There Was Never an Audition

Deb has been about to go back to the choir for three years.

She sang with them for eleven years before that. Second row, alto, the one who knew everybody's birthday and organized the coach for the Christmas concert two years running. Then there was an illness in the family, and she missed a term, and then she missed the next one, and then it had been long enough that going back would be A Thing.

So she decided to get ready first.

This is the part I want you to sit with, because it is not laziness and it is not avoidance. Deb has worked at this. She has a keyboard app on her phone. She does scales in the car, actual scales, at traffic lights, with the window up. She bought a book. She has been practicing, alone, in a kitchen, for three years, in order to be good enough to walk into a room where twenty-eight amateurs sing Handel badly on a Wednesday.

Every so often she gets close. Last October she got as far as the car park.

Her friend Priya, who never left, finally rang her about it in the spring, and Deb explained the whole thing: that she wanted to come back properly, that she did not want to be the one holding the section up, that she was nearly there, that a few more months.

And Priya let her finish, which is a kindness, and then said:

"Deb. There is no audition."

Deb said she knew that.

"No, love, I do not think you do. There has never been an audition. Barbara has been in that choir for nine years and she cannot read a note. Terry sings a fourth under everybody and we have all just agreed to love him. Last week the tenors came in eight bars early and Michael laughed so hard he had to sit down on the piano stool."

Then she said the thing that got Deb out of the kitchen.

"You are practicing for a room that does not exist. You are getting ready for an audition, and this is a Wednesday."

Now let me ask you what you are practicing for.

Because you do this. Before you come close to Him, you check.

It is not a formal thing. It is a quick internal scan, and it happens in the two seconds before prayer, and it produces a number. How have I been doing lately. What has the last fortnight looked like. Have I got anything to show.

And if the number is low you do not stop believing. You just quietly postpone. You will come back properly when you have had a good week. You will really pray when you have got the mornings sorted. You are nearly there. A few more months.

He justifies the ungodly, which is a strange thing to advertise

Paul writes a sentence in Romans that ought to have been edited out by somebody nervous, and thank God it was not.

Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness.Romans 4:4 to 5

Read what he calls the person being justified.

Not the improving. Not the sincere. Not the one who has had a good fortnight and is finally in a fit state to approach. The ungodly. That is the advertised clientele, printed on the door, and Paul does not soften it anywhere in the chapter.

And look at the logic of the first half, because it is a piece of ordinary common sense and it is devastating. If you work, what you get is wages. Wages are not a favor. Nobody thanks their employer for wages. So the moment you turn up with a good fortnight in your hand, you have changed the entire nature of the transaction, and you are now owed rather than loved.

So hear it, right now, with your tally in your hand. You are accepted on the ground of Christ and not on the ground of your last fortnight, and the number you scanned for two seconds ago has never once been consulted. That is written down in the plainest chapter Paul ever wrote, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a written acceptance and gets a person to actually walk through a door with it.

Now let me name the sad mathematics of your three years, because you deserve to see it.

The tally never comes back good enough. Not because you are a bad person, but because a tally has no ceiling. There is always a better fortnight available in theory, so there is always a reason for one more month of practice.

And meanwhile, the very thing that would restore you is the thing you are postponing. Deb's voice did not get better in that kitchen. Voices get better in rooms with other voices in them. She was doing scales at traffic lights in order to qualify for the only thing that would have actually helped her.

You are doing the same. You are getting your act together in order to be fit to come close to the One whose nearness is the thing that puts an act together.

Let me guard this. I am not telling you the practice was pointless or that discipline is a trap. Deb's scales did her good and your good fortnight is a good fortnight. Nobody here is against effort.

I am telling you the practice was never the entry fee, and treating it as one has kept you in a car park in October.

You are welcome tonight at the exact level you are at. Not tolerated at that level. Welcome, which is a word about the host, and the written word says He justifies the ungodly, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a person believe a door is genuinely open, in His own time.

There was a man five hundred years ago who spent his early life practicing for an audition. Every discipline, every vigil, every hour of it aimed at arriving in a fit state, and it nearly finished him. And then he read this very chapter, and understood that faith is credited as righteousness to a person who is not bringing wages, and he described it afterward as walking through an open door he had been standing outside of for years.