Bought It Twice Under Two Names

The first time he could live with. Everybody buys something once.

It was after the accident, when he was off work for four months and had a lot of evenings, and it came through a video that came through another video, and the whole thing was about principles and a system and it cost about what a decent tire costs, and he watched most of it and nothing happened and he put it away.

Two years later he bought it again.

Different name on the front. Different man presenting it. Better production, if he is honest. And he was about three sessions in when a phrase came up that he recognized, word for word, and he sat forward, and he went and found the old one on the laptop, and it was the same material with a new coat of paint.

He has never told a living soul about the second one.

Because the first one is a story you could tell at a table. Everybody has got one of those. The second one is not a story, the second one is a finding, and the finding is: I am the kind of man who falls for this.

He is forty four. He runs a crew. Nobody who works with him would ever describe him as gullible, and if you said the word to any of them they would think you were talking about somebody else.

And he has carried that finding about himself for three years and told nobody, and it has quietly changed what he lets himself hope for.

You know that laptop. Yours might not be a course. It might be a relationship, or a job, or a scheme somebody brought you. Once is an event. Twice is where a man stops thinking about the thing and starts thinking about himself.

Sit down by the fire. Coffee is there. There is one line from a prophet that has more fight in it than anything else in this article.

There is no code, and there is a rising

Let me say the plain thing first, because the name over the door of this place promises a secret and I am not going to sell a man a third one.

There is no code. There was nothing in the first one and there was nothing in the second one, and the reason the material was identical is that there is only so much of that material and it goes round and round.

And here is what I am not going to do. I am not going to spend this evening running down the man who fronted it. I never met him. Your peace is not going to be built on somebody else being a crook, because that kind of peace needs a fresh crook every year and it never lets a man sit down.

Here is the line. It is a prophet talking to somebody who is enjoying his failure.

Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the LORD shall be a light unto me.Micah 7:8

Look at the grammar of it. When I fall. Not if. He is not claiming a life without falls. He is standing in the middle of one, being watched by somebody enjoying it, and what he says is: this is not the end position.

And look at what is missing. There is no clause about how many times. There is no line saying when I fall a first time I shall arise but a second time indicates a permanent condition. Nothing in that sentence sets a limit, because the arising does not come from the man's track record, it comes from the Lord being a light in the dark.

You are not disqualified by a second time, and there is no counter anywhere in that verse. That is not a soft thing I am saying by a fire. It is written in Micah 7, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a prophet's line and lays it on a man who has carried a finding about himself for three years.

You have a God who is a light to men sitting in the dark, and the rising was never a function of how many times. Scripture says when I fall, I shall arise, and His Spirit is the one who makes an old defiance sound like it belongs to a man in a truck rather than to somebody in a book.

Now let me say the true thing, because you would spot me going round it.

The second time did not happen because you are gullible. It happened because you were still hungry for the same thing you were hungry for the first time, and nobody had ever answered it, so when it came round again wearing a different coat, the hunger recognized its own shape before your judgement got a look at it.

That is not stupidity. That is an unanswered question. And an unanswered question will keep answering adverts until somebody finally answers the question.

You are not the kind of man who falls for things, and what got you twice was one hunger that nobody had ever fed. Scripture says that the deep calls unto deep, and that God satisfies the longing soul, which puts the hunger itself in a completely different category from a weakness, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man believe that about himself out loud.

And now what I owe you about your mouth, because three years of a private finding does not lift because a friend was decent to you at a fire. Jesus said faith the size of a mustard seed, spoken to a mountain, does what deciding things about yourself never does. So speak, out loud. You have the standing to speak to a finding you made about yourself and tell it what it is not, because you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and Scripture calls that yours by position rather than by judgement, and the Holy Spirit takes a spoken word much further than a truck bed.