Six Of Mine, None Of His

The homework was about agreements.

Kate's daughter had it spread over the breakfast table on a Tuesday, and it was the sort of thing a seven year old brings home from a class on rules: draw a house, and inside the house write what your family asks of you, and outside the house write what your family gives you back. Two columns. Crayon.

Dee had come by after dropping her own two off and was leaning on the counter with a mug, watching the girl build a fence out of cereal boxes around her own worksheet, which was not part of the assignment.

"Mom," the girl said, without looking up. "What are God's rules for you?"

Kate answered without pausing. Be kind. Tell the truth. Pray. Forgive people even when you don't feel like it. Go on Sunday. Look after the people in front of you. She said it the way you say a phone number, and she was still going when her daughter cut across her.

"Okay. Now His."

Kate looked up. "His what?"

"His rules. For Him." The girl was still building the fence. "Like, I have rules and you have rules and God has rules for me. What are His for Him?"

And nothing came.

Dee laughed at the cereal boxes, because the fence had gone up on three sides and the girl had nowhere left to sit. Kate laughed too, a beat late. And then she stood there holding the milk with her mouth slightly open, because she could not do it. Thirty one years of Sundays, and she could produce six things asked of her at speed and not one sentence God had ever said about Himself.

It was not doubt. That was the strange part. She would have told you without hesitating that God is good, and she meant it, and she could not quote a word of it.

You know that silence. Somebody could ask you tonight what is expected of you and you could answer them at the counter with your hands full. And then they could ask what God committed Himself to, in the words He actually used, and the room would go quiet in exactly the same way. A general sense that He means well is what you already have. It is also what has not held.

The other column is not empty. Nobody read it to you.

Here is what this message is going to do, plainly, so you can decide to stay. It is going to put three sentences in your mouth. Not warm impressions of God. Sentences, with references on them, that you could say out loud at a counter tomorrow morning while somebody else holds the milk.

Start with the shortest one in the book.

for he has said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you."Hebrews 13:5

Look at who is speaking. Not the writer of the letter. The writer is quoting. God said it about Himself, in the first person, and the whole force of the verse is that it was already said before anybody needed it.

You are covered by a sentence you did not draft and cannot revoke. That is not a nice thought I am handing you; it is Hebrews 13:5 written down in a letter that has been read out loud for two thousand years, and the Holy Spirit is the reason it lands on you as address rather than as history.

Now count the negatives, because they are doing work. Never leave. Nor forsake. In the Greek there is a stack of them, the way a person doubles a word when they want to be sure they are not misheard. He is not being poetic. He is closing exits.

And this is the moment to say the sentence this whole site exists to say, and it goes in the middle of the teaching, not at the end where a disclaimer goes. God's oath is one half of the covenant, and that half is settled: spoken, sworn, holding whatever kind of week this turns out to be. Your response is the other half, and it is real, and it is genuinely asked of you. It is simply not the half that keeps this standing.

Two more, so there are three

One sentence can be carried off as a slogan. Three cannot. So take a second one, and notice that it is not vague either.

fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.Isaiah 41:10

Three I wills stacked in one breath, and every verb is something He does to a person, not something He waits for a person to do first. Strengthen. Help. Uphold. And notice He does not say what the circumstance will do. I am not going to tell you what your week is going to look like, and neither does this verse, and that restraint is the honesty of it: what is promised is the hand, not the weather.

You have that hand named over you in words older than every worry you brought to this table. I am not improvising that. Isaiah 41:10 is where it is written, and the Spirit who moved a prophet to write it is not finished with it, because a promise is not an artifact. It is a thing being kept.

Now the third one, and this is the one people never think to claim, because it sounds like something they would have to arrange themselves.

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.Ezekiel 36:26

Give. Put. His verbs, His hands, His initiative. Nothing in that sentence is subcontracted to you.

Right now, as you read, you are standing inside three separate commitments God made in His own voice: He does not leave, He upholds, He gives a new heart. Ezekiel 36:26 and Isaiah 41:10 and Hebrews 13:5 are their addresses, and three references become three things you could say tonight without looking them up, because the Holy Spirit does not leave a written promise lying on a page as reference material.

And your side is not nothing. Hear that clearly, because a person who has spent years reciting the expected six can swing hard the other way and decide nothing is asked at all. Something is asked. Kindness, truth, prayer, forgiveness, the people in front of you: those were not wrong, and Kate was not wrong to know them. They were only ever half the page. What you do matters and it is not what holds the covenant up, and both of those are true in the same sentence.