It happens in a van, mostly. Occasionally in a staff room, once memorably in a car park in the rain.
Somebody says something that is not really about what they are saying. He notices, because he has always noticed. And then there is a decision that takes about a second and a half, and if he goes toward it rather than away, the next fifteen minutes are the reason he believes any of this is real.
He would guess maybe two hundred times in nine years. He has never counted properly and would find counting distasteful.
None of it has a name. There is no group, no evening, no title, nothing anybody could look up. When people from church talk about what they are involved in, he says he is not involved in much at the moment, and that is technically true and completely false at the same time, and he has never worked out how to fix the sentence.
And somewhere in the ninth year the arithmetic turned on him. If it has no name and no room and nobody has ever seen it, on what basis is it anything at all? Perhaps he is a man who has spent nine years having good conversations.
If yours happens one at a time with no name on it, come and sit on a crate. Nothing organized is going to be criticized here.
Scale is not the same as substance
Let us look straight at the measure he has been using, because he did not choose it and it does not come from anywhere he trusts.
The measure is aggregation. A thing counts when it is gathered into something visible: a name, a room, a number. Under that measure, two hundred fifteen minute conversations in a van are two hundred separate small events rather than one large real thing, and so they do not add up to anything.
That is a way of counting borrowed from work he does not respect, applied to a life he does. And it produces an obviously false result, which is the surest sign that the measure is wrong rather than the life.
You are not a man having good conversations. Nothing about work that never aggregated has ever made it smaller than it is. I am not saying it to flatter a man in a van. Scripture says inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me (Matthew 25:40), which is an accounting method stated by the Lord Himself and it is not aggregation, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it hold in a staff room at half past twelve.
The unit of account is one person
Here is the part that turned this for me, and it takes nothing off anybody running anything.
Read the number in that sentence, because the whole of the reckoning turns on it.
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.Matthew 25:40
One. Not a congregation, not a movement, not a season of work. One of the least of these, singular, and the transaction is complete at that number.
And then the exchange: done it unto me. The thing is not weighed by who received it or by how many. It is credited to a different account entirely, and the account belongs to the King.
Your unit of account is one person, and Scripture completes the transaction at that number. That is written into the sentence itself, and it is the Holy Spirit who brings it into a van on an ordinary Tuesday.
Nothing here is against organized work
Something must be said very plainly, or this becomes a page that quietly congratulates him for having no name.
The people with groups and evenings and titles are not doing something inferior. Organizing is hard, unglamorous work, and a room that exists on a Thursday exists because somebody booked it and chased people and did the accounts, and a great many people have been reached because somebody was willing to do that.
His hiddenness is not a virtue and their visibility is not a compromise. Both of those are false and this page is not saying either.
You do not need a platform for this to be real. It was given to you, not to an audience. Scripture says the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal (1 Corinthians 12:7), where the profit is of persons and no count is attached, and it is the Holy Spirit, and not the presence of a name, who determines what a thing is.
And if these nine years have cost more than the men in that yard know, if sleep has gone, if the van has started to be a hard place to sit, please talk to somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, a crisis line, and the emergency services if there is danger to anybody tonight. That is not a detour around God. It is one of the ways He keeps people.
So here is the turn, and it is not a promise that any of it becomes something.
You do not need a platform for this to be real. It was given to you, not to an audience. Scripture says inasmuch as ye have done it unto one, ye have done it unto me (Matthew 25:40), where the reckoning completes at a single person and is credited to Him, and it is the Holy Spirit, not a name or a room or a number, who makes a thing count.
I cannot tell you whether any of it ever becomes visible, and I am not going to guess at it. Nobody honest would. What I can tell you is that the King in that passage does His accounting one person at a time, and that a second and a half in a van, gone toward rather than away from, is the whole transaction.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in your own voice. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the standing under these words is His rather than your own. You speak under His will and not yours, and what God does next, and when, is His to decide, however He answers.
- Idea that this does not count, you are a way of measuring and you are not God's account of it. Matthew 25 completes the reckoning at one of the least of these, singular, and credits it to the King Himself, and the Holy Spirit has never once counted by aggregation. In the name of Jesus I put your measure down.
- Verdict that nine years was only talk, you are not what God says about me and you are not sitting in that van tomorrow. First Corinthians 12 attaches no count to the profit it names, so invisible was never the same as small, and His Spirit determines what a thing is. I do not need a platform for this to be real.
- Father, inasmuch as I have done it unto one of the least of these, I have done it unto You, and Matthew 25 puts the whole transaction at the number one. I thank You for everybody who books rooms and chases people and does the accounts so that others get reached, and Your Spirit has never once required a name over a door. It was given to me, not to an audience.
Matthew 25:40
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
