He can do the voice.
That is the thing that would sound mad if he said it out loud, and it is why he never has. If you asked him what God would say to him about it, he would not have to think. He could give it to you word for word, in a particular tone, with a particular pause in the middle, and it would take about eleven seconds.
He has been running that eleven seconds since he was thirty-one. He is fifty-nine.
He does not pray about it. There is no point. You do not ring somebody up to ask a question you already have the answer to, and you especially do not ring them up when the answer is that one.
Everything else, yes. He prays about the farm and about his knees and about his grandson who is having a hard time at that school. He prays out loud at the table and he does not mumble it. He has prayed for other people and seen things happen that he cannot explain, and he would tell you about two of them if the evening was long enough.
Just not this. This has a settled answer and the file is closed.
The thing he has never examined, not once in twenty-eight years, is where the voice in the eleven seconds actually comes from.
It is not his father, which is the first thing anybody would guess and which he has considered and dismissed. His father was a hard man in some ways and never about this.
It is closer to his own voice. That is the honest answer, and it has taken him a long time to be able to say even that much to himself: the tone in which God tells him the thing is a tone he recognizes, and it is the one he uses when he has run out of patience with himself, which happens about once two weeks and always has.
Let Him say His own line
I want to start where you got to on your own, because you did the hard part already and I do not think you have given yourself any credit for it.
You noticed that the voice is yours.
Twenty-eight years of a settled answer, and somewhere in there an honest man sat down and worked out that the tone in the eleven seconds is the tone he uses on himself when he has run out of patience. That is not a small thing to see and most people never see it.
So let us take it one step further, and it is only one step. If the voice is yours, then the sentence is yours. Which means for twenty-eight years you have not been carrying God's verdict. You have been carrying a very good impression of one, performed by a man who is hard on himself once two weeks.
Now here is what He actually says, and I want you to notice how the sentence opens.
Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.Isaiah 1:18
Come now, and let us reason together.
That is an invitation to a conversation. It is God, in the mouth of a prophet, in the middle of a chapter where He has been listing what is wrong, stopping and saying: come and talk to Me about it.
Which is precisely the thing you decided twenty-eight years ago there was no point in doing.
You are invited into the conversation you have been declining, and that is not encouragement, it is what is written, and the Holy Spirit is the reason it is landing on the closed file rather than on the general truth about God's mercy that you would have agreed with at nineteen.
And look at what He says the outcome is. Not that the scarlet was never scarlet. He does not minimize it and neither will I. He says scarlet becomes white as snow, which is a change of state, performed by Him, on the thing exactly as it is.
Now let me say something about the twenty-eight years of not praying about it.
You have been faithful in everything else. The farm, the knees, the grandson at that school. You pray out loud at the table and you do not mumble. You have kept every other door open with God for twenty-eight years while holding one shut on His behalf.
That is not rebellion. That is a man being scrupulously polite about a thing he has decided in advance would be unwelcome, and Scripture says the invitation is come now, and the Spirit of God has been the one keeping you at that table praying out loud all this time.
I want to say the plainest thing I have to say to you, and then I will stop.
You are not required to like the sentence you have written in order to stop reading it. The word says come and reason together, and the Spirit is the one making that verse warm in your chest at fifty-nine, and God has not been agreeing with your impression of Him for twenty-eight years. He has been waiting for you to bring the thing and let Him answer it in His own voice.
And if what is on you tonight is heavier than this, if it has got as far as not wanting to be here at all, please tell one human being tonight. A doctor, a crisis line in your own country, one person who can sit with you. That is not a detour from any of this. It is part of it, and you are worth the phone call.
You are invited into the conversation you have been declining, and the invitation is in His own mouth. The word says come now and let us reason together, and the Holy Spirit is the reason a verse you have known since you were a boy is warm at fifty-nine.
So here is the turn, and it is a single action and it is small.
Bring it.
Not to a person. Not to a room. To God, out loud, once, in your own kitchen, and then be quiet for a minute and let Him answer.
I am not going to tell you what He will say, and I want to be careful here, because a man who has spent twenty-eight years listening to a sentence somebody wrote for him does not need another sentence written for him by me. What is on offer is not my version of His answer. It is His answer, which is the one thing you have never let Him give.
What I will say is what is written, and what is written is come now, and let us reason together, and that the outcome named in that verse is scarlet becoming white as snow, and that the whole sentence is spoken by God and not by a tired man on a Tuesday who has run out of patience with himself.
The file is not closed. It was never a file. It was an impression.
You are somebody God speaks to in His own voice, and the eleven seconds were never it. Scripture says scarlet becomes white as snow and puts the changing in His hands, and the Holy Spirit has kept you praying out loud at that table for twenty-eight years.
Declare this over yourself
Say them out loud, in your own voice, at the volume you use to pray at your own table. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so this is not a man asking for a different verdict. It is an ambassador saying out loud what his King has already said, and however He answers and whatever He does from here is His and it is good.
- Sentence I put in His mouth, you are my own voice on a bad two weeks and you are not His. The word of God says come now and let us reason together, which is an invitation to the conversation I have been declining for twenty-eight years.
- Closed file, in the name of Jesus you are opened and you were never a file, you were an impression I have been performing. The Holy Spirit has kept me praying out loud at my own table all this time, which is not what God does with a man He has finished with.
- Lord, You said scarlet becomes white as snow and Your word puts the changing in Your own hands and not in mine. I am bringing it to You today with my hands open, and I am waiting to hear it in Your voice.
Isaiah 1:18
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