Twenty-Three Times

Twenty-three times I went into a cold room certain I might not come out of it.

Twenty-three times, God brought me back.

I know what it is to call the people you love just in case, and then get up three days later and drive to treatment like it was nothing.

The fuller account is in my memoir. What I want to preach about is the particular kind of endurance it takes when the hard thing is not one event but a returning one.

Maybe you have something in your life that keeps returning. Not one catastrophe you survived and closed behind you. Something that comes back, on a schedule or without one, and every time it comes it asks for another piece of you.

Maybe it is a test result. A phone call. A court date. A relapse. A procedure. A conversation you have to have all over again with somebody who never changes. Maybe it is a room you keep having to walk back into.

And Your Body Knows Before Your Mind Does

And maybe you have noticed something about yourself that unsettles you. The phone rings and your stomach drops before you ever look at the screen. You see the envelope and your hands go cold. You have not read one word yet and you are already braced.

Let me say this plainly, because I do not think anybody has told you. That is not a lack of faith. That is a body that has learned something. God made you with a nervous system that remembers, and it is doing exactly what it was designed to do, which is protect you from a thing that has hurt you before. It is not a spiritual failure. It is anatomy.

Paul Kept a List

And Scripture does not pretend this away. In Second Corinthians 11, Paul lists what he had been through, and it is a catalogue of repetition. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck. Five times. Three times. Three times. He counted. That is a man who knew exactly how many, which means he carried each one.

And then he adds the phrase that gets me every time: in perils oft. In deaths oft. Oft. Repeatedly. Not once heroically. Over and over.

And He Said It Plainly

And in Second Corinthians 1 he says of one season, we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life. We despaired even of life. That is an apostle saying he did not think he was going to make it. And then, but we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead. He does not say the repetition made him stronger by itself. He says it moved his trust off himself and onto the God who raises the dead.

Daily Deliverance for Daily Danger

And Psalm 68:19 says, blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits. Daily. Because daily is how the trouble comes. And Lamentations says His mercies are new every morning. That is not poetry about sunrises. It is logistics. God supplies on the same schedule the trouble arrives on.

Do Not Shame Your Body

First, stop condemning yourself for the bracing. When you feel that drop in your chest, do not add a second layer of suffering by telling yourself a real believer would not react that way. Jesus in Gethsemane sweat as it were great drops of blood. His body responded to what was coming. That was not a failure of faith in the Son of God, and it is not one in you.

Speak to Yourself Before the Thing Arrives

Second, get ahead of it with your mouth. David said in Psalm 42, why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? Hope thou in God. He is not describing his feelings. He is instructing them. And he does it while they are still going. So before you walk into the room, before you open the envelope, say something out loud. God has brought me through this twenty-two times. He is not going to stop on the twenty-third.

Keep the Count on Purpose

Third, count the deliverances, not just the events. This is why the number matters to me. Twenty-three times I thought it might be the end. Twenty-three times He brought me out. And that second number is a testimony, not a coincidence. First Samuel 7:12 says Samuel set up a stone and called it Ebenezer, saying, hitherto hath the Lord helped us. Hitherto. Up to this exact point. That is a running total, and God told His people to build monuments to it precisely because human beings forget deliverances faster than they forget dangers.

And Let People Walk You In

And fourth, do not do the returning thing alone if you can help it. Somebody can drive you. Somebody can sit in the waiting room. Somebody can be on the phone before and after. Ecclesiastes says woe to him that is alone when he falleth. Repetition is exhausting, and exhaustion is precisely when isolation does the most damage.

So let me say the thing I most want you to carry. I know what that drop in the chest is. I know what it is to call the people you love just in case.

And I need you to know the truer thing too.

Twenty-three times I went into that cold room certain I might not come out of it. Twenty-three times, God brought me back. I am still here.

So when the thing comes back around again, and it will, you do not walk in on the strength of your feelings. You walk in on a record. Count it up. Whatever your number is, He has been at every single one. And He has not missed one yet.