She has three versions and she has never said any of them.
The short one is about eleven words and it is the one she would use at a door. The medium one covers the shift work and the first year of her mother's illness and comes out at about a minute. The long one is honest.
Deshanna is thirty-nine.
She has been drafting these for six years, in the car, in the shower, in the four minutes before sleep. She has revised the medium one so many times that she could deliver it now with the pauses in the right places.
And what she noticed in June, in a supermarket car park, holding her keys, is that she has never once been asked.
Nobody has stopped her in the street and required an account. There is no committee waiting. The two women she was close to have both sent messages over the years that said nothing more demanding than that they were thinking of her.
The interrogation is entirely hers. She wrote it, she convened it, and she has been preparing for it for six years, and it has never sat.
But she cannot walk in without the statement ready, and she has known for about a year that having it ready is not the same as being able to use it, and the readier it gets the less possible the walking in becomes.
The long version is the problem.
The long version has in it that she stopped praying for about two years and did not miss it, and that when she started again it was because she was frightened and not because she wanted to, and that she has never told anybody either of those things.
She does not want to say that in a doorway on a Sunday morning with somebody's hand on her arm.
So she does not go, and the drafting continues, and it is now six years.
And you may have a statement in your pocket. And nobody may ever have asked you for it.
Jesus makes a promise about the ones who come, and attaches no condition
Take this off before we go a step further, because you have carried it six years and it was never yours.
You are not required to make a statement. You never were, and no account of missing years has ever been the price of anything. Scripture has Jesus making a promise about everybody who comes to Him and He puts no qualification on it at all, and it is the Holy Spirit, not a well-drafted explanation, who brings a person in. Set it down here in this hall. It is heavy and you have been revising it in car parks for six years.
Now hear it, and hear that it is a double negative for emphasis.
All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.John 6:37
Whoever comes to me I will never drive away.
Whoever. No category is described, no condition is named, and no explanation is requested at the point of arrival. The only verb required of the person is comes.
And the second half is put in the strongest available form. Not will be welcome, which would still leave room for a person to wonder. Will never drive away, which shuts the other possibility off entirely.
The coming is the whole of what is asked and the promise is unconditional. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who does the bringing, and He has never once wanted a statement at the door.
Now let me be careful here, because there are ditches on both sides and I have no intention of putting you in either.
Nothing here says the two women should have pushed harder. They should not have, and they were right not to, and messages that ask nothing are a kindness people rarely credit, and Scripture would have you know that leaving somebody room is a form of love.
And nothing here promises you what a particular doorway will be like on a particular Sunday. I have not met those people and I will not put words in their mouths, because that would be a promise about a congregation and not about God.
The point is narrower and it is about the interrogation you convened, and Scripture requires one verb of a person arriving, and His Spirit is the one who has been drawing you through six years of drafting.
Here is the tender part, and Scripture is gentle with it. The long version is not what keeps you out.
The long version is the thing you have most wanted to say to somebody for six years, and you have been calling it your obstacle because that is safer than calling it your hope. His Spirit is the one who has kept it alive in you and He is not the one who put a doorway between you and saying it.
So here is the turn, and it requires no statement at all.
Go, or eat, or pray, without waiting to be asked and without announcing it to anybody.
Take the last one, tonight, in the kitchen when the house is quiet. Pray without the preamble, without the medium version, without the eleven words.
That is the whole of it. Not a Sunday, which is yours to time. Not a message to either of the two women, though that may come.
One prayer, unprefaced.
Whoever comes is the only condition, and the promise is that He will never drive anybody away. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who brings you, and neither of them ever asked for an account.
I am not going to tell you what the doorway will hold or when you will walk through it. That belongs to God and He works in His own way and in His own timing, and I will not put a promise in His mouth so this page can end well. What I can tell you is what is already yours, and what is already yours is a promise with the strongest wording available and no conditions attached.
Go without waiting to be asked.
Declare this over yourself
Say these standing on your own, out loud, in ordinary words. Nothing here is a task and nothing here has to be earned; it is already yours in Christ, and it was yours through all six years of drafting. Scripture is what these lines stand on, His Spirit is the one who makes them live, and the outcome is His, answered in His own way and in His own timing.
- Three versions in my pocket, I wrote you and I convened the hearing and nobody has ever once asked me for you. In the name of Jesus I set you down in this hall, because the invitation still stands, and nobody withdrew it and I do not need a new one to come.
- Certainty that I cannot walk in without the statement ready, you have grown for six years and you were never once weighed against Scripture. It is written, whoever comes to me I will never drive away, and the only verb asked of a person there is comes.
- Lord, You put no category and no condition on it, and Your Spirit is the one who has been drawing me through six years of drafting. You never wanted an account at the door, and I am praying tonight with no preamble at all.
John 6:37
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.