You have wanted to say it again since about the spring before last.
And every time you have thought about it, a picture has arrived without being invited, and in the picture there is a building and a minister and a woman in a hat, and you are standing at the front in a jacket you do not own.
And you have not wanted that. Not because it is wrong. Because it is not you and it never has been and it never once was.
So the wanting has been sitting there for two years with nowhere to go.
Before anything else, and this stands at the top and is never softened: if you cannot say it today, you are not failing at anything. There is nothing on this page pushing anybody anywhere. Some men arrive here on a day when it will not come, and that is a real day and it is not a verdict.
For everybody else, the picture in your head is not from the Bible. Let me show you where these things actually happen.
In the open, on a plain
There is a moment near the end of Deuteronomy where a very large promise gets made, and I want you to notice the setting.
I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life (Deuteronomy 30:19, King James Version)
Heaven and earth as the witnesses. Not a building. Not an assembly, although there is one. The sky and the ground.
That whole speech is delivered outdoors, on a plain, to people standing on dirt at the end of a very long walk. There is no roof anywhere in the chapter.
You are able to do this outdoors under the same two witnesses, and Deuteronomy has never once required a building for a large thing to be said. Deuteronomy 30:19 calls heaven and earth to record in the open air, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a gravel road a legitimate location.
And the language is not ceremonial. Choose life. Two words, plain, spoken to men who had spent forty years outside.
You have a place already, and the word has never once made a room the condition of a promise being said. The passage puts the witnesses in the sky and the ground, and the Spirit of God is the one who receives a sentence said at a fence line.
Where the picture came from
Let me deal with the picture, because until you can see where it came from it will keep arriving.
Most people have been to a renewal. Probably more than one. Somebody's twenty fifth, in a church hall, with a cake. And it was lovely and everybody enjoyed it and it went into your head as the form of the thing.
That is how forms get set. Not by teaching. By one afternoon in nineteen ninety eight that nobody intended as an instruction.
And the trouble with a form set that way is that it excludes every other form without ever announcing it. So a man who does not want the hall concludes he does not want to say it at all, when in fact he wants very much to say it and does not want the hall.
You are able to want the saying without wanting the occasion, and no verse has ever once bundled those together. Deuteronomy 30:19 has the largest promise in the book made outdoors with no ceremony around it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates a saying from an event.
You made a promise years ago and you have kept it in trucks and kitchens and hospital corridors, and the saying of it again has never once needed a room the keeping did not need. It is written that heaven and earth were called to record, and the Spirit of God is the one who is standing on the road where a man actually is.
One sentence, wherever you are standing
Here is the assignment and it is one sentence and the location is yours.
Say one sentence of it again, out loud, to God, with today's knowledge in it.
On a gravel road. At a gate. In a truck cab with the engine off. Wherever you actually are, which is the same place Deuteronomy happens.
You are standing under the two witnesses that verse names, and Deuteronomy has never once required a roof for a large thing to be said. Deuteronomy 30:19 calls heaven and earth to record in the open air, and the Holy Spirit is the one who receives a sentence said on gravel.
Something like: I said I would stay, and I know now what that has meant, and I say it again standing here.
Out loud, alone, to God. Not to her, not as an event, and nobody needs to know it happened.
And if it will not come today, leave it and go on with the work. Nothing here is asking for anything you do not have.
You are able to say it where you stand, and the ground under you has never once been the wrong ground. Deuteronomy 30:19 puts the record in heaven and earth with no building anywhere, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present at a fence line while a man says one sentence.
Here is what I believe is going out over somebody this morning.
You are not a man who does not want to say it, and four years of avoiding a hall has never once been four years of avoiding the promise. Deuteronomy 30:19 calls heaven and earth to record in the open air, and it is the Holy Spirit, not my telling you, who takes a form set by one afternoon out of a man's way.
And this, which is what I came with.
You have the whole of the outdoors available as a place for it, and it has never once required a roof to count. The word puts the record in the sky and the ground, and the same Spirit who moved Deuteronomy is standing in the hall with you.
One sentence. Where you actually are.
Declare this over yourself
- Notion that it has to happen in a building, you were never in the text. Deuteronomy 30:19 calls heaven and earth to record with no roof over any of it, so by the Holy Spirit I say it on the road this week, in the name of Jesus.
- Hall with a cake in it, you are not the only form there is. The word puts the largest promise in that book on open ground with no ceremony around it, and by the Spirit of God I am done letting one afternoon set the shape of this.
- Father, You took a promise on a plain with the sky and the ground as the witnesses. Your word says I call heaven and earth to record this day, so by Your Spirit I say one sentence of it again standing where I am, with what I know in it.
Deuteronomy 30:19
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