For the believer who can describe his faith fluently and only ever by comparison.
It's eleven minutes past six on a Friday, and the airport road is moving about as well as it ever does.
The driver has been friendly the whole way, in that easy professional manner that asks nothing of you. Somewhere around the second roundabout he says he's noticed the book on the seat beside him, and he asks, without any weight on it, what sort of church the passenger goes to.
And out it comes, smooth as anything, because it's been rehearsed since childhood. "Well, we're not the kind that does all the ceremony." A pause. "And we're not like the ones you see on the television, either."
The driver says "right, right," in the tone of a man who's being told about somebody else's argument, and changes the subject to the roadworks.
Ten minutes later the passenger is standing at a bag drop realizing that a total stranger asked him one friendly question about the thing he loves most, and he answered with two sentences that were both about other people.
You are able to say what you're for, and not only what you've spent your life distinguishing yourself from. The written Word describes your faith in a run of positives with nothing to push against, and the Holy Spirit is making that description true in you rather than leaving it on a page.
What Two Sentences Cost at a Bag Drop
The strange part is that he'd told the truth. Both sentences were accurate.
That's what makes this hard to see. He wasn't being unkind, he wasn't sneering at anybody, and he'd have been genuinely upset to think he had. He was doing what he'd watched every adult he admired do, which is locate the faith by drawing a line and standing on one side of it.
The cost is that the driver learned nothing. He got a map of a dispute he'd never heard of, in a car, on a Friday, when he'd asked a simple question and might have been given a person.
You've done this. It isn't hostility and it isn't pride. It's what happens when the only vocabulary anybody ever handed you for your own faith is comparative, and you reach for the words you have.
A Description With Nothing to Push Against
Here's the opening line of a passage written to believers who were being pulled in several directions at once:
There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling.Ephesians 4:4 (KJV)
Read what's not in it. There's no opponent anywhere in that sentence. Nobody is being corrected, nobody is being distinguished from, and there isn't a single word that requires another group to exist in order to make sense.
It's built entirely out of what is. One body. One Spirit. One hope. A man could say that line to a taxi driver on the airport road and the driver would learn something about God rather than about a quarrel.
You are held by a description that doesn't need an opponent to be complete. The written Word states your faith in positives with no contrast in it, and the Holy Spirit is the one making that description live in you today.
An Answer That Needs a Villain Isn't Finished
Here's what I'd carry out of that car if I could take a single thing away with me.
Test any description of your faith by asking whether a stranger could act on it. "We're not the ones who do the ceremony" gives a person nothing to do, nowhere to go and nobody to meet. It's a location on a map of other people's arguments.
An answer built out of positives can be acted on immediately. If he'd said "I belong to Jesus Christ and I've never got over it," the driver could have asked a follow-up question. Instead he was handed a boundary and politely declined to cross it.
That's the real tell. A negative answer always ends the conversation, and it ends it in a way that looks like the other person lost interest.
You can give an answer a stranger could actually walk toward. The written Word gives you a faith stated in what it is, and the Holy Spirit supplies the content, so the answer is His before it's your explanation.
Nothing Here Is a Criticism of Where You Come From
Let me be plain, because there's a version of this message that would wound you and I won't write it.
The people who taught you to answer that way weren't wrong to love what they loved. They were holding onto something at a time when holding on cost them, and the comparison in their vocabulary is usually the scar of a real struggle rather than a habit of contempt.
I'm not asking you to think less of them, and I'm certainly not asking you to go back and correct anybody. You can keep every word of their affection and still add a sentence they never got round to teaching you.
You can honor the people who raised you and still speak in positives. Scripture gives the positive form without disparaging anyone who learned another one, and the Holy Spirit does the adding rather than the demolishing.
The Line You Don't Have to Draw
Here's the turn, and it's quieter than a decision and steadier than a mood.
What came out of your mouth in that car was never coldness toward anybody. It was a vocabulary handed to you whole, in which the fastest way to say who you are runs through who you aren't. Nobody sat you down and taught you that on purpose, and nobody has thought to hand you anything else since.
I'm handing you something else now. You have a faith that can be stated with no comparison in it at all, and stating it that way takes nothing from anyone.
You can answer the next question with a person rather than a boundary. The written Word gives you one body, one Spirit and one hope with no opponent attached, and the Holy Spirit makes I belong to Jesus Christ a sentence you can say to a stranger in traffic.
Declare this over yourself
You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so what follows is not a claim made out of your own authority. It is agreement, said back to God in His own words, while the Holy Spirit carries it. How He orders the rest of it is His to decide, and He answers in His own way and in His own time.
Say this once, slowly, with nobody to distinguish yourself from.
I am for something, and that is the true sentence about me, not the list of what I am not. The Word of God says there is one body and one Spirit and one hope of our calling, so my faith is stated in what it is and not in what it stands against. The Holy Spirit makes that description live in me today, and not only on a page. I don't owe a stranger in a car a map of somebody else's quarrel. I keep every word of affection from the people who raised me, and I add to it rather than correcting them. When the next friendly question comes, I can answer it with a person instead of a boundary.
Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.
This message is free. Nothing here is locked, nothing is for sale, and nothing is being asked of you.
Ephesians 4:4-6
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.
