He has been going for nine years and he has never joined anything.
That is not quite the right word, because nobody there asks anybody to join anything and there is no register. But there is a thing that happens to people and it has not happened to him.
He is at everything. He is warm about all of it. He can talk to anybody about what they are into and he means it, and people like him a great deal and would say he is one of them.
He noticed it at a table in June when somebody asked, quite innocently, what he actually thinks about the thing the group had been going through for six months.
And he found that he thought it was very interesting.
That was the whole of his answer, and he heard it come out, and the man opposite nodded and moved on and nothing awkward happened at all.
Nine years of finding it very interesting.
He has never had a position that cost him anything. He has never taken a view that would make an evening difficult. He has never once been the one who says, I have gone into this and here is where I have come out and I know it will not suit everybody.
He is not a coward and he does not think of himself as one, and he would tell you, honestly, that he has just not got to the bottom of it yet.
Nine years.
They searched the scriptures daily
Sit down in that circle a minute, because Luke describes a group of people who were praised for exactly the right combination, and both halves of it are in one sentence.
These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.Acts 17:11
Received the word with all readiness of mind. And searched the scriptures daily whether those things were so.
Openness and investigation, together, and neither one on its own.
Notice what searched is. It is a digging word, and daily is a commitment word, and whether those things were so means they were going somewhere. They were finding out. The searching was in order to arrive, and the record says they were more noble for doing it.
Nobody in that verse is praised for remaining permanently open.
Hear this in your own circle. You are not a fraud, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture praises openness that searches in order to arrive at something, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has had you in that room warmly and faithfully for nine years without letting you go.
Now let me name what interested is doing, because it is not cowardice and cowardice would be a false word for a man who has stayed nine years.
Interested costs nothing and cannot be wrong.
An interested man never has to be corrected, because he has not asserted anything. He never loses an evening, he never becomes the awkward one, and he never has to go back to somebody in a year and say, I have changed my mind about that, which is one of the hardest sentences there is.
And it is not a pose. You genuinely are interested. That is what makes this so hard to see for nine years: the position is completely sincere and it is also a place where nothing can ever happen to you.
Hear this too, and let it land at that table. You are not shallow, and Scripture is what says so. What is written praises men for searching daily in order to find out whether a thing was so, and the Spirit of God has never once required a man to be certain before he could commit to anything.
And that last part matters, so let me say it plainly.
Committing is not the same as being sure. You have been waiting for certainty in order to move, and the men in that verse moved while they were still searching, daily, and the searching was the moving. That is what is written, and the Holy Spirit has been moving you the whole nine years without waiting for you to be sure.
You are not going to get to the bottom of it. Nobody does, and you have used the phrase for nine years as though the bottom were four or five months away, and it is not, and it never was. The written word never promised anybody a bottom, and the Spirit of God has kept you searching in that room for nine years anyway.
So this week you do one thing that only a committed man would do, and you put it in the diary.
The diary part is not decoration. A thing in the diary has a date and a cost and can be failed, and that is the entire difference between what you are about to do and the last nine years.
What it is depends on you, and you already know, because you thought of it in the second paragraph and then thought of a reason it was premature.
It might be saying the actual thing you think out loud in that room, including the part that will not suit everybody. It might be taking on something with a name and a duration, so that you are somewhere on a Tuesday whether you feel like it or not. The written word calls that daily, and the Holy Spirit has kept you in that room for nine years already. It might be a conversation with one person where you say: I have been at the edge of this for nine years and I am not doing that any more.
One thing. This week. In the diary.
The written word praises men who searched daily in order to arrive rather than in order to stay open, and the Holy Spirit has kept you in that room warmly for nine years without one break, so nothing about those nine years was wasted and none of the warmth was fake.
Nine years of being interested is not nothing. It is the longest run up anybody in that room has ever taken. This week it becomes a step.
Declare this over yourself
Say these in the circle with the chairs still out. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the Holy Spirit has kept you in that room faithfully for nine years according to the written word, so the standing you speak from was never built out of having got to the bottom of it. Whether the thing you say lands well or makes an evening difficult, the outcome is His to decide, and it is never a measure of a man who has stayed nine years.
- Nine years of being warm about it, you are not devotion and you are not enough any more. Scripture says they received the word with all readiness of mind and searched the scriptures daily whether those things were so, and that searching was in order to arrive at something.
- Waiting for certainty that I have been calling honesty, get out of this room, in the name of Jesus. The written word never once required a man to be sure before he could commit, and the Spirit of God has kept me here warmly for nine years without one break.
- Lord, You called them more noble for searching daily in order to find out, and Your Spirit has had me in that room for nine years, exactly as it is written. I am doing the thing I thought of in the second paragraph this week, and it is going in the diary with a date on it.
Acts 17:11
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