It is about nine seconds long and you have it ready by Saturday afternoon.
Busy, mostly. Work has been a lot but that is a good problem. The kids are good. We had a nice thing on Wednesday.
Every clause in it is true. That is what makes it work and that is why nobody has ever caught it, and you have been running it for about three years now, in the foyer, at the door, in the car park, to about eleven different people, and not one of them has ever had any idea.
What is not in it is the Tuesday. What is not in it is the letter. What is not in it is that you sat in the car for twenty minutes before you came in this morning and that you nearly turned round.
Here is what I want to talk about, and it is not honesty exactly.
You have stopped being able to arrive without it.
There was a time when you walked into that building as whatever you happened to be that morning. Now there is a preparation, and the preparation happens on a Saturday, and it is not lying and it is not hypocrisy, and it has quietly become the price of admission that you charge yourself.
Nobody in that room set that price. You set it, and you have been paying it for three years, and you are extremely tired.
The father moves first and he moves early
There is a detail in the most famous homecoming story ever told that gets read past because everybody is waiting for the ring and the robe.
But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.Luke 15:20
When he was yet a great way off.
Notice where the running starts. Not at the gate. Not after the speech, which the boy had prepared and rehearsed on the road and never got to finish. A great way off, which means before any of the presentation had been delivered.
And notice what the boy had with him. He had a version. He had worked it out on the journey, and it was a good one, humble and accurate and well phrased, and his father cut it off halfway through by kissing him.
So take this now, in the car park, with your nine seconds loaded. You are met before the account is given. That is what is written into the shape of that story, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the running, and no prepared version has ever been the condition of a welcome.
The version is not a sin and it is exhausting you
Now let me be careful with this, because there is a message here that would send you into a foyer and make you tell eleven people about your Tuesday, and that would be a disaster and it is not what anybody needs.
The version is not dishonest. Social life runs on versions and it is right that it does. The woman who asks how you are in a doorway is being kind, not conducting an inquiry, and answering a doorway question with a full account is not honesty, it is a category error. That is what is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it true in you.
Keep the nine seconds. You will need them next Sunday.
What has to change is not the version. It is the belief underneath it, and the belief is: I cannot go in there as what I actually am this week.
That belief is what set the price. And it has grown, because a thing you never test grows, and it now covers Saturday afternoon as well as Sunday morning.
You are received before you are presentable. His word has the father running while the boy is still a field away, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries that home to a man in a car park, and there is no version of the account that buys you a welcome, because the welcome was never for sale.
The plain hall and the door with nothing at it
In 1895 a man named Phineas Bresee opened a hall near the middle of Los Angeles and made one rule about it: not a single seat could be rented.
What that produced was a door with nothing at it.
In most rooms of that period, and honestly in most rooms now, there is a small toll at the entrance. It is not money any more. It is presentability, and everybody knows the currency of their own building, and everybody pays it without ever being asked.
Bresee abolished the version of it that was in his power to abolish, and the reason people still write about that hall is that the abolition worked. People came in from those streets exactly as they were on a Tuesday afternoon, and there was nothing to arrange first.
You are charging yourself a toll at a door where nobody is standing. The written word puts the father on the road already running, and the Holy Spirit has never once asked anybody to prepare a version first.
Go without the nine seconds.
Not to make a point and not to unload on anybody. Simply do not prepare. Do not run it on Saturday afternoon. Turn up on Sunday as whatever Sunday morning has actually made you.
And when the first person asks, you will find the nine seconds are there anyway, because three years builds a habit, and you can use them if you want to. That is fine. Nothing about this requires you to be raw in a foyer.
The change is not in your mouth. It is that you walked in without having paid.
You are met a great way off. The written word says the father was running before the speech, and the Holy Spirit does the same running toward a man in a car park, so what you are doing on Sunday is not an experiment in honesty. It is arriving without a toll.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud in the car, engine off, before you get out. The right to speak them was not earned by three years of good versions and is not lost on a bad week. It is Christ's own authority, delegated, and because you are in Christ it has been given to you whole, this morning, unprepared. Speak them under not my will, but Thine: He receives and He runs in His own way and in His own timing, and one exposed Sunday is never the measure of what He has settled.
- Edited version, you are not the price of getting through that door. The written word has the father running while the boy is still a great way off, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does that running toward me.
- Toll, come off this doorway, because nobody is standing at it. Jesus cut the prepared speech off halfway through with a kiss, and His Spirit carries that home, so I walk in unprepared, in the name of Jesus.
- Lord, You met me before the account was given, and Your word says it and Your Spirit does it. I go on Sunday exactly as this week has made me, and I do not run the nine seconds on Saturday.
Luke 15:20
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.
