The Words Came And Then The Shame

The words came out at about a quarter past nine.

She did not plan them. She has gone over it perhaps two thousand times since and she is certain of that, and it is the one thing she is certain of.

There was a woman on the second row who she has known for years and does not know well, and there had been a long time of nothing much happening, and then a sentence went through her chest like a hand through water, and she said it out loud, in a room, to that woman.

Twelve words. Maybe fourteen.

And the woman on the second row put her hands over her face and stayed like that for a long time, and afterwards two people came and said something to her about it, and she went home in a car feeling as though she had been standing too close to a fire.

The shame arrived at about one in the morning.

Not doubt. This is what nobody understands and it is why she has never explained it properly. She does not doubt what happened, and she does not think she made it up, and if she is honest she does not really believe she got it wrong.

What arrived at one in the morning was the exposure.

She had been seen. For fourteen words, in a lit room, she had been visible as a particular kind of person, and she has spent nine years since making absolutely certain that nobody ever sees her that way again.

So let me ask you.

What came out of your mouth that you have been apologizing for inside ever since?

He said both halves and God kept both of them

There is a passage in Jeremiah that I want to read to you exactly as it stands, because people quote the second half and leave out the first, and the first half is where you actually live.

Jeremiah has had a terrible time of it. He has been publicly humiliated, and he is at the end of himself, and he says something that a great many preachers pretend prophets do not say.

But if I say, I will not mention His word or speak any more in His name, His word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.Jeremiah 20:9

Read the first clause, the one everybody leaves out. He decided to stop. You are not the first to have made that decision at one in the morning, beloved, and the Holy Spirit kept both halves of that man in the Book without correcting either one.

Now read the first clause again, because that is the part.

If I say, I will not speak any more in His name.

He decided to stop. That is what the sentence means. This is not a hypothetical he is entertaining for the sake of an illustration; this is a man who has been through something in public and has resolved, privately, never to do it again.

Exactly what you resolved at one in the morning nine years ago.

And God kept that in the book. Both halves. The resolution to stop and the fire that would not let him.

Now hear me, beloved, because I am going to be very careful here and then very direct.

The careful part first. This house does not tell anybody what happened in a room. I was not there. I do not know what that was and I am not going to validate it or dismiss it, and nobody who was not standing in that room at a quarter past nine has any business ruling on it.

Now the direct part.

Look at the timing. Nine at night: the words. One in the morning: the shame.

Four hours.

Whatever was happening in that room was happening at a quarter past nine. What arrived four hours later, in the dark, alone, was not additional information. Nothing new came in between. No one told you anything. Nothing was discovered.

Shame that arrives four hours later has not learned anything. It has only waited until you were alone.

And the word says the fire is in his bones and he is weary of holding it in and he cannot, and the Holy Spirit poured out on all people has never given somebody a thing to carry in order to punish them for having carried it.

Nine years of making sure nobody sees you like that again is not humility, and I say that with all the love in the world, because I know exactly how much it looks like humility from the outside.

And you are not somebody who overstepped. Jeremiah 20 keeps the resolution to stop and the fire in the bones on the same page, both halves, without correcting either, and the Holy Spirit has never handed anybody something in order to punish them for carrying it.