She has never once gone forward at anything.
There have been opportunities. About four hundred of them, at a guess, over eleven years, and she has stood there each time while other people went, and she has been glad for them, and she has stayed exactly where she was.
It is not defiance. It is not even really shyness, although she would use that word if you asked her because it is the shortest available.
What actually happens is that the moment arrives and something in her goes very still and says: this is not how it happened for me, and walking down there would be agreeing that it should have.
Here is her difficulty.
Because she never did the public thing, there is no record of her anywhere. No card, no date, no line in a book, nobody who was there.
Her friend has a certificate. An actual one, in a drawer, from a Tuesday in a hall, with a name written on it by somebody who is now dead. Her friend is not sentimental about it and mentions it about once every three years.
She thinks about that certificate more than she would ever admit.
Eleven years, and she still has the feeling that hers is unfiled. That somewhere there is a list and she is not on it, and that this has never been settled and possibly never will be.
He compared it to wind
Let me sit with the still thing in you for a second, because it is not the problem here and I do not want it treated as one.
Something in you refuses to reenact a beginning that did not happen that way. That is not rebellion. That is an instinct for the truth, and eleven years of standing still while others walked is a considerable amount of integrity to have exercised quietly.
Now hear this and hold it as already true rather than as encouragement: yours does not need filing, and the plainest description He gave of the whole business is deliberately unfileable. That is not my sympathy talking, it is what stands written in the third chapter of John, and the same Holy Spirit whose name is in that verse has been with you through all four hundred of those moments.
Read what He says to a man who has come at night with a serious question.
The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.John 3:8
You cannot tell where it comes from.
He is not being evasive. He is being exact. He picks the one thing in the natural world that is unmistakably present and absolutely unlocatable, and He says: that is what this is like, for everyone.
Not for the quiet ones. Not for the people who missed the moment. Everyone born of the Spirit, including the woman with the certificate in the drawer.
So take this now rather than after somebody makes it official: you are not unfiled, because the written word compares this to wind and says outright that its origin cannot be traced, and the Spirit of God is the one who has kept you standing still in integrity for eleven years rather than performing something untrue.
And I will guard it, because there is a way to take this too far.
Nothing here says the public thing is empty or theatrical. It is not. Saying something out loud in front of people is one of the oldest and most sensible things anybody does, and your friend's Tuesday was real, and the man who wrote the name on that certificate meant it.
What is written simply never makes the record the reality, and the Holy Spirit has never once needed a witness present in order to do His own work.
So say your own season out loud, to the empty room.
Not to a group, not down the front, not to anybody. In the room you are in, in your ordinary voice, one sentence with a time in it. What is written compares this to wind and says its origin cannot be traced, and the Holy Spirit has been with you through four hundred of those moments.
It was the autumn I was twenty-four, and by the end of that year I was His.
You are able to say that today rather than after somebody records it somewhere, because Scripture compares this to wind and says plainly that nobody can tell where it comes from, and the Holy Spirit has been at work in you through eleven years of standing still while everybody else walked.
And let the certificate go.
Not your friend's. She can keep hers and she should. I mean the one you have been waiting for: the moment somebody would confirm you from outside, which you have half expected for eleven years and which has never arrived and is not coming, because there is nobody in the building who was ever authorized to issue it. John 3:8 says that about everyone born of the Spirit, and the Holy Spirit has never needed a witness present in order to do His own work.
There is no list you are missing from. The still thing in you at four hundred meetings was not a fault in your beginning, it was your beginning refusing to be misdescribed. What is written leaves no list you could be missing from, and the Holy Spirit kept you standing still in integrity for eleven years.
And you have never once, in eleven years, said the true version out loud. What is written never made the record the reality, and the Holy Spirit has been doing His work with nobody there to write any of it down.
Declare this over yourself
Then say these out loud. Know what they stand on: this authority is not yours by nature, it is Christ's, and in Christ it has been given to you, so you speak as one representing the King and not as a woman waiting to be confirmed from outside. Every line rests on what is already written, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries it, never the sound of your own voice. You speak under His will, never over it, and however He answers, the outcome is His.
- Feeling that mine was never made official, you are put out. Scripture compares this to wind and says you hear its sound and cannot tell where it comes from, and it says that about everyone born of the Spirit.
- Fear that there is a list and I am not on it, get out, in the name of Jesus. Nobody in that building was ever authorized to issue what I have been waiting eleven years for, and the stillness in me at four hundred meetings was integrity and not a fault.
- Lord, You have been at work in me with nobody present to write any of it down. Today my own season is getting said out loud in this room, in my ordinary voice, all the way to the end.
John 3:8
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.
