I Did It Once as a Boy and I Have Never Known If It Counted

A man asked me a question in a hallway that I have been asked, in different words, more than any other.

He said: I did it when I was fourteen, at a camp, and I have never been sure whether it took.

He was fifty one. He had spent thirty seven years going back over one evening, checking it for a feeling he could not remember clearly, cross examining a boy who no longer existed about whether he had meant it properly.

And here is what struck me. He was not asking whether God is real. He believed that without difficulty. He was asking whether a transaction he could no longer inspect had gone through.

I want to be careful with a man in that position, because the easy answers are all bad. Telling him to do it again does not help; he has done it again eleven times and none of them settled it either. Telling him he is fine does not help, because I am not a person with access to that information.

What does help is a sentence Paul writes to a young man in a mess, and the mechanism inside it.

The seal has two halves and only one of them is yours

Here is the verse.

Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his. And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. (2 Timothy 2:19, King James Version)

The seal has two lines on it, and Paul puts them in a deliberate order.

The first is the Lord knoweth them that are his. That is the knowing, and notice whose it is. It is not: you shall know, or you shall feel, or you shall remember the evening clearly. The knowledge is His and it is described as a foundation that stands sure, which is a word about something that does not move whether or not anybody is checking it.

The second is what a person can actually do: let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. Present tense, ongoing, available today, and nothing to do with a memory from thirty seven years ago.

So the assurance is His and the action is yours, and the man in the hallway had been trying to do both jobs, which is why he was exhausted.

You have a foundation that stands sure whether or not you can inspect it. 2 Timothy 2:19 puts the knowing on God's side of the seal and calls it a foundation, and it is His Spirit, Ephesians 1:13 who is Himself called the seal, who does the sealing that no memory could accomplish.

John writes a whole letter so people can know

If knowing were impossible, John would not have written what he wrote at the end of his letter.

These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life. (1 John 5:13)

That ye may know. He states the purpose of the letter outright, and it is knowledge rather than hope.

And here is what he does not do in that letter, which is what makes it useful: he does not tell anybody to go back and examine a moment. He gives present tense evidence. Do you love the brethren. Do you keep His commandments in the ordinary sense of wanting to. Does the Spirit bear witness.

Every one of those is checkable today. None of them requires a person to reconstruct an evening at a camp.

You have present tense evidence available and no requirement to excavate a night. 1 John 5:13 says these things have I written that ye may know. It is the Holy Spirit, 1 John 3:24 saying hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us, who is named as the evidence itself.

The holding described in John's gospel is not mutual

There is a verse that dismantles this whole worry when you read the grammar, and I have read it out loud to more anxious people than any other.

And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. (John 10:28-29)

Look at who is doing the holding and who is being held. There is no verse in that passage where the sheep's grip is the mechanism. The security described is His hand and His Father's hand, and the sheep are the object throughout.

A man cross examining his fourteen year old self is checking the strength of the wrong grip. He is asking how tightly the boy held on, and the passage is about how tightly he is being held.

You are held rather than holding on, and the grammar of that passage never once puts the grip in your hand. John 10:28 makes the hand His and the sheep the object throughout. It is the same Spirit, Romans 8:16 bearing witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, who reports on that from inside a person.

And if the doubt has become the loudest thing in your week and is affecting how you sleep, say it out loud to somebody: a doctor, a counselor, a pastor you trust, or the 988 crisis line, which answers every hour there is. Thirty seven years of private auditing is a real weight and there is no reason for it to be carried alone.

What Paul does with his own past, which is nothing

Paul had more reason than anybody to relitigate his own history, and he says out loud what he does with it.

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before. (Philippians 3:13)

Forgetting those things which are behind. He is not claiming amnesia; he tells his own story constantly in the letters. He means he has stopped treating the past as the place where the answer lives.

And this one thing I do is his summary of an entire spiritual method. One thing. Forward. He was a man with an unforgettable conversion and he still put the weight on the reaching rather than on the memory.

Which is, in the end, the practical answer to the man in the hallway. He does not need a better memory. He needs today, and today is available and does not need to be reconstructed.

You have today available and it does not have to be excavated. Philippians 3:13 puts the whole method on reaching forth rather than on inspecting what is behind, and it is the Spirit of God, Galatians 5:25 saying if we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit, who supplies a present tense a memory cannot.