The Line I Did Not Draw

For the believer whose brother-in-law prayed at their table in words that were not theirs.

Suppose a man at his own dining table on a Sunday, with eleven people round it and a leg of lamb going cold while somebody prays.

It's his sister's husband doing it, because the man usually asked was late and somebody had to. He's been in the family nine years, he's an entirely decent human being, and he has never prayed out loud in this house before.

The prayer is good. It is also completely unlike anything that has ever been prayed at this table. Different rhythm, different vocabulary, one phrase repeated that nobody here would repeat, and a particular way of addressing God that lands slightly to the left of everything the host has heard since he was small.

And while it's happening, a thing moves in him that he cannot account for afterward. Not disapproval. Something quieter and much faster, which files the man on the other side of a line, and which is finished before the amen.

Everybody eats. Nothing is said. He thinks about it that evening while washing up, and again on the Tuesday, and he genuinely cannot remember when he drew a line or what the rule on it is.

You are carrying a line you never remember drawing, and it can file a decent man before the amen. The written Word says the Lord knows the ones who are His, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps that knowledge in His own hands.

Why It Arrives Before You Do

Here's the uncomfortable mechanism, and it isn't a character flaw.

Your ear was trained a very long time ago. Years of hearing God addressed in one particular register built a template in you, and templates are astonishingly fast. Anything matching goes straight through as sincere. Anything that doesn't gets flagged before your judgment has arrived in the room.

The flag isn't a verdict. That's what makes it so durable. It's a small sense of strangeness attached to a person, and strangeness is not an accusation. So there is nothing to examine, nothing to repent of, nothing to argue with.

So it survives. It survives a theology you'd defend, a genuine fondness for the man, and nine years of him being nothing but kind to your sister.

The Seal on the Foundation

Here's Paul, writing to Timothy in a letter shot through with worry about who is genuine:

Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his.2 Timothy 2:19 (KJV)

Look at who is given the knowing. Not Timothy, anxious and close to the situation. Not Paul, who knew these people by name and had been right about a good many of them.

The knowing in that sentence is His. That sentence is the seal on the foundation, and it is the single item in the letter neither man is permitted to pick up.

The knowing is sealed and it is God's, and it was never issued to your ear. The written Word assigns it to Him alone, and the Holy Spirit keeps it there rather than passing it to a template built when you were nine.

An Accent Is Not a Distance

Here's what I'd carry out of that dining room if I could take a single thing away with me.

What actually happened at that table was an accent. A man said what was true to God, in the cadence he learned it in, which is exactly what everybody at that table does. That includes the host, who cannot hear his own, because it is the one the room is tuned to.

Every person praying anywhere has an accent. There is no unaccented way to speak to God in English or in any other language, and the sensation of strangeness is not information about the speaker's standing. It's information about which room you grew up in.

The line, then, is not a line about God at all. It's a line about phonetics, and it has been quietly filing people for thirty years while presenting itself as discernment.

What you heard was an accent, and a strangeness in the ear is not a distance in the man. The written Word leaves the knowing with God, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can retire a line that only ever measured cadence.

Nothing Here Draws a Different Line

Let me be plain, because there's a version of this message that would do harm and I won't write it.

I'm not telling you who is in. That question has not been given to me, and a message that answered it would have drawn a new line in your dining room with my hand on the pencil.

Nor am I declaring that the door is open to all, which would be the same ruling reversed. That is the same act in a warmer voice, and it is still a man at a table doing what the verse gives to God.

You can put the line down without taking up another one. Scripture gives the knowing to God and to nobody else, and the Holy Spirit holds it rather than handing you a pencil.

Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.