The Sentence You Have Prepared

It is nineteen words long and you have had it ready for six years.

You know exactly where it goes. It goes in the small space after somebody says something like: and where did you train, or so what did you study, or the one that comes most often, which is not a question at all but a friendly assumption that you did.

It is a good sentence. It is honest, it is light, it moves the conversation on without any awkwardness, and it does not invite a follow-up.

You have used it about twelve times in six years. Twice a year.

That is what has started to get to you.

Because the sentence takes about four seconds to say and you have been carrying it for six years, which is a very poor ratio, and what carrying it actually means is that it is with you every single time you are in that building.

It is with you when you speak in the group. It is with you when somebody asks you a question about a passage and you know the answer and you give the answer, and you give it with about a third of the weight you would give it in your own kitchen, because the sentence is standing there behind you the whole time.

You know a great deal. Twenty-two years of reading and asking and turning things over.

And there is a nineteen-word sentence in your mouth every Sunday, and nobody in that room has ever asked for it, and you have been paying it anyway.

The council notices two things and only one of them is the credential

There is a scene in Acts where two fishermen are standing in front of the highest court in the nation, and Luke records exactly what that court concluded about them, and there are two halves to it.

Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.Acts 4:13

Unlearned and ignorant men. That is the court's assessment and it is not a compliment and Luke does not soften it. In the language of that court it meant something like: not formally trained, no schooling in this, laymen.

And then the second half, which is the whole point of the verse.

They took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.

That is what the room actually noticed. Not the absence of training, though they clocked that in about four seconds, the way rooms do. What they could not get past was the other thing, and the other thing was not on any certificate.

So take this now, six years in. You have the credential that the room in Acts could not account for. The written word puts an untrained pair in front of the highest court in the land and records that what registered was the time they had spent with Him, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does that registering.

Nobody has been asking. You have been paying anyway.

Now let me put the practical thing in front of you, because you are a person who wants the mechanism.

Twelve times in six years.

That is the actual demand this room has made on you. Twelve times somebody has come near the subject, and every one of those was small talk, and not one of them was an examination.

You have been paying a toll twelve times a year in your own head for a gate that opens twice. The written word settled that, and His Spirit has been carrying it ever since.

And here is the cost, and it is not the sentence. It is the third. You give your answers at about a third of the weight, and you have been doing it so long that the third has become your normal volume in that building, and there are people in that group who have never heard you say a thing at full weight.

That is not humility. Humility knows exactly what it has and holds it lightly. What you have been doing is a discount, applied in advance, by you, on the assumption of an objection nobody has raised.

You have twenty-two years and it is real. His word puts the credential in the time spent with Him, and the Holy Spirit is the one who taught you, and a discount you apply to yourself has never once been asked for by anybody in that hall.

The plain hall and who was allowed to speak in it

In 1895 a man named Phineas Bresee opened a hall near the middle of Los Angeles and made a rule that not one seat in it could be rented.

Here is a thing about that hall and the movement that came out of it that people forget. It was full of people teaching who had no formal training whatsoever.

That was not a compromise made because nobody better was available. It was a conviction: that God gives what He gives to whom He chooses, and that a room which only listens to the trained will never hear most of what He is saying.

Some of the most useful teaching that came out of that tradition came from people who would have had to use your sentence.

You are standing in a room built by people who did not have the thing you are apologizing for. The written word puts the credential in the time with Him, and the Holy Spirit distributes as He wills.