I Know Everything About It And Have Never Done It

Asher can tell you what the word means in the original, and he has never once said anything to anybody.

He is not a dabbler. Twenty-two years of proper reading. He knows where the passages sit, how they relate, which of the fences are structural and which are cultural and which are argued about, and he can lay the whole of it out for you in about an hour without notes.

People come to him with this. That is the thing. When somebody in his church is confused about it, they are sent to Asher, and he sits with them and he is genuinely useful, and they leave clearer than they came.

He is fifty-nine.

Three times in the last two years, somebody has come to him with a specific person on their mind. Not a doctrinal question. A person. They wanted to know whether they should say something to them.

And all three times Asher gave them a careful, accurate, structurally sound answer about the doctrine of it, and all three of them left informed, and he has no idea whether any of them ever said the thing.

He did not notice at the time. He noticed about a month ago, all three at once, in the way those things arrive.

And underneath that he found the thing he has actually been avoiding, which is that in twenty-two years of knowing more about this than almost anybody he has never once turned to a specific human being and said a plain strengthening sentence about who they are.

He has an answer for that too. He has several. They are all reasonable. He has stopped believing any of them.

You may know that desk.

Maybe you also read yourself into competence. Maybe people come to you now. And maybe the competence has been standing in for the thing for years and you have only just seen it.

What the angel says it is made of

There is a moment in Revelation where John does the wrong thing and gets corrected, and the correction contains a definition, and the definition is not about information.

And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me, See thou do it not: I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus: worship God: for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.Revelation 19:10

The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.

Spirit there means the animating substance, the thing it is actually made of. And the answer given is not a body of doctrine, not a category of speech, not a technique and not a discipline. It is testimony about a person.

And look at what is happening in the scene when it is said. An angel is refusing to be the subject. John is at its feet, and it redirects him, immediately, off itself and onto God, and then explains the whole category in a sentence that is likewise pointed away from itself.

The verse is spoken in the middle of an act of deflection, which is what it also describes. This thing is made of pointing at somebody else.

Which means what you have built, however excellent, is knowledge about the mechanism, and the verse says the substance is a testimony pointed at a person, and the two have never been the same object.

And the substance of it is testimony rather than mastery. The written word puts the definition in an angel's mouth in the act of pointing away from itself, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my paragraph who brings that to a man who has known more than almost anybody for twenty-two years.

And He speaks and you can carry it plainly. The word names strengthening and comfort as the entire purpose, and the Spirit is the one who supplies it rather than requiring the structural map you already possess.

Why the studying held

Now the mechanism, precisely, because you will not accept a vague account and you should not have to.

Study has three properties that make it the perfect substitute for this, and you did not choose any of them.

It is unbounded, so there is always a further thing to read and therefore always a legitimate reason not to have arrived. It is private, so nothing you get wrong is witnessed. And it is genuinely useful to other people, so it produces real fruit and real gratitude and never once looks like avoidance from outside.

A substitute with those three properties is undetectable. It is not laziness and it is not cowardice, and nobody watching your life for twenty-two years would have flagged it, because everything you did was good.

And the thing you were avoiding is exactly the thing study has no version of: turning to one person and saying something you cannot footnote, in front of them, where being wrong is visible in a face at three feet.

And what has held you is a substitute rather than a failure of will. The word says knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth, and the Spirit is the one who sets those beside each other without ever calling the knowledge worthless.

And nothing about you is under review for twenty-two years of good work. The word says there is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, and the Spirit supplies that to a man whose reading has genuinely made other people clearer.

And none of the reading was wasted

Let me be plain, because a man could read this and go and be ashamed of his library, and that would be a worse outcome than the one we started with.

Nothing here says the twenty-two years were avoidance dressed up. They were real, they were faithful, and the people you have sat with left clearer because you did the work nobody else was willing to do.

And nothing here hands you a future to hand anybody. Not an outcome, not a date, not one word about a person's health or marriage or death, because that is not this and never was, and you of all people know exactly where that fence is and why it is where it is.

What is on offer is the one act your whole shelf has been describing: a plain sentence to one specific person about who they already are, said out loud, with nothing behind it that can be cited.

And you are permitted to say a thing you cannot footnote. The word makes the substance testimony rather than exposition, and the Spirit is the one who makes that a permission rather than a rebuke to twenty-two years.