He has read that verse a hundred times and he stops at one word now.
Praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.
Daily.
He can tell you what it meant in that setting, and he has taught it, and he would give you three reasons why the word is there and all three would be sound.
And he still stops.
Because nothing has moved in a year. Nobody has come, nobody has gone, nothing has happened in that room that anybody would write down, and the verse says daily, and the two of those things sit next to each other every time he reads it and he cannot get them apart.
It has got worse over about eighteen months, and it has got quieter as it has got worse.
He does not say it. He has taught out of Acts 2 twice in that period, and he did it honestly, and nobody in that room would have any idea that the man teaching it had gone slightly cold on one word.
He is not angry at God, and he wants that clear, because he has watched other men go there and this is not that.
It is a smaller and more tiring thing. It is a man who reads a description of what God did, in a book he believes completely, and feels the distance between that and his own year, and closes the book about four seconds earlier than he used to.
The Lord added
Sit down at that desk with it open a minute, and do the thing you would do for anybody else: find the subject of the sentence.
Praising God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.Acts 2:47
The Lord added.
That is the subject and that is the verb, and neither of them is you, and neither of them is anybody in the whole of the second chapter of Acts.
Notice where this verse sits. It is the last line of the chapter. Everything else has come first: the wind and the fire, the preaching, three thousand, the doctrine, the fellowship, the breaking of bread, the prayers, the selling and the sharing, all of it, and then at the very end, almost as an afterthought in the grammar, Luke says who was doing the adding.
It is put last on purpose. Everything the people did is described in full and then the growth is credited to somebody else entirely, and there is no line anywhere connecting the second to the first.
And the daily is attached to Him. Read the sentence again and see whose adverb it is. It describes the frequency of His action in one city in one season. It is not a target and it is not a standard and it is not addressed to a man at a desk in a hard year.
Hear this in your own study. You have not gone cold, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture puts the Lord as the subject of that sentence and the daily as His, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has had you teaching out of that chapter honestly through eighteen months of exactly this.
Now let me name what has happened to that word, because it is not unbelief and unbelief would be a stupid word for a man who reads the original.
A description becomes a measurement the moment you stand under it.
That verse is a report about a season. You know that. But a man in year eighteen of a quiet stretch does not read it as a report, he reads it as a level, and once it is a level he is below it, and then the word daily has an opinion about him every time it comes round.
Nobody taught you that and you have never believed it doctrinally for a second. It arrived through the eyes and not through the mind, which is why knowing better has not shifted it in eighteen months.
Hear this too, and let it land on the open page. Your gathering has not failed and neither have you, and Scripture is what says so. What is written puts the growth in the last clause and credits it to God alone, and the Spirit of God has never once issued that verse as a standard for anybody to meet.
And let me be plain, because this is the ground where these pages lie. Nobody here is promising you a change in the year ahead. That is not mine to promise. And nothing here says a still room is a failing one: there are years in Scripture where nothing visible happened and God had not left the building in a single one of them.
So today you read that verse out loud and you say who the subject is.
Out loud, because you have read it silently a hundred times and silently is where the trouble lives, and because the written word was read aloud in that city before anybody ever read it in a chair, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has brought you back to it today. Read it aloud at the desk, slowly, and then say the next sentence out loud as well: the Lord added. The Lord. Not me. The daily is His.
That is not a technique and it is not positive thinking, and you would spot either of those in a second and rightly reject it. It is grammar, said out loud, by a man who teaches grammar to other people and has not applied it to himself since the spring of last year.
And then do the ordinary thing this week. Open the room. Teach the thing you were going to teach. Ring whoever you were going to ring.
The written word makes the Lord the subject of that sentence and puts the growth in the final clause where none of the people can reach it, and the Holy Spirit has kept you teaching honestly out of that chapter through eighteen months of a quiet year, so nothing about a still room is a report on you.
That word was never addressed to you. It was never a target and it was never a standard, and it is a description of what He did, and the whole chapter is arranged to put it last so that nobody would ever mistake it for something a man had done.
Declare this over yourself
Say these at the desk with the page open. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the Holy Spirit has kept you teaching honestly out of that chapter according to the written word, so the standing you speak from was never built out of a year in which nothing moved. Whether the next year is still or full, the outcome is His to decide, and it is never a measure of a man who has taught it straight while it cost him.
- Word daily that has become a rebuke to me, you are not addressed to me and you never were. Scripture says the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved, and the Lord is the subject of that sentence and the daily is His adverb and not mine.
- Distance I have been feeling between that chapter and my own year, get off this desk, in the name of Jesus. The written word puts the growth in the last clause where none of the people can reach it, and the Spirit of God has never once issued that verse as a standard for anybody to meet.
- Lord, You are the one who added, and Luke put it last on purpose so nobody would mistake it for something a man had done, and Your Spirit has kept me teaching that chapter honestly through eighteen months, exactly as it is written. I am reading it out loud today and saying who the subject is, and then I am opening the room this week.
Acts 2:47
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