It is not a metaphor. He would want that clear. There is an actual running figure, and it goes up and down, and he can tell you roughly where it is at any hour of any day.
It does not have units. That is the odd part. It is not a number of things and it is not a score out of anything. It is more like a weight, and he knows it the way you know how full a bag is by the strap on your shoulder.
And he checks it before he prays.
That is the mechanism and it has been running since he was about twenty-four. He sits, or he stands, or he is in the car, and there is a preparatory half second in which the balance is consulted, and then either he prays or he does not.
Mostly he does not. What he does instead is a kind of holding pattern: a general upward attention, a sort of respectful hovering, which is not nothing and is not prayer either, and which he has told himself for eighteen years is basically the same thing.
He is forty-two.
The figure has never been low. That is worth saying. There has never been a week in eighteen years where he checked and thought, ah, good, go ahead. The best it has ever done is get quiet for a while after something particularly good happened, and even then he was aware it was quiet rather than clear.
Nobody knows about this. His wife thinks he is a private man about faith and she is right in a way she does not know the shape of. The two men he meets on a Thursday morning would tell you he is the most consistent of the three of them.
And what sits underneath it, unstated for eighteen years, is a proposition. Not a fear. A proposition, held quietly, the way a man holds a thing he considers settled: He will hear me when the balance is right, and the balance has never been right, and that is fair.
Whose book is being read
I want to start with the word fair, because that is the load-bearing word in the whole structure and I think you have never noticed it doing the work.
You have called the arrangement fair. And you meant it as a concession, as a man taking his medicine, which is the most honorable available reading of your own position and it is entirely characteristic of you.
But look at what fair does in that sentence. It makes the ledger legitimate. It concedes that the accounting is real and that God is running it and that the only thing under discussion is where the figure currently sits.
And that is the thing that is not true. Not the arithmetic. The existence of the book.
He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.Micah 7:19
I want you to notice the verb. Not filed. Not offset. Not moved to a lower column. Cast into the depths of the sea, which in the ancient world was the one place a thing went where nobody was ever getting it back.
And notice who does it. Every verb in that verse belongs to God, and the last one is addressed to Him directly. The disposal is His act and it is done in the way a man throws a thing off a boat, not in the way a clerk closes an account.
You are a man whose sins were thrown into deep water by God Himself, and that is not a comfort I am offering to somebody with a bookkeeping habit, it is what is written, and the Holy Spirit is the reason it is landing on the eighteen years rather than on the theology you would already have agreed with.
Now let me say something about the half second, because I think it is the actual cruelty in this.
Eighteen years of consulting a balance before speaking to God is eighteen years of arriving at a door and checking whether you are permitted. And the checking has never once come back permitted, not in eighteen years, which means the honest description of your prayer life is that of a man standing outside a house he has a key to.
You have never once needed to check. Scripture puts the whole disposal in God's hands and describes it as an act of casting into deep water, and the Spirit of God is the one who has been keeping a man in a holding pattern faithfully attentive for eighteen years, which is not something a man does about a God he has given up on.
I want to say something about the holding pattern, actually, because you have been quietly ashamed of it.
The respectful hovering. The general upward attention that is not nothing and is not prayer. You have been keeping the line open for eighteen years without believing you were allowed to speak on it. That is not a failure of faith. That is a remarkable and slightly heartbreaking loyalty, and God has heard every hour of it, because He was never operating the switchboard you thought He was.
And here is the last of it. You are welcome to speak, now, with the figure exactly where it is this afternoon. The word says the sins went into the depths of the sea and the Spirit is the seal on it, and the balance you have been consulting was never the book God is reading, because the book God is reading on this subject was thrown overboard.
And if what is on you tonight is heavier than shame, if it has got as far as not wanting to be here at all, please tell one human being tonight. A doctor, a crisis line in your own country, one person who can sit with you. That is not a detour from any of this. It is part of it, and you are worth the phone call.
So here is the turn, and it does not require the figure to move.
You are not going to talk your way to a clear balance. You have tried for eighteen years and the best it ever did was go quiet.
What moves is the legitimacy of the book.
The ledger is real in the sense that you are genuinely running it. It is not real in the sense of describing anything God is doing. He is not consulting a figure before He hears you, and the reason is not that He is lenient. It is that the account was closed in a way that involved deep water and a hand throwing.
The half second before you pray can go now. Not because you have finally reached a permitted number, but because there is no gate there and there never was, and you have been showing a pass at an open door since you were twenty-four.
Speak. Today, at whatever the figure is at four this afternoon.
You are welcome to speak, at whatever the figure is at four this afternoon. Scripture says He casts our sins into the depths of the sea, which is a hand throwing rather than a clerk filing, and the Holy Spirit has kept you attentive for eighteen years at a door that was never locked.
Declare this over yourself
Say them out loud, at ordinary speaking volume, without checking anything first. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so this is not a man requesting an audience. It is an ambassador saying out loud what his King has already said, and however He answers and whatever He does from here is His and it is good.
- Running total, you are a habit of accounting since I was twenty-four and you are not the book God is reading. The word says He casts our sins into the depths of the sea, and that is a man throwing a thing off a boat and not a clerk moving a figure to another column.
- Half second before I pray, in the name of Jesus you are finished and there is no gate where you have been standing. The Holy Spirit has kept me attentive for eighteen years while I believed I was not permitted to speak, and God was never operating that switchboard.
- Lord, You did the casting Yourself and Your word puts every verb of it in Your own hands. There is no balance to consult and there never was, and I am speaking to You today with the figure exactly where it is.
Micah 7:19
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