The Part I Edit Out

He has told that story about forty times and it has never been the whole story.

It is not a lie. That is what makes it so uncomfortable to look at. Every single thing in the version he tells is true, and the order is right, and he does not exaggerate anything, and if you cross-examined him on it he would not have to move a single word.

There is just a piece missing from the middle of it.

It happened in a car park. He can tell you where he was standing and what the weather was doing and what he had been carrying in his left hand.

And it has been in the story for nineteen years as a gap. A slight acceleration. There is a moment where he goes from one part to the next slightly too smoothly, and nobody has ever noticed, because why would they.

If you asked him why he leaves it out, he would give you a reason and it would be a decent one. He would say it is not the point of the story. He would say it distracts people. He would say, quite genuinely, that it sounds mad when you put it into words and he would rather not spend the next ten minutes managing somebody's reaction to it.

And underneath all three of those, which are true, there is a fourth one, which is the real one.

If he says it out loud and it does not survive contact with the air, then he loses it, and it is the only one he has got.

Now let me ask you.

Which part of your own story do you leave out every time you tell it?

Paul waited fourteen years and then hid inside his own grammar

There is a passage where Paul finally tells something, and the way he tells it is one of the most human things in the New Testament.

He is being forced into it. He says so. He is in an argument with a church that is comparing him unfavourably with people who talk a great deal about their experiences, and he is being pushed into producing his credentials.

And here is how he does it.

I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. And I know that this man, whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows, was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell.2 Corinthians 12:2 to 4

Count the hedges in those two verses. There are four of them and they are all his. You are in company you did not expect, and the Holy Spirit never charged an explanation as the price of something He gave.

Read what is actually going on in those sentences.

Fourteen years. He has been carrying it for fourteen years and this is the first time it appears anywhere.

I know a man. He is talking about himself and he cannot do it in the first person. He hides behind a grammatical construction for two entire verses before he gives up and admits it a few lines later.

I do not know, God knows. Twice. He will not make a claim about the mechanics of it, because he genuinely does not have one, and he is not prepared to manufacture one to make the account more satisfying.

And Scripture keeps all of it. Nobody tidied that passage. The awkwardness is in the Bible, preserved, with the third person and the hedging and the fourteen years of silence intact.

Hear where you stand tonight, friend.

You are not a fraud with a gap in his testimony. Scripture puts a fourteen-year silence and a third-person dodge in the mouth of the apostle who wrote most of the New Testament, and the Spirit has not once required a person to be able to explain a thing before He would give it to them.

And I want to speak to the fear underneath, because that is what I am actually here for.

You are afraid that saying it will kill it.

That is not a stupid fear and I am not going to treat it as one. Things do get damaged in the telling. A person can say something precious into the wrong room and watch it come back smaller, and if that has happened to you once you will not do it again for twenty years.

But notice what Paul does not do. He does not deny it and he does not go around announcing it. He holds it for fourteen years, quietly, and then says it once, carefully, in a way that gives away nothing he is not sure of.

That is a third option, and nobody ever tells you it exists. You have been choosing between hiding it and broadcasting it, and there is a whole way of living in between, and the man who wrote half the New Testament lived there.

The word says he heard things that no one is permitted to tell, and he simply left them untold, and it cost him nothing.

And you are not a fraud with a hole in his testimony. Second Corinthians puts a fourteen-year silence and a third-person dodge in the mouth of the apostle who wrote half the New Testament, and the Spirit has never once required an explanation as the price of a gift.