I Filed It Under Maturity

You did not stop asking. Let the record show that. You are not a woman who stops.

What you did was more sophisticated than stopping, and I want to describe it accurately because you have never had it described accurately and I think you have been carrying it wrong.

You moved it.

You had a list of things you were asking God for, and you had another list, not written down anywhere, of things you had accepted. And one afternoon, without any ceremony, you took that one request off the first list and you put it on the second.

And then you named the move.

You called it maturity. You may not have used the word out loud, but that is the file it went into, and you have referred to it that way to yourself ever since. You told yourself, and once or twice you told other people, that you had come to a place of peace about it. That God's ways are higher. That you had learned to hold things loosely.

All of which is true doctrine, every word, which is exactly why it worked so well.

Here is the thing though.

You know the difference. You have known it the whole time.

You know what actual surrender feels like in your body, because you have done it about other things, and it does not feel like this. This one has a small tight place around it that real peace does not have.

Let me say this before we go on.

I am not accusing you of dishonesty.

There is nothing here you did on purpose and nothing you owe anybody an apology for. What you did is what a tired, intelligent, doctrinally careful woman does when a request has cost more than she can keep spending. It is a survival move and it used good material.

I am saying I know what is in that file. That is all.

Come and argue

Here is God speaking to people who had every reason to think the conversation was over, and listen to what He invites them into.

Put me in remembrance: let us plead together: declare thou, that thou mayest be justified.Isaiah 43:26

Three imperatives, and every one of them is startling.

Put me in remembrance. Bring it up. Raise it again. He is not asking to be informed; He is inviting the raising of it.

Let us plead together. The word is a legal one. It is the language of a case being argued, and He is not the opposing counsel in that sentence, He is the one saying let us do this together.

Declare thou. Speak. Out loud. Say the thing.

That is not the vocabulary of a God who wants a file closed quietly. That is a courtroom being opened at His own suggestion.

So let me turn and speak straight at you, and I am going to be as direct as this verse is.

You are invited to reopen it. Not one day, not when you have permission from somebody, not once you have worked out whether you are allowed. Right now, exactly as you are, you are the person Isaiah 43:26 is addressed to, and the invitation is in the imperative rather than the conditional. That is not my opinion. That is what is written, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a written line and lays it on a real woman in a real week.

Now, why did the filing work so well?

Because you filed it under something true. That is what made it airtight.

God's ways genuinely are higher. Holding things loosely genuinely is maturity. Every load bearing beam in that file is sound timber, and that is precisely why nobody, including you, has ever been able to get the door open. You cannot argue with any of the parts.

But a true doctrine in the wrong drawer is still in the wrong drawer, and you have known that since about the second month.

And here is what I want you to hear, because it is settled rather than pending. You have not been demoted from asking, and no reclassification you made in an afternoon is binding on heaven. The word says let us plead together, and together is a word about company rather than about permission, and it is His Spirit who carries a written invitation into a real chest in a real week.

Real surrender is loose. What you have is tight. You have taught the difference to other people for years.