I Learned Him at Nineteen

You still have the folder. You could find the section on the atonement in about ninety seconds and it would be better organized than most things you have written since.

You were nineteen. You did the module because it was interesting and because somebody you liked was doing it, and you were good at it, and by the end of the year you could set out four theories of what happened at the cross and say honestly which one you found most persuasive and why.

You believed it. That is the part that people get wrong when you try to explain this. It was not an academic exercise held at arm's length; you came out of that year genuinely persuaded, and you have been persuaded ever since.

You have never met Him.

That is the sentence, and it has taken about fifteen years to be able to say it plainly.

There has been no crisis. You go, most weeks. You could hold your own in any conversation. When somebody in your life is going through something you say true things to them and the true things help.

And the whole of your relationship with God is still, structurally, a set of notes taken by a nineteen year old in a good year, kept in a folder, correct, and never once converted into anything else.

What this page will not do

I am not going to tell you the module was a mistake. It was not. A great many people believe things they cannot defend and it costs them at about forty when somebody pushes, and it will never cost you that, and that is worth having.

I am not going to require an experience of you. There is a version of this conversation that ends with somebody being told they need a moment, and the person goes looking for one and manufactures it or fails to, and both of those are worse than where you are now. Scripture already said it in Philippians 3:8-10, and the Holy Spirit is the one doing the work, not the sentence.

And I am not going to tell you the last fifteen years were nothing. You have said true things to people in trouble and the true things helped, and that is not nothing however it was arrived at. None of that is mine to declare on my own. Scripture said it first in Philippians 3:8-10, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings it the distance.

What I am going to do is show you what the notes were always for, and it is not what a nineteen year old assumed.

You are not outside anything because you arrived by the study door. Scripture says the Lord knoweth them that are his, 2 Timothy 2:19, and the knowing runs in His direction rather than depending on how somebody came in, and the Holy Spirit is at that table with a woman who has kept a folder for fifteen years.

The verse is written by somebody with better notes than yours

There is a passage in Philippians written by a man whose training makes yours look casual.

Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord... that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings.Philippians 3:8-10

Paul had the best religious education available in his world. He says so elsewhere and he is not modest about it.

And here he uses two different kinds of knowing in a few lines, and the difference between them is the whole of your situation.

The first is the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, which he calls excellent and prizes above everything.

The second is the one in the purpose clause: that I may know him. It is a different verb and it is a different activity, and it is written by a man who already has the first kind in abundance and is still reaching for the second.

That tells you two things.

The first is that having the notes does not produce the meeting, and Paul is the proof, because nobody had better notes.

The second is that the notes are not an obstacle to it either. He does not throw them away; he re-values them. Everything he counts as loss, he counts as loss for something, which is a comparison rather than a rejection.

You are not disqualified by the way you learned it. Scripture says that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, Philippians 3:10, and it is written by a man with the best training available who is still asking for the other kind, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gives the second sort of knowing to somebody who already has the first.

What the fifteen years actually are

Here is the thing worth seeing, because you have been reading it as a failure. Scripture put that in writing long before you read it here, in Philippians 3:8-10, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes written words land.

You have been living off a set of correct beliefs, faithfully, for fifteen years. You have not drifted, you have not abandoned it, you have kept going in a period when a great many people from that year did not. I have no authority to say that by myself. Scripture carries it in Philippians 3:8-10, and the Holy Spirit carries it to you.

That is not the profile of somebody who has nothing. Beliefs held for fifteen years without any experiential reinforcement are held by something, and it is not the beliefs themselves; propositions do not hold people.

Which means something has been keeping you, and it has not been the folder, because the folder cannot do that.

You have not met Him in the sense of an event you could point at. But you have been kept for fifteen years by somebody, and being kept is a relationship whether or not it has ever announced itself.

You are not without a history with Him. Scripture says being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it, Philippians 1:6, and the performing is an ongoing action attributed to Him across years, and the Holy Spirit has been doing something in a woman who has never been able to name a moment.

What a meeting looks like for somebody like you

Not a light. Not a feeling you would have to describe afterwards to somebody who asks.

For a person who arrived by the study door, it usually looks like the second person, used for the first time about something that is not in the notes.

Your folder has every doctrine in it. It has nothing about your marriage, or the thing that happened in your thirties, or what you are actually afraid of on a Tuesday. Not one page of it is about you. That is Scripture's sentence and not mine, Philippians 3:8-10, and it is the Holy Spirit and not this page who makes it true where you are.

So say something to Him that is not in the notes. Out loud. Something specific and undoctrinal and true this week.

That is what turns a subject into a person: not better content, but content that could not have been written by a nineteen year old in a good year, because it is about the woman sitting at the table now.

You are not going to meet Him in the material. Scripture says draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you, James 4:8, and the drawing near is mutual and it is described as a movement rather than as a comprehension, and the Holy Spirit is the one who closes a distance from the other side.