Six Years in the Same Line

The line forms on the right hand side, from the front, and it usually runs about eleven people deep by the second song, and the ministry team pray two at a time so it moves steadily.

Renita has been in that line about forty times.

Not always for the same thing. She has stood in it for her son, twice, and for a neighbor with a diagnosis, and once for a whole department at work that was going through something.

But there is one thing she has brought into that line more times than all the rest put together, and it is the thing from six years ago, and she is in the line for it again tonight.

She is forty nine. The people who pray are good people and one of them, a man named Curtis, has prayed with her enough times that he knows without her saying, and he never says so, which is one of the kindest things anybody has ever done for her.

She believes she was forgiven for it. She would say so plainly to anybody, at any volume, in any room.

And the line is eleven deep and she is seventh.

If there is a line you keep standing in, this is written for you. And I want to give you one word out of Hebrews, because it is a citizenship word and it changes where a person is standing.

Boldness is a citizenship word

Here is the verse.

Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus.

Now, boldness sounds like a temperament. It sounds like nerve, like the quality of the person who goes first, and a woman who has spent six years in a line might reasonably conclude she does not have much of it.

The word is not about temperament at all.

It is a political word. In the ancient world it named the right a free citizen had to speak in the public assembly: to stand up, without a patron, without an intermediary, and say what they had come to say. It was a status. Slaves and foreigners did not have it. Citizens did, and having it did not depend on how confident anybody felt on the day.

So the verse is not saying be brave enough to go in. It is saying: this right is held.

You are holding a right of entry rather than being asked to summon a quality. Hebrews 10:19 uses the word for a citizen's standing to speak, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes a written status and makes it real in a person, so this does not rest on how much of it lands in a church aisle.

Now I want to be careful here, because a woman who has stood in that line forty times could hear all of this as a rebuke and it is nothing of the kind.

Nothing here forbids you to stand in the line. That line is a good thing. Curtis is a good thing. Being prayed with by another believer is one of the ordinary glories of the Christian life and I would not take a syllable of it away from anybody.

What the verse removes is not the freedom. It removes the necessity. May and must, and the whole of this article lives in that gap.

You have had a necessity lifted rather than a good practice criticized, and those two are not connected at all. It is written as a declaration of standing and not as a word against anybody in a line, and His Spirit is the one carrying a lifted necessity into a life, which is why it holds while you are seventh of eleven.

Enter into the holiest

Then look at where the right runs to, because it is not a modest destination.

Boldness to enter into the holiest.

Not the courtyard. Not as far as the veil. The holiest, which in that building was the one room nobody went into, ever, except one man, once a year, with blood and with enormous care, and the whole nation understood that this was the arrangement and had understood it for centuries.

And the verse hands that room to brethren, plural, ordinary people, and gives them a citizen's right to walk in.

Which puts a prayer line in perspective, and I say this with real affection for prayer lines. A woman standing seventh of eleven waiting for access is standing in line for a room she already has the right to enter directly.

That is not a criticism of her. Nobody ever told her. It is very easy to spend years in a good practice without anybody mentioning that the thing the practice reaches toward is already held.

You have direct right of entry to the room you have been waiting at the door of. Scripture names the holiest as the destination and gives the right to the brethren, and the same Spirit at work in that letter is the one testifying inside a person now.

Something belongs here in the middle where nobody can skip it. If the line has become the only place you can breathe, if the nights have been getting long, or if the thinking has traveled out past regret toward wishing to be gone, get a person alongside you. Talk to your doctor. Sit down with a counselor. If tonight is a dark one, call or text 988 or your local crisis line and let another human being be with you in it. That is not a lesser road than prayer and it is not a fault in anybody's faith. God has always worked through people, and one sitting across from you is part of what He is doing rather than an alternative to it.

By the blood of Jesus

And then the clause that says how the right was obtained, because a citizenship word raises the obvious question, which is how anybody got the citizenship.

By the blood of Jesus.

Not by application. Not by good standing in the community. Not by having been in that church for twenty seven years or by anybody's record of service, and not, crucially, by the number of times a person has come forward.

It was conferred, at a cost, by somebody else, once.

And a right conferred that way is not a thing that degrades with use or with disuse. It does not need renewing at the end of a period. A citizen does not become less of a citizen for having gone six years without speaking in the assembly, and does not become more of one by speaking forty times.

You hold a right that was conferred rather than earned, and it does not move with how often you use it. Hebrews 10:19 grounds the boldness in the blood of Jesus and not in anybody's practice, and the Spirit takes what is written and makes it living in a body.

I am not going to tell you that you stay in your seat next week. Six years of a thing goes at the pace it goes and if you are in the line on Wednesday it would not mean one thing had failed. Nobody has any business handing you a date, and Curtis will pray with you gladly and it will be a good thing.

You are clean right now standing seventh of eleven, and the line has never once been a witness about you. It is written and it is conferred, and it is His Spirit rather than the strength of your agreement who makes a conferred thing real in a body.