It happened during the fourth verse of a hymn she has sung since she was eleven, and nobody sitting near her noticed anything at all.
She could not tell you what to call it. Something went through her, or into her, and it took about the length of two lines, and she came out the other end of it different in a way she has not been able to reverse and would not want to.
She has said nothing. Six weeks now. She has sat in the car park after the service four of those weeks, engine off, not going anywhere, working through the same problem.
The problem is not whether it was real. She is oddly settled about that. The problem is that the building she has belonged to for thirty one years has no words for what happened, and she has quietly concluded that a thing with no words in a place must therefore belong to a different place, and that somewhere out there is the room she is now supposed to move to.
Nobody has said that to her. She built it herself in a car park.
If something arrived that your building has no category for, come and sit in the yard. Nothing about your church is going to be run down here.
A missing vocabulary is not a missing welcome
Let us separate two things that six weeks have welded together, because the weld is what is keeping her in that car park.
The first is true: her congregation does not have language for what happened during the fourth verse. They would not know what to do with it if she described it, and that is a fact about a vocabulary.
The second does not follow: that a thing which cannot be named in a room cannot be held in it. Buildings hold a great deal they have no words for. Half the marriages in that congregation are carrying things nobody has ever found language for, and they are still being carried, in those seats, week after week.
You are not in the wrong room. Nothing your building lacks a word for has ever been outside what God can do in you there. I am not saying it to keep a woman where she is. The written word says the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal (1 Corinthians 12:7), where the giving is made to a person rather than to a category, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that hold in a woman with her engine off.
Given to a person, not filed under a heading
Here is the part that turned this for me, and it takes nothing off her congregation.
Read who receives it in that verse, because it is a person and not a tradition.
But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal.1 Corinthians 12:7
To every man. The unit is one person, and the verse does not route the giving through a building's understanding of it, or make the receiving conditional on anybody being able to describe it afterward.
And then to profit withal, which is a purpose clause pointing outward: it was given for the good of the people around her. Which puts the point of it precisely where she already is, among the people she has sat beside for thirty one years.
You were given to directly, and Scripture aims the purpose of it at the room you are already in. That is written into the verse itself, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries it to a woman six weeks into a car park.
Nothing here is against that congregation
Something must be said very plainly, or this becomes a page about a church that has fallen short.
They have not failed her. A congregation without a vocabulary for a thing is not a congregation that would reject it, and she has been loved by those people through two bereavements and a bad year, and none of that required a word for anything. Their silence on this subject is not hostility. It is simply silence.
And nothing on this page tells her to stay or to go. That is not a decision a page can make for a woman about her own church, and anybody who offers to make it from a distance is guessing.
He did this to you here. You can be renewed in the room you are already in. Scripture says now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:4), where the variety is stated as normal rather than as a problem to be sorted into the correct building, and it is the Holy Spirit, and not a shared vocabulary, who holds what He gave.
And if these six weeks have cost more than the people in that yard know, if sleep has gone, if the car park has become the hardest part of Sunday, 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 about what your church does next.
He did this to you here. You can be renewed in the room you are already in, and you do not have to go. The written word says the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal (1 Corinthians 12:7), where the giving is to a person and the purpose is aimed at the people around them, and it is the Holy Spirit, not a category in a building, who decides where a person is kept.
I cannot tell you whether God moves you, one day, somewhere else. Nobody honest would, and if He does it will be plain and it will not be settled in a car park by a woman arguing with herself. What I can tell you is that He met you in row four during a fourth verse, and that He did not appear to be waiting for a better room.
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.
- Six weeks in a car park, you are a question about a building and you are not a question about what God did. First Corinthians 12 says the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man, which makes the unit one person rather than a tradition, and the Holy Spirit never once routed it through a room's vocabulary. In the name of Jesus I take you off my Sundays.
- Conclusion that a thing with no words here belongs elsewhere, you are not what God says about me and you are not sitting beside me on Sunday. First Corinthians 12 says there are diversities of gifts but the same Spirit, so variety is normal rather than a filing problem, and His Spirit holds what He gave. I am staying in the seat.
- Father, the manifestation of Your Spirit is given to every man to profit withal, and First Corinthians 12 points the purpose of it straight at the people around me. I thank You for a congregation that carried me through two bereavements without needing a word for any of it. He did this to me here, and I can be renewed in the room I am already in.
1 Corinthians 12:7
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.
