It happened in the fourth month and it took about four seconds.
That is the thing about conclusions. We imagine them arriving after long deliberation, and they do not. They arrive in a corridor, or in a car, or in the twelve seconds between waking up and remembering, and they arrive fully formed, and then they never get looked at again.
Hers came in a corridor in the fourth month, in the afternoon, holding a plastic cup.
It was this: this is not going to change, and I have been told that in the only way He tells people, which is by not doing anything.
Four seconds. And then eleven years.
Now I want to be exact, because I teach and precision is not a luxury here.
She did not stop believing in God. She has never stopped, not for one day, and she would be genuinely offended at the suggestion. She has gone every week. She has served. She has prayed for other people with real faith and, more than once, seen things happen for them.
What she stopped doing was reopening the file.
The conclusion of month four went into the record as settled, and every year since has been read in the light of it, and nothing that happened afterwards has ever been allowed to be evidence against it, because settled things are not evidence-tested. That is what settled means.
Eleven years of a four-second ruling.
So let me ask you.
What did you decide in month four that you have never once reopened?
God answered the sentence and not the circumstances
There is a moment in Isaiah where the people say something out loud, and God's reply is unusual in a way that is easy to miss.
They say it in the first person, as a settled conclusion, in exactly the tone of a person who has stopped arguing.
But Zion said, The Lord has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me. Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of My hands.Isaiah 49:14 to 16
Now watch what God does not do.
He does not explain the circumstances. He does not go through what has happened and account for it. He does not offer a timeline, a reason, a defense of His conduct, or a promise about when things will change.
He goes straight at the sentence.
The Lord has forgotten me is a conclusion, and God treats it as a conclusion, and He addresses it as a claim about His own character rather than as a report on the situation.
And then He does something that I want you to hold on to, because it is precise and it is not sentimental.
He picks the strongest natural bond anybody in that world could name, which is a nursing mother and her infant, and He grants that it can fail. Though she may forget. He does not pretend it cannot. He is not making an argument from how reliable love is in general, because He knows exactly how reliable it is in general.
He says: even that can fail, and I will not.
Then He gives the reason, and the reason is not an emotion. It is an engraving. Something cut into a surface, permanent, physical, not subject to mood or memory.
Hear where that puts a woman who ruled in month four.
You are not living under a verdict God handed down. Scripture puts the Lord has forgotten me in the mouth of the people and God answers the sentence rather than the circumstances, and the Spirit He poured out has never communicated a ruling by declining to act.
And here is the doctrinal point, and I want it to be sharp, because vagueness here is what keeps people in year eleven.
Inaction is not communication.
We know this everywhere else. A doctor who has not called does not thereby mean anything. A letter that has not arrived says nothing at all. It is only with God that we take a blank and read it as a message, and we do it because the alternative, which is not knowing, is genuinely harder to live in than a bad answer.
You did not reach that conclusion because you are faithless. You reached it because four seconds of a bad ruling was easier to carry than an open question, and it has been easier every year since.
So you are not living under a ruling God handed down. Isaiah 49 answers the sentence rather than the circumstances, and the Spirit has never communicated a verdict by declining to move.
So here is the turn, and it is not that the conclusion was wrong.
I do not know whether the thing you decided in month four will turn out to have been right. Nobody does, and this house does not put a date on God for anybody, and I will not sell you an outcome.
What I am telling you is that it is not settled law, because you are not a court, and four seconds in a corridor is not a ruling.
Reopen the file. That is all. Not conclude the opposite. Reopen it.
Isaiah says God answered the sentence rather than the situation, and He said He has engraved them on His palms, which is a permanent mark and not a mood. The Holy Spirit poured out on all people has never said anything by doing nothing.
Month four was a guess. It has been governing you for eleven years, and you never once appointed it.
You have been engraved rather than remembered, which is a completely different thing. The word calls it a mark cut into the palms of His hands, and the Spirit who has kept you in that corridor for eleven years is not working from a memory.
Declare this over yourself
Say these where you can hear yourself. Know what holds them up. This authority is not yours by nature, it is Christ's, and in Christ it has been given to you, so you speak as one representing the King. And you speak under His will, never over it. However He answers, and in whatever way He comes, the outcome is His.
- Conclusion, you were four seconds in a corridor and you have been governing eleven years, and I never once appointed you. Isaiah 49 says God answered the sentence and not the circumstances, so I am reopening a file that was never settled law.
- Rule that says He tells people by not doing anything, you have made a blank into a message and in the name of Jesus I strike you out. The Holy Spirit who did the pouring has not once communicated a verdict by declining to move.
- Lord, Isaiah 49 says though a nursing mother may forget, You will not, and You called it an engraving rather than a feeling, and Your Spirit has never delivered a verdict by declining to move. I am sitting here for five minutes with the file open and nothing filed, and month four was a guess and not a ruling.
Isaiah 49:15
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.
