He could recite the list. That is the thing. Six years on, he could stand up and give it to you in order, because he has been carrying it around like a card in a wallet.
Be consistent. Get up before the house does. Deal with the thing you keep going back to. Get your attitude right about your brother in law. Be hungry, and if you are not hungry, ask to be made hungry, and mean the asking. Then heaven opens.
He has kept about four of those, four days out of seven, for six years, and every time he gets a run going, something goes and he loses it, and the run resets, and the list stands there completely undamaged, waiting for him to start again on the Monday.
What he has never said out loud is the sum he has quietly arrived at, which is that whatever the people talking about an open heaven are experiencing, it belongs to a kind of person he is not going to manage to become.
He is not angry about it. He would say the teaching is right and he is the problem.
If there is a list like that in your wallet, come and sit down. I want to have a look at it with you, and I am not going to hand you a better one.
Whoever gave you the list was not lying to you
Let us be fair to them first, because bitterness would be an easy sell here and it would ruin you.
The person who handed you that list was almost certainly describing something real. They did get up early, and things did happen, and they told you what they had done because they wanted you to have what they have got. That is love, delivered badly.
What went wrong is not their honesty. It is the arithmetic. They took a description of their own life and turned it into a mechanism, and a mechanism has a lever, and a lever can be pulled wrongly, and now there is a man with a card in his wallet who thinks he is the fault in the system.
You are not the fault in any system. There is no mechanism here, so there is nothing for you to be failing at. That is not me being gentle: it is written flatly, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us (Titus 3:5), and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that land in a man who has been resetting his run every Monday for six years.
God opened it from His side, before anybody asked
Here is what Scripture actually shows, every single time the sky comes open.
Nobody down here does it. The flood, the voice at the water, the Spirit coming down at Pentecost on people who were sitting in a room: in each one, the opening comes from above, and the people underneath are recipients and not operators. Not once does somebody meet a standard and heaven respond by opening.
And the biggest one is the one that happened without anybody's permission at all.
And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom.Matthew 27:51
From the top. Not from the bottom. That direction is the whole doctrine in one detail, and Matthew wrote it down on purpose: the tearing was done from the side nobody could reach.
You are not standing outside anything, and there is no key in your hand that God is waiting on. The written word says we have boldness to enter by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he hath consecrated for us (Hebrews 10:19 and 20), consecrated being a thing already done to something, and it is the Holy Spirit, and He is the one who makes that a fact you can stand on rather than a verse you can quote.
And I am not going to give you a better list
This is where a page like this usually goes wrong, so let me be careful.
I am not replacing your list with a subtler one. I am not going to tell you that the real condition is sincerity, or hunger, or the right heart posture, or surrender, or getting your motives clean first. Every one of those is the same card with nicer handwriting, and the man in the kitchen would simply start failing at the new one by Wednesday.
There is no condition. Not a hidden one, not a spiritual one, not a small one you could probably manage.
You are welcome now, in the state you are actually in this morning, with the run broken and the list undone. The written word puts it as plainly as it can be put, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8), and yet is the word doing the work there, and the Spirit is what turns that from doctrine into relief in a man who has been waiting to qualify.
And one more thing, because six years of failing at a list wears on a person. If what you are carrying has gone heavier than disappointment lately, if you are not sleeping or you are frightened for yourself, ring somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, or a crisis line, and the emergency services if you or anybody near you is in danger tonight. That is not a failure of faith. It is one of the ways God keeps people.
So here is the turn, and it does not start on a Monday.
God is open toward you because that is who He is, and it was never something you switched on. The written word says every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning (James 1:17), and no shadow of turning is a sentence about God's disposition being steady when yours is not, and the Holy Spirit is the one making that steady in you this morning while the list sits on the table undone.
I cannot tell you what God does about the particular thing you have been waiting for, or when. What I can tell you is that you have not been outside, and the six years of resets did not put you there, and there is nothing left for you to qualify for.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in your kitchen, in your own voice. The right to speak like this is yours in Christ and it is not issued on the strength of the run you have going. The written word is the ground under it and the Holy Spirit is what keeps it living rather than merely decided, and what God does about the thing you have been waiting for, and when, is His, in His own way and in His own time, and nothing on this page claims to know which.
- List I have been failing for six years, you are finished and you were never the door. Matthew 27 has the veil torn from the top down, from the side I could never reach, and the Holy Spirit had the direction written down on purpose. In the name of Jesus I put you face down on the table and I leave you there.
- Belief that this belongs to a kind of person I will never become, God has never said you over me, and you are not resetting my Monday any more. It is not by works of righteousness which I have done but according to His mercy (Titus 3:5), and Christ died for us while we were yet sinners, and His Spirit is making that plain in me with the run broken and the list undone. I am not the fault in the system.
- Father, You are the Father of lights with no variableness and no shadow of turning, and James 1 says so, and Your Spirit has held You open toward me through every week I thought I was outside. I thank You that You opened it from Your side before anybody asked and that You have never once been waiting on me. The paper is face down and I am going to put the kettle on.
Titus 3:5
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