I Am Waiting For Confirmation

She has a notebook and in it there is a list of things that might have been confirmations, and next to each one, in her own handwriting, a reason it probably was not.

A verse that came up twice in four days. Probably because she was already thinking about it.

A woman she barely knows saying something in a prayer meeting that landed like a hand on her shoulder. Probably a coincidence, and anyway that woman says a lot of things.

A conversation on a plane, of all places, that went exactly where it needed to go. That one has three lines of reasons underneath it.

Six years.

She asks. She asks properly and often and with a genuinely open hand. She is not a woman playing games with God and anybody who knew her would tell you that.

And every single time something arrives that might be an answer, she runs it through the same process, which is asking whether she could have produced it herself, and the answer is always technically yes, and so it goes in the notebook with a reason next to it and she stays exactly where she is.

She is fifty-one and she has been standing still for six years, because acting on a maybe is presumption, and presumption is the one thing she is genuinely afraid of.

What this page will not do

Straight out, because you will be testing every sentence I write and that is fine.

Nothing here is going to tell you what you are for. There is no list at the bottom, no exercise, nothing designed to be taken as a diagnosis.

And nothing here is going to tell you that six years of asking was disobedience. It was not. You have been afraid of presumption, which is a real thing to be afraid of, and you have been holding an open hand the entire time.

And nothing here is going to tell you that any of the things in the notebook were confirmations. I have no idea. I was not there and I am not going to interpret a stranger's life from a distance.

You are not being corrected and nothing is being interpreted for you here. That is not caution on my part. Scripture handles this in one verse about which direction the voice comes from, and the Holy Spirit has never once required a woman to be certain it was Him before He would deal with her.

The word comes from behind

Here is the sentence, and the geography of it is the whole thing.

And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left.Isaiah 30:21

Behind thee.

Not in front. Not a light on the road ahead showing which fork to take. A voice from behind, giving direction to somebody who is already going somewhere.

You cannot hear a word from behind you while standing still and facing every direction at once. The whole image assumes movement. It is a correction voice, a steering voice, and steering is something that only happens to a thing that is already moving.

And notice the last clause: when ye turn to the right hand and when ye turn to the left. The turning is happening. The voice comes into the turning.

You have been asking for a category of guidance that Scripture places behind a person who is already walking, and it cannot reach a stationary listener because it is not that kind of voice. I am not stretching that. Isaiah 30:21 puts the word behind and describes turning already in progress, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a written line like that and lands it on a woman with a notebook full of discounted things.

Presumption is not what you think it is

Now let me say something plain about the word you are afraid of.

Presumption in Scripture is not acting without certainty. It is acting against what God has said. The presumptuous man in Deuteronomy is the one who goes ahead after being told no. Uzzah is not condemned for uncertainty. The men who went up to fight after being told not to are told plainly beforehand.

Presumption has a shape and the shape is contradiction, not uncertainty.

Which means the thing you have been guarding against for six years is not actually the thing that word describes, and the ordinary next duties in front of you have never been in the category of presumption at all, because nothing has been said against them.

You have been afraid of a category you are not standing anywhere near, and the word defines presumption as going against what God has said rather than as moving without certainty. The word is consistent on that in every instance, and the Spirit who searches all things has been with you through six years of open-handed asking and has not been withholding.

And this week is not an answer

Here is where I want to be careful, because you will hear the next paragraph as a technique if I am not exact.

I am not telling you that if you start moving, the confirmations will come. That is a promise about outcomes and I will not make it.

I am not telling you that any of the things in the notebook were God. I do not know.

I am telling you that Scripture puts the steering voice behind a walker, and that the thing being asked of you is one ordinary week, and that a week is not an answer to your six year question and is not meant to be.

One thing. In front of you. Already there. Requiring no interpretation of anything at all.

You are able to do one ordinary thing this week without deciding whether anything in that notebook was Him. Scripture never requires certainty about guidance before a person may do the next obvious duty, and the Spirit who was given to guide is not standing at the end of a confirmation you have not received.