There is a particular sound a room makes and Adaeze can hear it from the door.
It is not silence. Silence would be easier and also more honest. It is a drop of about half a tone across a whole foyer, and a very slight increase in the number of people who are looking at their phones, and two conversations that get a little warmer to cover the ones that got quieter.
It lasts perhaps four seconds. Then everything is completely normal and several people are extremely pleased to see her and at least two of them mean it entirely.
She has been walking into that foyer for two years since it happened.
And here is what she has been doing in those two years, which she has never described to anybody because describing it would make it sound mad, and it is not mad, it is just exhausting.
She has been running a campaign.
Not deliberately. It happened by increments. She arrives early because arriving early means being at the table rather than coming through the door. She has become the person who stacks chairs, because a person carrying chairs is doing something rather than being looked at. She agrees a bit faster than she used to. She has stopped saying the second half of opinions.
None of that is dishonest. All of it is small. Together it is a two year campaign for a verdict that has never once been scheduled to be handed down, in a court that does not sit, by people who mostly are not thinking about it at all.
And two of them are. That is true as well, and she is not going to pretend otherwise. There are people in that hall who were genuinely hurt, and their carefulness with her is not a fault in them. It is a reasonable thing that reasonable people do.
And this is where I stop writing about Adaeze, because you have a room.
A foyer, a staff room, a family kitchen at Christmas. I am not going to ask what happened and I am not going to tell you the room should have handled you better.
Look at who is holding the file
I want to give you the two most useful questions in the New Testament, and they were written as a challenge, and nobody has ever answered them.
Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth.Romans 8:33
Read the first line as what it is. It is a challenge thrown open to the entire universe. Anybody. Anyone at all. Who is going to bring a charge here.
And then the answer does not say "nobody would dare". It does something better and much stranger. It answers a question about the charge by naming who does the justifying, which only makes sense if the two questions are actually one question: the person holding the file is the only one with anything to say about it, and it is God, and He has already spoken.
Now put that in a foyer.
You have been treating a room as though it holds the file. Two years of arriving early and stacking chairs and shortening your opinions is what a person does when they believe the verdict is still in the room's hands. It is not in the room's hands. It was never handed over.
So take that at the door, before you go in. You are justified already, and Romans 8:33 says it is God that justifieth, and the Holy Spirit is the one bearing witness to it in you rather than a room being polled about it.
And notice one more thing, because it protects you from the wrong use of this verse.
Romans 8:33 clears you before God. It does not pronounce on what other people experienced or on what they are still carrying. That is deliberate. The written word is precise about jurisdiction: what God has settled is settled completely, and what still sits between you and a person who was hurt stays live and honorable work, and the Holy Spirit is present in both without confusing them.
Here is the turn.
The campaign has to end, and not because it is wrong to be gracious in a room, and not because stacking chairs is bad. Stack the chairs. It is because a campaign is a request for a verdict, and the verdict has already been given by the only one entitled to give it, and Romans 8:33 has God doing the justifying while the Holy Spirit bears witness in you.
You do not need the foyer to change its half tone. That is the freedom in this. If it changes, receive it gladly. If it never changes, your standing does not move by so much as a millimetre, because it was never stored there.
And keep the other half in your hands as you go in. The people who were hurt are not a problem to be solved on the way to feeling better. Where something can be put right, put it right, and let it cost what it costs, and do not attach it to whether the room warms up. Their timeline is theirs, and God is unhurried about it, and so are you now.
So take this plainly. You are cleared where it counts, because the written word says it is God that justifieth and Christ is in you and you are in Him, and the Holy Spirit is walking you through that door today at your full height.
Let me say one thing gently before we go on. If the two years have started carrying a thought that sounds like this room would be easier without me in it, that is not a thing to hold alone in a corridor. Tell one person today and tell your doctor. In the United States you can call or text 988 at any hour, and wherever you are there are people awake right now. Nothing on this page is instead of that, and you are worth the call.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud over your written name. The right to stand was not issued by a room and cannot be withdrawn by one: it is yours in Christ, given, exercised in His Name. Speak them, look at your name a moment, and leave the outcome with Him.
- Half a tone at the door, you are a corridor and you are not the hearing. Romans 8:33 asks who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect and answers it is God that justifieth, and the Holy Spirit is bearing witness to that in me at full volume.
- Two year campaign for a verdict, you are answered and you are over. Romans 8 has the file in God's hands and the case already decided, and in the name of Jesus I stop asking a foyer for something it was never given the authority to hand out.
- God, You justified me and You did not put it to a vote. Romans 8 says it is You that justifieth, and Your Spirit is walking me through that door today while whatever still belongs to the people who were hurt stays honorable and unhurried in front of You.
Romans 8:33
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