The Only One In The Shop

He opens at seven and he is on his own until about half past eight.

That is his favorite part and it always has been. The shutters go up, the lights come on in that order because of the way the wiring was done in 1994, and there is an hour and a half where the shop is his and nothing has gone wrong yet.

He has been doing it for twenty-six years.

And the reason he is reading this is that on Thursday he watched something on his phone in that first hour, which he does not usually do, and it was a man in a very large room, and what was happening in the room was extraordinary, and he could not stop watching it.

He is not cynical about it. He wants that said, because the easy version of this article would be a swipe at that man and it is not going to be one. What he saw was real and it was good and people were helped, and he is glad it happened and he would say so to anybody.

But he put the phone down at about eight and stood there in his own shop with the lights on and had a thought that has followed him around since, which is: I have no idea what any of that has to do with me.

Not bitterly. Almost practically.

Because everything he has ever been shown about the power of the Holy Spirit has had a room in it. A crowd, or at least a few people, or somebody laying hands on somebody else.

And his life does not have a room in it. It has an hour and a half with the shutters up, and a delivery at nine, and a woman who comes in about ten past eleven most days and takes a long time choosing, and a run of school children at four who he watches carefully and likes.

Six days a week for twenty-six years, and almost none of it with anybody watching.

So he filed it, years ago, without ever putting it into words: that is a thing for other lives.

And that is you in your own quiet hour, or you would not still be reading.

The first man in the Bible said to be filled

Let me give you something you have almost certainly never been given, because nobody preaches it.

There is a first time in Scripture that God says of a named individual that He has filled him with the Spirit. It is not a prophet. It is not a king. It is not somebody about to address a crowd.

I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, to work in every craft.Exodus 31:3-5

A man called Bezalel. A craftsman.

Read the list again, because it is astonishing when you notice what it is. Ability. Intelligence. Knowledge. Craftsmanship. Cutting stone. Carving wood. Setting things properly.

That is a description of somebody good at their job.

You are looking at the first filling in Scripture and it landed on a man in a workshop. It is written, I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship (Exodus 31:3). The Holy Spirit filled a man so that stone would be cut well, and there is no room and no crowd anywhere in the account.

Now let me be careful about what I am not saying, because you deserve precision rather than a nice feeling.

I am not saying the large room is fake. I have already told you it is not, and I meant it.

I am not saying your shop is secretly a platform. It is a shop.

And I am certainly not saying that quiet faithfulness is the real version, and the visible thing is the shallow one, because that is just the same snobbery running the other way, and it would be a cheap thing to hand you.

What I am saying is smaller and much more useful.

You have been given one picture of how He works, and Scripture carries several, and the first one is yours. It is written that there are varieties of gifts but the same Spirit, and varieties of activities but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone (1 Corinthians 12:4-6). The Holy Spirit distributes across a range that is far wider than the range you have been shown.

And here is the sentence in that passage that most belongs to a man on his own at seven in the morning.

Who empowers them all in everyone.

Not: who empowers some of them in some people. The scope of that sentence is total, and it was written to a church that was already having an argument about which manifestations counted, which is why Paul takes the trouble to make it so wide.

You are inside the scope of that sentence, at seven in the morning, with nobody in the shop. It is written that it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone (1 Corinthians 12:6), and everyone has no clause in it about an audience. The Holy Spirit is not less present in an hour with the shutters up than in a room with four hundred people.