steady volume, there is a clock she has never mentioned to anybody, and it has been running since a Tuesday nine years ago.
Now we see through a glass, darkly
Sit down for a minute, because there is a verse in the middle of the most quoted chapter in the written word that describes the exact condition you have been treating as an emergency, and the Holy Spirit put it there for people carrying one thing for nine years.
It is in the chapter people read at weddings. Right after the part about love never failing, before the part about the three that remain.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.1 Corinthians 13:12
Now I know in part.
That is Paul. Writing Scripture. Under inspiration. Saying, in the middle of it, that his own knowledge is partial and the glass is dark and the seeing is not yet what it is going to be.
He does not say this as a confession. He does not apologize for it or promise to sort it out. He states it as the ordinary condition of a believer on this side of things, and then he goes straight on to say that faith, hope and love remain.
They remain. In the dark glass. With the partial knowing.
Hear this at your own table. You are not on your way out, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture puts partial knowledge in the mouth of an apostle without a flicker of alarm, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has kept you singing on a Sunday and teaching on a Wednesday for nine years with the clock running.
Now let me name the clock, because it is the actual problem and the question never was.
A question does not have a timer on it. You installed one, and you installed it because somewhere you absorbed the idea that faith is a state of resolved matters, and that an unresolved one is therefore a leak, and that a leak that has not been fixed in nine years must eventually empty the tank.
That is not in the Book. What is in the Book is a man saying I know in part and then getting on with it for another thirty years.
Hear this too, and let it stop something. You are not less faithful than the ones with no questions, and Scripture is what says so. What is written names the glass dark for everybody in the room, and the Spirit of God has been in every one of those nine years, and He has never once treated the question as notice being served.
And now the one thing about the four people you asked, because it matters and it was not your fault.
Two of them answered fast because a fast answer felt like help. One did not know and said so, and he gave you the most honest thing anybody gave you in nine years. And the fourth heard a question and reached for a pastoral cause, which is what frightened people do.
None of that told you anything about your standing. It told you that a room can be uncomfortable with an open question, and a room being uncomfortable is not a verdict from God.
So today you take the timer off.
The question stays. Nobody is asking you to answer it, and nobody is asking you to stop asking it, and the written word does not tell you to resolve anything before you are allowed to sing on Sunday, and the Holy Spirit has been in every Sunday you sang it.
Write it down. One plain sentence, the way you can already say it, on a piece of paper, and put it somewhere you will see it: in the front of the book you teach out of, or on the shelf by the kettle.
Not to work on. To keep.
That is the whole action, and it does something exact: a question in a drawer is a secret, and a secret runs a clock. A question written down and left in the light is just a question, and questions do not have deadlines.
The written word says now we see through a glass darkly and now I know in part, and the Holy Spirit has been holding a woman who knows in part for nine years and has not once looked at the clock, because there is no clock.
Faith, hope and love remain. Yours have. That is what the last nine years actually prove.
Declare this over yourself
Say these with the paper in front of you. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the Holy Spirit has kept you singing and teaching through all nine years according to the written word, so the standing you speak from was never built out of how much you have resolved. Whether the answer comes next year or never comes at all on this side, the outcome is His to decide, and it is never a measure of the woman carrying the question.
- Question, you are not a countdown and you do not get to be my leaving. The Word of God says now we see through a glass darkly and now I know in part, and it is an apostle saying it without one flicker of alarm, so partial is the ordinary condition of everybody in the room.
- Clock that has been running since a Tuesday nine years ago, get out of this house, in the name of Jesus. Scripture says faith, hope and love remain right there in the dark glass, and the Spirit of God has never once treated an open question as notice being served.
- Lord, You are the God who is known in part and loved entirely, and Your Spirit has held me through nine years of not knowing. I am writing it down in one sentence today and keeping it in the light, and I am not working on it.
1 Corinthians 13:12
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.
