Eleven.
He counted them once, on a bad night, which he does not recommend. Eleven times he has walked to the front of a room, or knelt at the end of a bed, or pulled into a lay-by and prayed the prayer. Camps, conferences, one funeral, two ordinary Sundays, and a Wednesday in a hotel in Leeds that he has never told anybody about.
Every one of them was real. That is what he cannot get anybody to understand when he tries to explain it. He was not performing. He meant it in the car park at seventeen and he meant it at forty-three in the hotel.
And the shape it has left him in is this.
He now believes the Holy Spirit comes when he asks and goes when he drifts.
He has never said it in those words, because said in those words it sounds like something he would correct in somebody else. But look at how he lives. He knows the feeling of the days after: clean, close, aware, that first fortnight. And he knows the feeling of the fourth month, when he is not doing anything wrong but nothing is close either, and he starts scanning for a meeting.
Eleven times is not eleven repentances to him. It is eleven re-admissions. He is a man who believes he has to get God back into the house, and the interval keeps getting shorter, and he is tired in a way that has nothing to do with sleep.
And here is the thing he said out loud once, at forty-three, in Leeds, and then apologized for saying.
He said: I do not think He stays with me.
And that is you in your own car park, or you would not still be reading.
Sealed is not a word about a mood
Let me give you a sentence you have probably heard read aloud in at least four of those eleven rooms, and never once heard as being about you.
In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.Ephesians 1:13
Were sealed. Past tense, and it happened once.
A seal in that world was not a feeling and it was not a top-up. It was wax and a signet, pressed into a document, and what it did was declare ownership and guarantee that the contents had not been tampered with. Nobody re-seals a letter every few months to check it is still sealed. The seal either holds or it was broken by somebody, and Paul does not offer you as a candidate for breaking it.
You were sealed once with the promised Holy Spirit, and eleven prayers did not seal you eleven times. It is written that when you believed you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13), in the past tense, as a completed act. The Holy Spirit was not admitted at the front of a room in Leeds. He was already in the man walking up.
Now let me say what the eleven actually were, because you have been reading them as a record of your instability and they are not that.
They were eleven honest men in eleven rooms who wanted God, and every one of them was heard.
What they were not is eleven arrivals. You did not get Him back on any of those nights because He had not gone anywhere on any of the nights before them, and the fourth-month flatness you keep reading as His absence is the ordinary weather of a life and not a report on where He is.
You are not scanning for a meeting because He is far off, and the flat fourth month is not a measurement of Him. It is written that He Himself has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you (Hebrews 13:5), and never leaves no interval in which He is out. The Holy Spirit was as present in month four as He was in the fortnight after Leeds.
And now the one you most need, so let me put it down without anything attached.
He is not waiting to be asked back in, because He is not out. There is no twelfth time required tonight. Nothing you do in the next hour improves your standing, and nothing you have done in the last four months damaged it.
You have the Holy Spirit right now, in the fourth month, without going to the front of anything. It is written that He is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it (Ephesians 1:14), and a guarantee that runs until acquisition is a guarantee running tonight. The Holy Spirit has never once been readmitted to a man He never left.
So stand in the car park and stop counting.
You are not being asked to stop going forward. Go forward whenever you want to, at any age, in any room, and mean it exactly as much as you meant the other eleven.
What goes is the arithmetic underneath it. The idea that the interval measures anything, that the fourth month is a report, that a man has to get God back into his own house.
You were sealed the first time and every one of the ten after it found a man who was already sealed. It is written that in Him, when you believed, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance (Ephesians 1:13-14). The Holy Spirit walked to the front of that room eleven times inside the man who was walking.
One hand over your heart. Hold it there.
He did not go out in the fourth month and He has never once needed asking back.
He is in the same room as you, and you are not cast off.
Declare this over yourself
Say them with your hand over your heart. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and that standing was given to you rather than earned by an eleventh walk to the front. Scripture is the ground under every line and the Holy Spirit is what makes them live in a man. Whatever He does from here is His, and the outcome is His.
- Belief that He goes out between the times I ask Him back, He did not leave. It is written that when I believed I was sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, in the past tense, as a completed act. He is here now, in the same room, and I am not cast off.
- Four months of scanning for a meeting to get Him back into my own house, in the name of Jesus you end in this car park. It is written that He is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, and a guarantee that runs until acquisition is running tonight. The Holy Spirit has never once been readmitted to a man He never left.
- God, You heard eleven honest men in eleven rooms, and not one of them was an arrival. It is written that You never leave and never forsake, and never leaves no interval in which You are out. You are here, and I am not cast off.
Ephesians 1:13
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