She was driving home in October and the question came out of nowhere, the way they do.
What do you actually hold?
Not what does she believe in general terms, which she could answer for twenty minutes. What is the ground under her feet, and where did it come from, and who put it there.
She could not answer it, and she is fifty three.
There have been four seasons. There was the church she came up in as a girl, with the woman who taught her and who is dead now. There was the intense couple of years in her twenties, with the tapes and the notebooks and everything underlined twice. There was the long stretch in her thirties with the man who taught properly, verse by verse, whom she now thinks of as a bit narrow. And there is now, which is podcasts and a good church and a lot of things half started.
She left each one whole.
That is the thing she saw in the car. She did not take anything out of them. Each time it ended, the whole season ended, teachers and notebooks and the ground with it, and she began again somewhere else.
There are four notebooks in a box upstairs from her twenties that she has not opened since her twenties.
And when she tries to name what she actually stands on, what comes up is a general warmth about God and a sense of having been around a long time, and she could not tell you which sentence of it came from where or who gave it to her.
Continue thou in the things which thou hast learned
Sit down by the shelf a minute, because Paul writes one sentence to Timothy about this exact thing, and there are two halves to it and the second half is the one nobody quotes.
But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them.2 Timothy 3:14
Continue thou in the things which thou hast learned.
Continue is a staying word. Not acquire, not progress to, not move on from once it has been absorbed. Stay in the things you have already learned, which assumes that the things you were taught years ago are still the things. That is what is written, and the Holy Spirit was in the giving of every one of them.
And then: knowing of whom thou hast learned them.
Not just the content. The person. Paul tells him to keep hold of who taught him, and in Timothy's case that is a grandmother and a mother, named a chapter earlier, ordinary women in a house.
Hear this in your own front room. You are not shallow, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture tells a man to continue in what he already learned and to remember who gave it to him, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been with you through all four of those seasons without leaving any of them.
Now let me name what the leaving is doing, because it is not fickleness and fickleness would be a cruel and inaccurate word for a woman who has stayed with God for forty years.
Each season ended for a real reason.
The church you came up in was not where you could stay. The intense couple of years burned out and had to. The verse by verse man was narrow in ways you were right about. Not one of those departures was wrong, and I am not going to tell you that you should have stayed anywhere you left. The written word never asked you to, and the Spirit of God went with you out of every one of those doors.
What went wrong is that the reason for leaving got applied to the whole season. You walked out and took nothing, every time, because taking something felt like conceding that the thing you were leaving had been right.
Hear this too, and let it land where the notebooks are. You have not lost forty years, and Scripture is what says so. What is written says continue in the things and know of whom you learned them, and the Spirit of God has been in every one of those four rooms and did not stay behind in any of them when you left.
And the woman who taught you as a girl, who is dead.
You have not thought about her teaching in thirty years, and you could not tell me one thing she said. But something in you knows how to talk to God when it is bad at three in the morning, and you did not get that from a podcast, and you have never once asked yourself where it came from. It is written into you, and the Holy Spirit has used it at three in the morning more times than you have counted.
So this week you go back to one thing and you read it again.
One. Not all four seasons, and not the box, because the box is a project and a project will not happen.
Pick the one you can most easily lay hands on. A notebook from your twenties. A book that man taught from. Anything with somebody else's teaching in it that you have not opened in a decade. The written word says continue in the things thou hast learned, and the Holy Spirit is the one putting that particular notebook in your mind right now.
And read twenty minutes of it, with the thing you know now.
You will find three kinds of sentence in there. Some of it you will disagree with, and that is fine and expected and it is why you left. Some of it will be flat. And some of it, without warning, will be ground you have been standing on for thirty years without knowing whose it was.
The written word says continue in the things thou hast learned, knowing of whom thou hast learned them, and the Holy Spirit has been in all four seasons with you and left none of them behind, so nothing about those four departures cost you what was given to you in them.
And if there is anybody still alive who taught you in any of it, tell them. That sentence is the whole of the second half of the verse, and most people never get to hear it about themselves.
Declare this over yourself
Say these in the front room with the old notebook open. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the Holy Spirit has been with you through all four seasons according to the written word, so the standing you speak from was never built out of which season you are in now. Whether the notebook holds up or reads as thin, the outcome is His to decide, and it is never a measure of a woman who has stayed with God for forty years.
- Habit of leaving every season behind me whole, you are not growth and you are ending today. Scripture says continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, and continue is a staying word and it assumes what I was taught then is still the thing.
- Fear that keeping something means conceding I was wrong to leave, get out of this room, in the name of Jesus. The written word tells me to know of whom I learned them, and the Spirit of God has been in all four of those rooms and stayed behind in none of them.
- Lord, You told him to continue in what he had already learned and to remember who gave it to him, and Your Spirit has been with me through forty years and four seasons, exactly as it is written. I am opening one old notebook this week for twenty minutes, and I am naming the woman who taught me as a girl.
2 Timothy 3:14
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.
