The Invitation That Is Never Coming

He has been waiting six years and last month he finally asked himself who he was waiting to hear from.

That is a harder question than it sounds and it took him three days.

Because it is not the minister. He knows the minister and he could ring him tonight, and the man would say something warm and mean it, and it would change nothing at all, and he knows that because it has happened twice.

It is not the eldership. It is not any committee. It is not the group of people in the other room he also stands among, and it is not the older man there whose opinion he weighs more than anybody's.

He went through all of them. Every single person and body he could think of who might one day say the sentence, and about each one he asked: if they said it, would that settle it?

And the answer was no every time.

Which means he has been waiting six years for a ruling from a body that does not exist.

He said it out loud in the shed, because that is where he thinks: nobody has the authority to issue what I am waiting for.

And that was the good bit. He expected it to be devastating. It was not. It was more like finding out a letter you have been checking the post for was never sent, which frees a man to stop checking the post.

You know that post.

Maybe you have been waiting for somebody to say it. Maybe there is one person whose word you have decided would settle everything, and you have half arranged your life so that they might one day say it. Maybe you have been waiting so long that the waiting has become the shape of how you stand in a room.

Nobody has withheld anything from you. That is the part worth hearing twice. Nobody has been sitting on a decision about you. There is no meeting where your name comes up and gets deferred. The letter was never sent because it was never written, because it is not a thing any of those people has ever had in their gift.

Somebody who could, already did

Here is a sentence about a transfer, and every verb in it is in the past tense.

Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son.Colossians 1:12-13

Hath made us meet. Hath delivered. Hath translated.

Three completed actions, and the word translated is the interesting one, because it is what you say about a person moved from one jurisdiction to another. A transfer of citizenship. A change of which authority you are under.

And read who does it. The Father, in every clause. Not a body, not a committee, not a congregation, not a room.

You are already transferred, and it was carried out by somebody who actually had the authority to do it. That is what the past tenses in Colossians 1:12-13 record, a completed move rather than a pending application, and it is the Holy Spirit who is called the earnest of that inheritance in the same letters, a deposit put down on something already settled.

Why nobody's word has ever landed

Now here is the mechanics, and it explains the two conversations that changed nothing.

When the minister said something warm, it did not land because a warm word from a good man is not a ruling and both of you knew it. He was being kind about a question he does not have jurisdiction over.

And you have been treating his kindness as a partial answer, and partial answers do not satisfy, so you went away and waited some more.

You have not been failing to receive encouragement, and the reason none of it settled anything is that none of it was the thing. Scripture says the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his (2 Timothy 2:19), and read where the seal is and whose knowledge it rests on, and it is the Holy Spirit who bears witness with a person's own spirit, which is a completely different mechanism from a man saying something kind after a service.

Nothing here tells you where to stand

Let me be clear, because a page like this could easily turn into an instruction about your two rooms.

Nothing on this page tells you to leave either one, to commit formally to either one, to raise this with anybody, or to stop attending anywhere. This site does not know your life, does not know those people, and has no business in that decision.

And nothing here promises that either room will one day say the sentence. That is not in this site's gift and it would be dishonest to imply it. They may. They may not. That is not what is being settled here.

You are not being told where to stand, and no promise is being made about anybody else's welcome. The word says let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind (Romans 14:5), and it is the Holy Spirit who does that persuading in a person over time, which is why no article gets to do it for you.