It Always Assumes You Have Somebody

He has read four of these now and closed all four at roughly the same place.

They start well. They usually start with somebody doing too much on their own, and he recognizes that, and he keeps reading.

And then there is a paragraph. It says something like: so this week, ask one person to come with you.

And he closes it. Not angrily. He just closes it, because at that exact sentence the article stops being about him and starts being for people who have a list.

Eight months in this city. He came for work and the work is fine.

Here is his list, in full. Two men he works with, one of whom he likes. A woman at the place he goes on a Sunday who has said hello and once asked about his coat, warmly, and whose name he is now nine weeks past being able to ask for. A landlord.

That is not a list you send that message to. That is not withholding, or fear, or a fence, or any of the things these articles are usually about, and he has read enough of them now to know that he does not fit the shape of the problem they are solving.

He goes to a night shelter on a Tuesday, on his own, because they needed people and he had Tuesdays.

He came out of it in October at about ten past ten and stood on a pavement for a while and then got the bus, and there is nothing in this paragraph that anybody did wrong.

They came as far as Three Taverns to meet a man they had never seen

Stand at the bus stop a minute, because there is a scene at the end of Acts about a man arriving in a country with nobody, and it is the most specific thing in the chapter.

Paul is being taken to Rome under guard. He has been shipwrecked. He knows almost nobody in Italy and the people who are with him are soldiers and prisoners.

And then this.

And from thence, when the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us as far as Appii forum, and The three taverns: whom when Paul saw, he thanked God, and took courage.Acts 28:15

They came to meet us.

He did not have them. He did not arrange them. He had never met one of them and he had no way of contacting anybody, and they heard he was coming and they walked out of the city, some of them thirty odd miles, and stood on a road to meet a man they knew only by name.

And look at what it does to him. He thanked God, and took courage. This is the man who has written most of the letters. He is not above needing that, and it arrives from people he did not know, on a road, in a country he had no list in.

Hear this on your own pavement. You are not outside this, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture puts a man in a foreign country with nobody and has company walk out to meet him, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moved on those brethren to leave the city, so nothing about your eight months is a disqualification.

Now let me be plain about the paragraph that keeps losing you, because you are right about it.

Most writing on this subject is written for people who have somebody and are not asking. That is a real problem and it is worth writing about, and it is not your problem, and being told to ask one person when there is genuinely nobody is not encouragement, it is a small weekly reminder that you are further out than the intended reader. The written word does not do that to you and the Holy Spirit has never done it either.

Nobody is going to tell you here that your list is a fence. It is a list. It is eight months long and it is short because eight months is short.

Hear this too, and let it settle where the bus stop is. You are not failing at this, and Scripture is what says so. What is written has the company arriving from outside a man's list entirely, and the Spirit of God has never once made a person responsible for producing the people who come to meet him.

And here is the one thing that is in your hands, and it is not the thing the four articles told you.

They heard of us. Somebody in Rome knew a man was coming.

You are the only person in this city who knows that you are here on your own. That information exists in one head, and the written word turns on somebody hearing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves people once they have. The smallest possible move is not asking somebody to come with you on Tuesday, because you are right that there is nobody to ask.

It is telling one person that you have nobody, which is the exact hinge the written word turns on, with the Holy Spirit doing the rest.

That is a different sentence and it is available to you, and it is the sentence that turns a man from an unknown arrival into somebody the brethren have heard of.