I Checked, And It Was The Lighting

She knows exactly how a room is moved and she wishes, some weeks, that she did not.

It started innocently. She did sound for four years in her twenties, and if you do sound you learn things. You learn what a low pad under a spoken sentence does to people. You learn that the same words land differently at eighty-two beats than at seventy-six. You learn what happens when the top end comes out of a mix and everything goes warm.

And she never stopped noticing after that.

Two Sundays ago something happened in that room at about the forty minute mark, and it was genuinely moving, and about eight people were in tears, and she was watching the lighting desk.

Not to be clever. She did not decide to. Her eyes went there because the wash had come down about fifteen percent over roughly ninety seconds and she noticed it happening.

And afterwards somebody said, in the car park, that the presence of God had been very strong.

And she said yes, and meant it, and drove home unable to work out whether she was agreeing or being polite.

That is her whole problem in one sentence. She cannot tell the difference any more between a room being handled well and a room where God is, and she does not think they are opposites, and she cannot get them apart either.

She has never told anybody. It sounds like cynicism and she is not cynical. She is just a woman who did sound for four years and cannot unlearn it.

And that is you in the car park saying yes, or you would not still be reading.

The one thing no amount of production can manufacture

Let me give you a verse that is almost never quoted for this, and it is the most useful thing you will read this year.

Paul is about to start the whole discussion of gifts, and before he does he lays down a test. It is the first thing in the chapter, before the list, before the body, before anything.

Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says "Jesus is accursed!" and no one can say "Jesus is Lord" except in the Holy Spirit.1 Corinthians 12:3

Read the second half slowly, because it is doing something extraordinary.

No one can say Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit.

Not: no one can be moved except in the Holy Spirit. Not: no one can cry except in the Holy Spirit. He picks the plainest, least atmospheric thing available, a sentence a person says, and he says that the saying of it, meant, cannot be produced by anything except Him.

You are looking at the one test Paul gives, and it is not an atmosphere. It is written that no one can say Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:3). The Holy Spirit is the only source of that sentence, and a lighting desk has never produced it in anybody.

Now think about what that does to your problem.

You cannot tell, from watching, whether a room's emotion is production or presence. You are right that you cannot. And the reason you cannot is that emotion is a poor test, and it always was, and Paul does not use it.

He uses a confession.

The eight people in tears at the forty minute mark: you genuinely do not know what was happening in them, and neither does the person in the car park who told you the presence was strong. But if any one of them, that week, in an ordinary moment with nobody watching, meant Jesus is Lord, then Paul says something happened in that person that no desk in the world can do.

You are able to keep every bit of what you know about rooms, because the test Scripture gives is not a test your knowledge can touch. It is written that no one can say Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:3). The Holy Spirit produces a confession, and your four years of sound engineering cannot reach it.

And now let me say the thing about you, which is the actual reason you are reading this.

You have applied the test to the room and never once to yourself.

You have said it and meant it, and by Paul's test that sentence in you came from Him. It is written that no one can say Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:3), and the sentence has no clause about how you felt while saying it. The Holy Spirit was the source of that in a woman who was watching the lighting desk.

You have been standing outside a room you were never outside.