You put out eight and you have been putting out eight for three years, and four of them go back against the wall at nine o'clock.
Sister Ruth, who has not missed one. The young man whose name you still are not sure you are saying right. The woman who comes with a carrier bag and prays with her eyes open. And Delroy, who arrives at twenty past and apologizes every single week.
That is the meeting.
Two people said something this month, and they were not the sort of people you can dismiss. One is your own pastor, who was gentle and careful and said the word sustainable. The other is a woman who has been in ministry for thirty years and who watched you across a table and asked what you were actually hoping for.
You did not have an answer at the table. That is what has been sitting on you since.
Because you did know the answer three years ago, when you first put chairs out. You wanted a room where people could pray without a service around it. That was it. That was the whole idea, and four people show up, and by every measure anyone has offered you the idea did not take.
And yet at twenty past eight last Tuesday Delroy came in apologizing and the woman with the carrier bag prayed for eleven minutes and something happened in your front room that you have no way of writing down.
Jesus put the door in the instruction
There is a line in the Sermon on the Mount that people quote as a rebuke and it is actually a design.
But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.Matthew 6:6
Jesus is contrasting it with praying to be seen. The whole passage is about audience: who the prayer is for, and who is counting.
And He puts a shut door in the middle of it, on purpose. He constructs the scene so that nobody is watching, and then says the Father sees.
That is not a rule against praying together. It is a settlement about the measure. If the Father sees in secret, then the number of people who saw is not the instrument, and it was never going to be.
You are not running a thing whose worth is countable. I am not putting my own opinion over you here. Scripture says thy Father which seeth in secret, Matthew 6:6, and the Holy Spirit is the one who was in that front room at twenty past eight while nobody outside the four knew anything was happening.
Those two people are not against you
Put this down first: your pastor is not your opponent, and neither is the woman who asked the question.
He used the word sustainable because he has watched people burn a room down around themselves and he was frightened of it happening to you. She asked what you were hoping for because thirty years teaches a person to ask the question nobody else will.
That question was not an attack. It was a gift, and it landed badly because you did not have an answer at the table, and not having an answer felt like losing. Scripture calls that kind of question the wound of a friend, Proverbs 27:6, and the Holy Spirit is as free to use a careful pastor as a verse.
You have not been asked to choose between hearing them and standing here. Scripture says in the multitude of counselors there is safety, Proverbs 11:14, and the Holy Spirit is as likely to speak through a pastor being careful as through a verse on a Tuesday.
The part where I would tell you to stop
Let me be honest, because a page that only encourages a woman is not much use to her.
If Tuesdays are costing your household what your household needs, change the shape. If you are doing this on four hours of sleep and a Wednesday you cannot function in, that is not devotion, it is arithmetic that is going to come due.
If you are holding it because stopping would mean three years meant nothing, say so out loud tonight and hand it over, because that is fear and not calling, and it makes a poor foundation for anything. Scripture says nothing given to God is forgotten, Hebrews 6:10, and the Holy Spirit has never once run a refund on a Tuesday.
A meeting that runs fortnightly is a meeting. Four people praying in somebody else's kitchen is the same four people praying.
You are not required to prove anything by wearing yourself out. Scripture says a bruised reed shall he not break, Isaiah 42:3, and the Holy Spirit is not standing in your hallway on a Tuesday with a clipboard.
The part where I stand with you
And here is the sentence I will not let stand.
It did not take is a judgement made with an instrument Jesus has already ruled out.
Four is not a failed twelve. Four is four people, and one of them is a young man whose name you are still not sure you are saying right who has come every week for a year and who has started praying out loud in the last two months, which he did not do at first.
You cannot put that on a form. Nobody can. Scripture says plainly that the Father sees in secret, Matthew 6:6, and the Holy Spirit is not reading the form.
You are not standing on numbers and you never were. Scripture says where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them, Matthew 18:20, and the Holy Spirit did not attach a quorum to that sentence.
You have been trying to answer the question you were asked at that table, and you have been trying to answer it with the wrong instrument.
You could not say what you were hoping for because you have been assuming the honest answer had to be a number. Scripture never made a number the instrument, Matthew 6:6, and the Holy Spirit has not been keeping a register. It does not. The honest answer is that you wanted a room where people could pray without a service around it, and you have one, and it has existed every Tuesday for three years.
That is not a small thing that failed to become a big thing. It is the thing itself.
You are held whether Tuesdays keep running or move somewhere else in the spring. Scripture says God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love, Hebrews 6:10, and the Holy Spirit has been in that front room on every one of those nights, including the one in February when it was two people and the heating had gone.
So put out eight on Tuesday, or put out four. Ring your pastor and tell him what you could not say at the table.
And stop asking a headcount a question that Jesus already answered.
Declare this over yourself
Speak these standing in Christ, under the will of God, with no date placed on Him. Scripture gives the standing and the Holy Spirit carries the words, and the outcome is His, and He may answer in His own way.
- Four chairs on a Tuesday night, you are not the measure of this room. Scripture says shut the door and pray to your Father who sees in secret, and a headcount was ruled out as the instrument before I ever put a chair down.
- Fear that stopping would make three years mean nothing, get out of this house in the name of Jesus. Scripture says God is not unrighteous to forget a work of love, Hebrews 6:10, and the Holy Spirit was in here on the February night when it was two of us and the heating had gone.
- Lord, You are the Father who sees in secret, and You have been in my front room at twenty past eight for three years. I am standing still in this room, and I am ringing my pastor to say what I could not say at that table.
Matthew 6:6
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