They met at twenty-two over a shared wall at work and it was one of those friendships that happens fast and then simply keeps going.
His friend was the one who talked. Not preaching, and never once in a way that made him want to leave the room. It came up the way things come up between two men who see each other every day, over about two years, in the way that ordinary conversation contains everything.
And then it landed. He would put it at a specific week, and he could name the road he was on.
That was nineteen years ago.
His friend does not believe any of it now.
It was not a fall. Nobody was hurt and there is nothing to describe and no scandal to be careful about. It came apart over about four years, quietly, in a way that his friend has explained to him twice, honestly, without any anger and without trying to take him with him.
The last conversation about it was two years ago and it was gentle and it was final, and what his friend said at the end of it was, I hope it stays true for you, and he meant it, and it was the kindest and worst sentence anybody has ever said to him.
So here he is at forty-one.
He still believes. That is not the crisis and he would say so plainly. He goes, he prays, he reads, and there has been no drift.
What there is instead is a specific and constant small ache, which is this: the man who showed me the door has walked back out of it, and he is not stupid, and he has thought about it more than I have.
That is the thing that arrives when he cannot sleep. Not doubt about God. A worry about his own reasoning, which he cannot answer because his friend genuinely is the cleverer of the two of them and always was.
And you have somebody who has gone. Not fallen, just gone, and you cannot work out what it means that they saw more of it than you and left.
He was asked whether he would go too, and he answered with a question
There is a moment in John six that people usually read as a triumphant confession, and it is not. It is bleaker and much more useful than that.
A great many disciples have just walked away over a hard teaching. Not enemies. Disciples. And the crowd thins out, and Jesus turns to the twelve and asks them a genuinely open question: do you want to go away as well.
And Peter answers, and notice that he does not answer with a boast about his own conviction.
Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."John 6:68
He answers with a question. Where would we go.
That is not a man who is unshakeable. That is a man who has looked at the alternatives honestly and cannot find one, and who says so out loud in front of everybody, while others are still leaving.
You are allowed to stay on that ground, and it is the ground the first disciple stood on when the room emptied. It is written, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life (John 6:68), and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a question like that hold a man up, which is a stranger and stronger thing than certainty.
Now your ache, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a comfort.
He is not stupid, and he has thought about it more than I have.
That may well be true, and this page is not going to pretend that intelligence is on your side of the argument, because that is a cheap move and you would see through it.
But consider what is actually being weighed. You are treating his conclusion as a superior computation performed on the same data. It is not. He is a man who lived a life over four years, and things happened in it, and at the end of it he holds a different view, and neither of you has audited the process that got him there, including him.
You are comparing verdicts and not arguments, and you have never actually been shown the working. Scripture says the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned (1 Corinthians 2:14), and it is the Holy Spirit who does that discerning, which is not a function of anybody's cleverness in either direction.
And the sentence at the end of the last conversation.
I hope it stays true for you.
You called it the kindest and worst thing anybody has said to you, and both halves of that are exactly right. It is kind because it is generous and it costs him something to say. It is worst because it hands you a doubt wrapped in affection, and there is no way to reject the doubt without seeming to reject the affection.
But you can hold the affection and put the doubt down, and those are separable even though they arrived in the same sentence.
You can keep the friendship whole and decline the sentence inside it. It is written that the Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I will hope in him (Lamentations 3:24), and it is His Spirit who makes God a portion in a man, which is not something a friend's opinion has ever been able to reach.
And the nineteen years, which have gone missing from your own account.
You came in nineteen years ago. Your friend's role in that was about two years long and it ended when it landed on a road you could name.
Everything since is yours. Nineteen years of praying, and one very hard stretch you got through, and a life built on it, and none of that was his and none of it depends on what he currently thinks.
You have nineteen years of your own and your friend was in two of them. Scripture says taste and see that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:8), and it is the Holy Spirit who gives a man his own tasting, which is the only kind there has ever been.
So answer the question tonight.
Not to your friend. Nobody is asking you to have another conversation, and the last one was gentle and final and should stay where it is.
Answer it to yourself, out loud, the way Peter did. Do you also want to go away. And then say where you would go, and say it honestly, and see whether there is anywhere.
You have looked at the alternatives and there is nowhere else, and that is not a failure of imagination, it is the oldest confession there is. It is written, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life (John 6:68), and it is the Holy Spirit who keeps a man standing in a thinning room, which is exactly what He was doing on the day that question was first asked.
Your friend showed you where it was. He did not build it, and he cannot take it with him.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud in the courtyard with the lanterns going on. You have the right to speak them because you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and that standing was given to you rather than earned by having a friend who stayed. Scripture is the ground under every line and the Holy Spirit is what makes them live in a person. Speak first to the question, then to the worry that arrives when you cannot sleep, then turn and speak to Him. However He answers about your friend, that part is His.
- Question of whether I go too, you are asked and I am answering it tonight. The Word gave a man a question to stand on when the room emptied, and I have looked, and there is nowhere else.
- Worry that the cleverer of us has seen further, you are put down in the name of Jesus. It is written that the things of the Spirit are spiritually discerned, and the Spirit does that discerning, and He has never once handed it out according to who is quicker.
- Lord, he showed me where the road was and he did not build it and he cannot take it with him. Nineteen years are mine and two of them were his, and every one of them was Yours before it was anybody's.
John 6:68
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.
