He has a phrase for it and he has been using it for eleven years without ever once hearing himself.
Somebody will ask about that stretch and he says, that was the time God was not there. Says it plainly, without bitterness, the way a man reports the weather in a year he was not around for. Nobody has ever pushed back on it, because of what happened, and because he is not the sort of man you push.
He is not angry. That is what people get wrong about him. He is not shaking his fist at anybody. He has simply filed a season of his own life under a heading, and the heading has become so familiar that it does not sound like a claim any more. It sounds like a fact about a date.
And underneath it there is a second thing he has never said, which is that if God was not there then, he does not fully trust that God is here now, and he has been running on that quietly for over a decade.
If you have a heading like that on a stretch of your life, come and lean on this tailgate a while. I am not going to explain what happened to you, and I am not going to tell you what the season was for.
The phrase is doing more than reporting
Let us look at the sentence itself, because eleven years of saying it has worn it smooth enough to be invisible.
That was the time God was not there is not a description. It is a verdict, and it was passed in the worst month of a man's life by a man in no condition to be running a courtroom, and it has never been reviewed since because nobody argues with a man about that.
Nothing about that is a character failure. A person in a wreck reaches for whatever explanation is nearest, and that one was nearest, and it stayed.
You were not left there. Nothing that happened in that season was God stepping out of it, and nothing about it put you outside His reach. I am not saying that to smooth it over. The written word says the LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit (Psalm 34:18), which puts His nearness precisely where a man least believes it, and the Holy Spirit brings it to bear in a yard eleven years on.
What He said about the water
Here is what steadied me on this, and it is not an explanation of your season.
There is a promise in the prophets that is worth reading slowly, because of what it does not say.
When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee.Isaiah 43:2
Notice the preposition. Through. Not around, not instead of, not above. The promise does not say the water will not happen, and it does not say why it happens, and it makes no attempt to justify it.
What it puts on the record is one thing only, which is company in it. He goes through the water with a man. That is the whole claim of the verse and it does not go any further, and neither will I.
You had somebody in the water with you, and the Word makes that claim and stops. That is written exactly that way and preserved without an explanation attached, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes it land in a man who has been reporting the weather of a year he thinks he got through on his own.
Nothing is being added to your season
Something has to be said very plainly here, because this is where somebody usually starts building.
I am not going to tell you what the accident was for. Not a lesson, not a plan, not a shaping, not something God allowed in order to produce something. Anybody offering you that was not in the vehicle and was not in the months after it, and a season a man survived is not raw material for somebody else's theology.
You have one claim in this article and it is the whole of it: He was there. Nothing is being said about why, because nobody honest knows. Scripture says whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence (Psalm 139:7), which is asked as a question with no available answer, and the Holy Spirit is the One who was in that season on the worst night of it.
And if that stretch left more behind than anybody in this yard knows, if sleep has gone, if the evenings have started to frighten, talk to somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, a crisis line, and the emergency services if there is danger to anybody tonight. That is not going around God. It is one of the ways He keeps people.
Here is the turn. It is not an explanation, because I have not got one and I am not going to build one for you.
God was in that place and you did not know it. He was near you on the worst night of it, and nothing that happened there put you outside His reach. The written word says when thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee (Isaiah 43:2), which claims company and refuses to claim anything else, and the Holy Spirit, not the wording, is the one who proves it true about your actual season rather than about hard years in general.
I cannot tell you why any of it happened. Nobody honest can, and the ones who tried were guessing at your expense. What I can tell you is that the heading you have been using for eleven years is not the name of that season, and that the fog was never the country.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in your own voice. What gives these words their weight is that you are in Christ, and it was never issued on the strength of how well you came through anything. The ground under it is Scripture and the life in it is the Holy Spirit instead of just settled, and what God does about the years since, and when, is His, and the outcome is His, and nothing on this page claims to know it.
- Season after the accident, you are eleven years old in my mouth and you are not the stretch God was absent from. Isaiah 43 says when thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, which claims company and refuses to claim anything else, and the Holy Spirit was in the water. In the name of Jesus I take the heading off you.
- Verdict I passed in the worst month of my life, God has never said you over me, and you are not leaning on this tailgate tomorrow. Psalm 34 says the Lord is nigh unto them of a broken heart, which puts His nearness exactly where a man least believes it, and His Spirit has been there for all eleven years. I am saying the date tonight without the phrase on the end.
- Father, You were in that place and I did not know it, and Psalm 139 asks where a man could go from Your Spirit and leaves the question standing open. I thank You that Your Spirit never once required me to have felt You in order to have been with me. Here is the season by its date, out loud, and here is one sentence to You about it.
Isaiah 43:2
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