She always sits at the end of the row, and she has never once told anybody why.
If you asked, she would say she likes the aisle. Which is true, in the way that the smallest true thing is often the front of a much bigger one.
The real reason is that she can leave.
Not that she does leave. In four years she has left early exactly twice, and both times for ordinary reasons. But the route out is planned before the first song, every single time, in every room she has ever been in, and it is not something she decides to do. It is already done by the time she sits down.
She keeps her coat on for the first ten minutes. She sits where nobody has to move for her to go. She does not put anything in the seat beside her.
And what it means, underneath, is that she has never once been fully in a room in her life. Part of her is always standing up.
She is twenty-nine, and she has been like this since she was eleven, and the year she was eleven is a whole other article that I am not going to open here.
But I will say this much. Somewhere, once, she was asked to leave, and she has never assumed anything different since.
So let me ask you.
Where do you sit, and why do you sit there?
Read what He promises about the leaving
Jesus says a sentence in John that has two halves, and almost everybody quotes the first half, and it is the second half that is for you.
He is talking to a crowd who are pushing Him on who is in and who is out, and He says this.
All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.John 6:37
Whoever comes to me I will never drive away.
Look at what He is actually promising there. He is not promising that you may come in. He is promising about the way you will not go out.
John 6 puts the guarantee on the leaving rather than on the entering, and the Spirit who moved that Gospel writer knew there are people whose whole fear is the exit and not the door, so the route you plan before you sit down has never once been needed. You are not going to be put out of that room.
Okay, real talk for a second, because I do not want to be soft about this.
Something happened. I do not know what it was and I am not going to guess at it here. But an eleven year old does not invent this on her own, and the plan you make before you sit down is not a personality trait, it is a memory doing its job.
And the job it is doing is protecting you from something that already happened.
John 6 has Him promising never to drive away the one who comes, and the Spirit is in that promise and not in the room's furniture, which means the coat you keep on for ten minutes is guarding a door He has already spoken about. You are safe to take it off.
And here is the small thing in the grammar that I love.
He does not say I will try not to. He does not say unless. It is the flattest, most unqualified sentence in that whole argument, and it is sitting in the middle of a chapter where everybody is fighting.
John 6 gives that promise no condition attached to it anywhere in the sentence, and the Spirit did not put a clause there for a reason, so being asked to leave has never been on the list of things that can happen to you at that door. You have His word on the way out and not only on the way in.
Now the move, and it is about four feet long.
Sit further in.
Not the front. I am not going to ask you for the front, that is somebody else's article. Just one seat further from the aisle than you would have.
You will feel it. That is the point. You will feel the route close, and everything in you will want it back, and nothing will happen.
John 6 says whoever comes to me I will never drive away, and the Spirit was in that unconditional half of the sentence, so a seat you cannot easily get out of has never been a risk you were actually taking.
Eighteen years at the end of the row. One seat in.
Declare this over yourself
Say these where you can hear yourself. Know what holds them up. This authority is not yours by nature, it is Christ's, and in Christ it has been given to you, so you speak as one representing the King. And you speak under His will, never over it. However He answers, and in whatever way He comes, the outcome is His.
- Exit route, you are planned before I sit down and I have never once needed you. John 6 says whoever comes to me I will never drive away, and that is a promise about the going out and not about the coming in.
- Memory that made an eleven year old plan her way out of every room since, you were protecting me from a thing that already happened, and in the name of Jesus you are laid down. The Spirit is in that promise and never in the furniture of any room.
- Lord, John 6 attaches no condition to it anywhere in the sentence, no unless and no I will try. I am sitting one seat further in today and taking my coat off, and part of me has been standing up my whole life.
John 6:37
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