The Question Came With the Rice

For the one at a family table who has never once said the true answer.

Picture a table with eleven people round it and a bowl of rice going clockwise, and an aunt holding it out to you while she asks where you worship now.

She isn't being unkind about any of it. She is the one who taught you to pray, forty years ago, in a kitchen that has since been knocked through and no longer exists. She asks every time she sees you, which is twice a year, and she has asked this way for four years running.

The bowl is heavier than it looks and you take it with both hands, which buys you a moment and looks like nothing but good manners.

You say the name of a place you went to twice, eighteen months ago, and you pass the rice on down the table. Two people nod at the name. The conversation moves on to somebody's boiler and the man who came to look at it.

Afterwards you stand in the kitchen and put your hands flat on the counter, because you have now said an untrue thing at your mother's table, again, for the fourth year.

The Lord knows those who are His, and He has known since before the rice went round. It is written that that the foundation of God stands sure with that seal on it, and the Spirit hasn't been in any doubt about you.

What You're Protecting

Name what the sentence is for, because it isn't there to deceive anybody and you know it.

You're protecting your aunt. She's seventy nine. She prays for you by name every morning and has done since you were small, and the true answer would frighten her in a way she couldn't do anything about at her age.

You are also protecting the table itself. Eleven people, twice a year, and one of those two occasions is Christmas dinner at your mother's house. The true answer turns a meal into a conversation about you, and four of those eleven would have strong opinions about it.

Those are real considerations and they are not cowardice. But notice what you have concluded from them, which is that no version of the truth could be said at that table at all, and that conclusion has never once been tested.

It was reached in year one, under pressure, with a bowl in your hands, and it has been treated as settled law ever since. Conclusions reached that way are worth reopening, because the circumstances that produced them were not conditions anybody would choose for deciding anything.

You've decided that nothing true could be said there, and you've never tested it. The written word says the Lord knows His own, and the Spirit is not asking you to manage the room alone.

The Lord Knoweth Them That Are His

Here's the verse, and it's the seal on it that matters.

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 (KJV)

The foundation stands sure, and the seal on it says that the Lord knows His own. Not that the congregation knows, or that the family knows, or that the aunt with the rice bowl knows.

That's written into a letter about a church in some disorder, where people genuinely couldn't tell who was in and who was out. Paul's answer was not a better register. It was that God holds the knowledge Himself, and that His knowing is what the foundation rests on.

Paul wrote that to a young man trying to hold a confused congregation together, and it reaches past that situation to a dining room with eleven people in it.

God holds the record, and He has never needed your table to confirm it. The written word puts that seal on the foundation, and the Spirit keeps it there.

He Was at the Table

Stay with this for a moment, because it changes the room you've been picturing.

You've been counting eleven people. There were twelve. The one who already knew the true answer was present for the whole meal, including the moment you said the name of a place you went to twice.

He was not disappointed by it. He knows exactly why you said it, what it cost you, and what you were protecting when you said it. He has watched you stand at that counter with your hands flat on it four years running.

That is a different kind of knowing from the kind you have been bracing against. You have been imagining an assessment. What was actually in the room was somebody who has seen the whole of it, including the kitchen afterwards, and who has not moved away from you by a single inch.

The audience you were managing didn't include the only one whose assessment counts, because He was never in the audience. He was at the table, and He has known where you worship since long before anybody passed the rice.

The one who already knew was at the table rather than in the audience. The written word seals His knowing, and the Spirit was in that room the whole time.

I Am Not Telling You to Say It This Christmas

Be careful, because this could become a demand and a demand is the last thing you need.

I'm not telling you to announce it over a meal. That may never be the right setting, and an eleven person table is a poor place for anything delicate.

Nor am I telling you the sentence you used is fine and to keep using it. It costs you something every time, and four years of standing at a counter afterwards is the evidence.

What I want off you is the belief that there's no true thing you could say. Not the care for your aunt. Not the wish to keep the peace.

Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.

Written by Imani This message is free. Nothing here is locked, nothing is for sale, and nothing is being asked of you.