For the believer who discovered the boundary while counting trees in the dark.
It's twenty past five on a November afternoon, and the light has about eleven minutes left in it.
She's out counting the trees because the insurance wants a number and she has put it off since September. Forty one in the old orchard, which she knew, and then she walks the far hedge because the light is going and she wants it done.
There's a post out there she has never properly looked at. Older than the fence attached to it, split at the top, leaning about fifteen degrees, and standing a good six feet outside the line the current fence runs.
Somebody's boundary once. Not hers, not her father's. Somebody before both of them decided the orchard ended six feet further out than it does now. A later somebody moved the fence in, and the post stayed where it was because nobody had a reason to pull it.
She stands looking at it with the light going and thinks about her friend Jean, who she has known for nineteen years, and who she realized in September that she does not quite count.
You can find an inherited boundary standing in your own field, left there by somebody you never met. The written Word says the Lord knows the ones who are His, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps that knowing in His hands.
What She Noticed in September
It wasn't a falling out. That's what made it so difficult to see and so difficult to say.
Jean had been talking about something God had done, in her own way, in words that belonged to her own tradition rather than to this one. And a thing had moved in the back of the listening, small and quick, that translated what Jean said into something slightly less real than it would have been from somebody else.
Not disbelief. A discount. A tiny automatic reduction applied at the point of hearing, and applied to a woman who has driven her to two hospital appointments.
You know that discount. It isn't hostility, and a person can hold it for forty years while being kind, hospitable and genuinely fond. It's a rate, not an opinion, and nobody ever set it consciously.
The Seal on the Foundation
Here's Paul, writing to Timothy at a point where the young man is anxious about who is really standing:
Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his.2 Timothy 2:19 (KJV)
Notice what is called sure. Not Timothy's read on the people around him, and not Paul's, though Paul knew them and had been right about a great many.
The foundation stands sure, and the seal on it is the Lord's knowledge. That's the boundary, properly set, by somebody with the standing to set it, and neither man in the letter is handed the mallet.
The real boundary is sealed by God's knowing and was never left to your assessment. The written Word gives the knowing to Him, and the Holy Spirit keeps it where it was placed.
The Post Is Older Than Anybody Who Believes It
Here's what I'd carry out of that field if I could take a single thing away with me.
The strange authority of that post comes entirely from its age. It's leaning, split, attached to nothing, and holding up no wire at all, and it still reads as a boundary because it is plainly older than she is.
Age is not a claim. A post that has stood for ninety years has not thereby become correct. It has only become difficult to question, and those two get confused constantly in fields, in families, in churches.
The discount she applies to Jean is that post. Older than her, set by somebody she never met, holding up nothing, and still standing in the middle of a field she owns.
Age makes a boundary hard to question, and never once makes it correct. The written Word seals the real boundary with God's own knowing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can free you from a post that holds up nothing.
Nothing Here Sets a New Post
Let me be plain, because there's a version of this message that would do harm and I refuse to write it.
I am not going to tell you who counts. That is not a question I have been handed, and a message that answered it would have driven a fresh post into the same field and called it a survey.
I'm also not announcing that everybody is in, which is the identical act performed from the other direction. Both are a person with a mallet doing work the verse gives to God.
You can pull the post without setting another one. Scripture hands the knowing back to God rather than reassigning it, and the Holy Spirit does the knowing rather than the resetting.
The Rate You Can Stop Applying
Here's the turn, and it's quieter than a decision and steadier than a mood.
That discount was never coldness in you. It was a rate set by somebody before you were born, applied automatically at the moment of hearing, to a woman who has driven you to hospital and sat two hours with an unturned paperback. Nobody set it deliberately, and nobody has thought to walk the far hedge and look at the post.
You have walked it now. Split at the top, leaning, attached to nothing, and six feet outside where the fence actually runs.
You can hand Jean's belonging back to the One whose seal it is. The written Word says the Lord knows them that are His, and the Holy Spirit makes the line I was handed is not the one He draws a place to rest rather than a new fence.
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 the light gone and the count finished.
He knows His own, and the boundary I inherited was never the one He drew. The Word of God says the foundation of God stands sure, sealed by the fact that the Lord knows them that are His, so the belonging of my friend was never mine to weigh. I hand her standing back to God's knowing rather than to a post I did not set, and the Holy Spirit keeps it there. I am not required to apply a rate that somebody fixed before I was born. Everything good my family handed me stays with me, and this one goes back rather than on to anybody else. When Jean tells me what God has done, I can hear it at full value.
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.
2 Timothy 2:19
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.
