There was a thing in the spring that changed her, and by November she could not say what it was.
She knows it happened. She remembers the week it happened in. She remembers ringing somebody about it and talking for an hour, and she remembers a particular afternoon where something that had been tight in her for years went loose.
She cannot tell you the content.
Not the verse. Not the teacher. Not the sentence that did it. She has looked for the talk twice and could not find it, and both times she got distracted by something else and stopped looking.
Because there was a new thing that week. There always is.
That is what she saw in November, and it was not comfortable. Her attention goes, without her deciding, to whatever arrived most recently. Not to what is best and not to what she most needs. To what is newest.
She is always current. She could tell you what everybody is saying right now and she is genuinely well informed and people ask her what they should be listening to.
And the thing that changed her life in the spring is gone, and she has not been able to get it back, and she has quietly stopped trying.
Lest at any time we should let them slip
Sit down at the desk a minute, because Hebrews opens its second chapter with a warning that is not about rebellion at all.
Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip.Hebrews 2:1
Lest at any time we should let them slip.
The picture behind that phrase is a boat. A boat that is not tied, drifting quietly past the landing it was meant to stop at, in the dark, without anybody deciding anything.
Nothing has been rejected. Nobody argued with the teaching. It simply is not where it was, and by the time you notice, you are a long way past. That is what is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has brought you back to look at it now.
And the remedy is in the first half: give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard. Heard, past tense. Not new things. The things already given.
Hear this at your own desk. You are not a shallow woman, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture names drifting rather than rejecting as the risk and puts the remedy on things already heard, and the Holy Spirit is the one who did something real in you in the spring that you did not imagine.
Now let me name what the pull toward the new is doing, because it is not fickleness and fickleness would be a false word for a woman who rang somebody and talked for an hour.
New things arrive with their own momentum and old things do not.
The thing that came out this week has a wave under it. People are discussing it, it is in front of you without being sought, and there is a small cost to being the person who has not heard it yet.
The thing that changed you in the spring has no wave at all. Nobody is talking about it. It requires you to go and get it, deliberately, against no current whatsoever, and there is no social cost to letting it go and there never will be.
So it goes. Not by a decision. By the absence of one, which is exactly what the word slip means.
Hear this too, and let it land in that light. You have not lost what God did in you in the spring, and Scripture is what says so. What is written puts the remedy on giving earnest heed to things already heard, and the Spirit of God does not undo a work in a woman because she cannot find the recording of it.
And that is worth staying with for a second, because you have been treating the lost content as though it were the lost thing.
Something went loose in you on an afternoon in the spring and it has stayed loose. That is not in a recording. You cannot mislay it by failing to find a talk, and the tightness has not come back, and you would have noticed if it had.
So this week you write it down and you put it where you will see it.
Not the talk. Do not go looking for the talk, because the search is where you have already been beaten twice and it will beat you again by Wednesday. The written word puts the remedy on things already heard, and the Holy Spirit did the work in you rather than the recording.
Write down what you can actually still say about the thing that changed you in the spring. It might be one sentence. It might be: something about not having to hold it all, and I rang Anna about it, and it went loose in me.
That is enough. That is more than enough, and it is the true version rather than the recorded one.
Then put the card where your eyes go. On the desk, by the kettle, in the car, and leave it there through several weeks of newer and more interesting things arriving.
The written word says give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, and the Holy Spirit did something real in you in the spring that has not come undone, so nothing about losing the recording lost you the work.
You are always current. That is a real gift and it feeds other people and I would not take it off you. But a woman who is always current is a boat that is never tied, and one card by a kettle is a rope, and you can have both.
Declare this over yourself
Say these at the desk with the card written. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the Holy Spirit did a real work in you in the spring according to the written word, so the standing you speak from was never built out of being able to find the recording. Whether you ever locate that talk again or never do, the outcome is His to decide, and it is never a measure of a woman who rang somebody and talked for an hour about it.
- Pull toward whatever arrived this week, you are not hunger and you are not steering today. Scripture says lest at any time we should let them slip, and the picture behind that is a boat drifting past its landing in the dark without anybody deciding anything.
- Search for a recording that has beaten me twice already, get off this desk, in the name of Jesus. The written word puts the remedy on things already heard, and the Spirit of God does not undo a work in a woman because she cannot find the talk it came through.
- Lord, You told them to give the more earnest heed to the things which they had heard, and Your Spirit did something in me in the spring that has stayed loose, exactly as it is written. I am writing the one true sentence down today, and the card is going by the kettle where my eyes go.
Hebrews 2:1
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
