She could tell you about a Sunday in 2011 the way other people tell you about a wedding.
She could tell you about the night in the youth hall when she was sixteen and something went through that room and eleven of them stayed until half past one and nobody wanted to be the one who said they should go. She could tell you about a Wednesday prayer meeting eight years ago with fourteen people in it where the whole thing shifted about forty minutes in and she has never been able to describe it and has stopped trying.
She is not exaggerating and she is not performing. Those things happened. She is a careful woman and she does not embroider.
And on Tuesday afternoon she was in her front room with a cup of tea going cold and the washing on the rack, and she thought a sentence that has been sitting on her since.
The sentence was: I do not know Him here.
Not that He was absent. She would not say that and she does not believe it. It is stranger and more specific than that. It is that in thirty years she has built up a whole vocabulary, a whole set of expectations, a whole way of recognizing Him, and every single piece of it was assembled in a room with other people in it.
Put her in a full room and she knows exactly where she is.
Put her in her own front room on a Tuesday with the radiator on and nothing happening, and she has no idea who He is in that room, because she has never met Him there. She has only ever met Him in a crowd.
And the thing that has bothered her since Tuesday is not guilt. She is not going to be guilty about loving a full room.
It is arithmetic. There are about a hundred and sixty hours in her week and maybe four of them are in a room like that, and if she only knows Him in the four, then she has been walking with somebody she recognizes for two and a half percent of her life.
And that is you with the tea going cold, or you would not still be reading.
The psalm that follows Him into the ordinary hours
Let me give you the sentence that answers a Tuesday, and it was written by a man who knew about full rooms and wrote this one on his own.
Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence?Psalm 139:7
Now watch what he does with it, because he does not answer it with a meeting.
He goes up and He is there. He goes down and He is there. He takes the wings of the morning and goes to the far side of the sea and He is there, and then, right at the end of that list, he puts the one that matters for a Tuesday:
If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night," even the darkness is not dark to you.Psalm 139:11-12
The man's list is not a list of great occasions. It is a list of ordinary and difficult places. Heights, depths, distance, and the dark.
You are in a room He has not left, and He was not more present in 2011 than He is in your front room this afternoon. It is written, where shall I go from your Spirit, or where shall I flee from your presence (Psalm 139:7), and the question is rhetorical because there is no such place. The Holy Spirit is the One that psalm is about, and He is not concentrated in halls.
Now let me deal with the thing you are half afraid of, because I think you have not said it out loud.
You are afraid that the four hours were the real thing and the hundred and fifty-six are the waiting.
You are not in a waiting room between meetings, and the ordinary hours are not the gap between the real ones. It is written that Christ in you is the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27), and in you goes where you go on a Tuesday with the washing on the rack. The Holy Spirit does not become more Himself when there are more people watching.
And I am not going to spend one sentence criticizing what happened in that youth hall when you were sixteen, because it was real and it was His and I would not take it off you for anything.
You have not been wrong about the full rooms and you are not being asked to trade them. It is written that where two or three are gathered in His name, He is there among them (Matthew 18:20), which is a promise about company and not a formula about numbers. The Holy Spirit was in that hall at half past one in the morning, and He was in your front room at half past two this afternoon, and He is the same Person in both.
What you are missing is not more of Him. It is a way of recognizing Him that does not require a crowd to be running.
And that is one breath, sitting down, before you say anything.
So here is the turn, and it does not ask you to give up one thing you love.
You are going to sit down in the front room on the Tuesday, with the tea going cold and the radiator ticking and no meeting in it anywhere, and you are going to be still for the length of one breath before you say a word.
Not to feel anything. Not to reproduce a Wednesday from eight years ago. There is no technique here, and there are no levels, and nobody in this is being graded on whether the room shifts.
You are going to be still for one breath because that is what a person does when there is somebody with them.
You are in company on a Tuesday afternoon and you have been in company through every one of the hundred and fifty-six hours. It is written that even the darkness is not dark to Him and the night is bright as the day (Psalm 139:12), and a dull afternoon is easier than the dark. The Holy Spirit is present in that front room at exactly the strength He was present in the youth hall, and He is not waiting for numbers.
The full rooms are not going anywhere.
You are just going to stop needing one in order to know who is with you.
Declare this over yourself
Say them sitting where you are. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and that standing was given to you rather than built up over thirty years of good meetings. Scripture is the ground under every line and the Holy Spirit is what makes them live in a person. Whatever He does with this afternoon is His, and the outcome is His.
- Empty Tuesday, you are not a place He is absent from and you never were. It is written, where shall I go from your Spirit, or where shall I flee from your presence, and the answer is that there is nowhere. He is here with me now, and I am not by myself in this room.
- Fear that the four hours are the real thing and the rest is waiting, in the name of Jesus you are put out of this house. It is written that Christ in you is the hope of glory, and in you goes wherever I go with the washing on the rack. The Holy Spirit does not become more Himself when more people are watching.
- God, You were in that hall at half past one and You are in this front room at half past two. It is written that even the darkness is not dark to You, so a dull afternoon has never once hidden You from me. He is with me as Someone and not as something, and I do not need a crowd to know it.
Psalm 139:7
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