The sheet goes up on the wall by the kitchen door about three weeks before, and it is a single piece of paper with eleven lines on it.
Testimony night is every quarter. It has been going for as long as he has been there. People put their names down, and on the night they stand up one at a time and say what happened to them, and it is one of the warmest evenings that building has, and he has never once written his name on that paper.
Nine quarters. He has walked past it going in and going out, twice a week, for over two years, and he has looked at it every single time.
It is not shyness. He talks in front of people for a living. It is that when he imagines standing up and saying the thing that is actually true about him, he hears how it would sound in that room, and it would sound like nothing. There is no night, no hall, no before and after that anybody could follow. There is the fact that something in him is different and has been for a while, and he could not tell you the shape of it in ninety seconds.
So he clears the plates afterward, which he is good at, and he goes home, and the sheet goes back up three weeks before the next one.
If you have walked past that sheet, pull out a chair. Nothing anybody has ever stood up and said in that room is going to be doubted here.
A sheet of paper is not a register of what God has done
Let us look straight at what that piece of paper actually is, because nine quarters is long enough for a thing to stop being furniture and start being a verdict.
It is a signup sheet. It is eleven lines and a felt tip pen. It was put on the wall to organize an evening, and it has done that job well for years.
What it was never designed to do is measure anybody. It has no column for what happened without an event in it. It cannot hold a change that took a season and had no hour attached, and it was not built badly, it was built for a different purpose entirely.
You are not empty in that building. Nothing about a blank line on a piece of paper has ever been an account of what God has done in you. I am not saying that to be kind about it. The written word says the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit (Romans 8:16), which names where the confirming actually happens and it is not the wall by the kitchen door, and the Holy Spirit is the one doing the witnessing, which is why it holds even on a night when nobody is being told.
Where the confirming happens
Here is what moved this for me, and it questions nothing anybody has stood up and said.
Look at what that verse puts in the position of the witness, because it is not what a testimony night puts there.
The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.Romans 8:16
Beareth witness. That is courtroom language, and the one giving evidence is the Holy Spirit, and the one He gives it to is your own spirit. It is an internal transaction. There is nobody else in the room in that verse. There is no audience, no eleven lines, no ninety seconds.
Which means the confirming was done, and it was done in the place He chose to do it, and it did not require an evening in a hall to be completed.
You were witnessed to directly, and Scripture puts that exchange between His Spirit and yours. That is written into the verse itself, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes it land in a man who has cleared a great many plates.
Nothing here doubts a single story from that room
Something has to be said very plainly, or this becomes a quiet complaint about an evening full of people he loves.
They stood up and said true things. Those were real, those were God, and there is nothing on this page suggesting that a story with a night and a hall in it is overstated, or that the people who told them were performing. Nine quarters of listening has not been nine quarters of listening to fiction.
The relief is not that theirs was smaller than it sounded.
You have something of your own to count, and counting it takes nothing off one person who has stood up in that room. Scripture says there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all (1 Corinthians 12:6), where different workings are traced to one source without either being ranked, and it is the Holy Spirit, and not a signup sheet, who decides which is which.
And if these two years have cost more than anybody in that building knows, if sleep has gone, if walking in on a Sunday has started to frighten, please 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 a detour around God. It is one of the ways He keeps people.
So here is the turn, and it is not a promise that a story with a night in it is coming.
What He gave you was quiet and it was real. Yours does not have to look like theirs. The written word says the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal (1 Corinthians 12:7), where every man reaches the one clearing the plates as squarely as the one at the microphone, and it is the Holy Spirit, not the running order, who sets the form.
I cannot tell you whether an evening with a date on it ever comes to you, and I will not guess at it. Nobody honest would. What I can tell you is that eleven lines on a wall were never the register, and that a man who cannot make his true thing sound like anything in ninety seconds has not therefore been given nothing.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in your own voice. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the standing under these words is His rather than your own. You speak under His will and not yours, and what God does next, and when, is His to decide, however He answers.
- Nine quarters of walking past that sheet, you are a record of what tells well and you are not a record of what God did. Romans 8 says the Spirit Himself bears witness with my spirit, so the confirming was done between Him and me, and the Holy Spirit never once needed a hall for it. In the name of Jesus I take you off the wall.
- Fear that mine would sound like nothing, you are not what God says about me and you are not walking me past that door again. First Corinthians 12 says there are diversities of operations but the same God works all in all, so a different working was never a lesser one, and His Spirit did the working. I am counting what is actually mine.
- Father, the manifestation of Your Spirit is given to every man to profit withal, and First Corinthians 12 puts the one clearing the plates inside that word. I thank You that You witnessed to my spirit directly and asked nobody in that building to countersign it. What He gave me was quiet and it was real.
Romans 8:16
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.
