What Happened To The Believing

Wade had it for about five weeks and it was the realest thing that has ever been in him, and the thing did not happen.

He is not going to describe the situation and it is not the point. What matters is the five weeks. He was not talking himself into anything. There was a settledness in him that he did not manufacture and could not have manufactured, and he told two people at the time, and both of them have since said, carefully, that he had been different in that period.

And then it did not happen. It went the other way, in fact, and it went that way over about nine days.

That was six years ago.

And what he has never been able to get help with is not the outcome. He has grieved the outcome. People were good about the outcome; there were casseroles and there were cards and his sister came for a fortnight.

It is what happened to the believing.

Because he had it. It was given, and he knows the difference between that and working himself up, and it was not fear or hope or determination, it was the other thing. And then the thing it was for did not come, and nobody has ever once addressed what a man is supposed to do with a genuine gift that pointed at a result that did not arrive.

The explanations came, of course. Two of them were kind and neither of them was any use. One person said it was for something else. Another said he would understand later. A third said something about faith needing to be tested, which Wade did not respond to at the time and has thought about since in ways that were not good for him.

He is fifty-six. And the practical result is that when something rises in him now, he backs away from it, because he cannot go through that again.

You may know the six years.

Maybe you also had the real thing, and it pointed at something that did not come, and everybody helped you with the loss and nobody helped you with the faith.

The end of the chapter nobody quotes

There is a chapter everybody knows about faith, and it ends in a way that almost nobody reads out.

The list goes through people who did extraordinary things. Subdued kingdoms, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, turned to flight the armies of the aliens.

And then it turns, in the same breath, and lists others: tortured, mocked, scourged, imprisoned, stoned, sawn asunder, wandering in deserts and mountains and dens and caves of the earth.

And then this.

And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise.Hebrews 11:39

Having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise.

Both halves are in one sentence, joined rather than contrasted. Their faith is commended, in writing, in the chapter that defines the word. And they did not get the thing.

The text does not explain it. It does not say they misheard. It does not say the faith was for something else, or that they would understand later, or that it was a test. It says they had real faith and did not receive the promise, and then it moves on.

And you can have had real faith and not received the thing, and both of those can be true. The written word puts them in one sentence about people it commends by name, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my paragraph who makes that reach a man six years on who has never been given a category for it.

And the faith you had was not disproved by what happened in those nine days. The word commends the faith of people who did not receive, and the Spirit bears witness with your spirit rather than reading an outcome backwards onto a gift.

The three explanations

Let me deal with the three, because they are still in you and they are doing damage.

It was for something else. Possibly. Nobody knows, including the person who said it, and offered at the time it functions as a way of making a man's disappointment tidy. You are allowed to leave that one unanswered.

You will understand later. Also possibly. Also not knowable, and it asks you to accept now a comfort that is not yet available, which is not a comfort but an IOU.

And the third one, which is the one that has stayed. Faith needs to be tested.

I want to be plain about that. If what was meant is that God arranges disappointments to check whether people mean it, that is not something I will teach and it is not in that chapter. What Hebrews 11 does is commend people whose faith was real and whose situation did not resolve, without ever suggesting the situation was arranged to examine them.

And more importantly: whatever anybody meant by it, you have heard it for six years as the outcome was about you, and it was not.

And what happened was never a report on you. The word attaches the not-receiving to people whose faith it is in the middle of praising, and the Spirit is the one who separates an outcome from a verdict in a man who has been quietly running them together.

And nothing about you is under review for the nine days. The word says there is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, and the Spirit supplies that to a man who has thought about one sentence for six years in ways that were not good for him.

And nothing here promises you the next one

I want to be honest at the place where a message like this usually cheats.

I am not going to tell you that if it rises in you again it will land this time. I do not know. Nobody writing anything anywhere knows, and you of all readers would spot it.

What I can tell you is what the backing away is costing, which is that a man who declines the gift when it comes has not protected himself from anything. The five weeks were good. They were, by your own account, the realest thing that has ever been in you. That was not the injury; the injury came from nine days that the five weeks did not cause.

And you are able to receive it again without guaranteeing anything. The word describes faith as given rather than as a bet placed on a result, and the Spirit is the one who supplies it without requiring the recipient to underwrite an outcome.