Leading From Outside The Room

You were extraordinary tonight and you know you were.

Not vain about it. You have done this long enough to be able to tell the difference between a night that worked and a night that did not, the same way a joiner can tell you whether a door hangs right without needing anybody's opinion.

That door hung right. The room went where you took it. A woman near the back put her hands over her face about two thirds of the way through and did not take them down for a while, and you saw it, and you knew what it was.

And you were not in it.

You were doing it. Every word was true and you have not said one thing from a platform in your life that you did not believe. But you were standing at the door of a room you have not been inside since roughly February, holding it open, waving people through.

Now everyone has gone and the chairs are half stacked and you are sitting on the edge of the platform with your shoes off.

Let me say something first, and I mean it, and I need you to actually hear it rather than filing it.

I am not accusing you of anything.

You are not a fraud. Leading people into something you are currently outside of is not lying to them, and I am not going to hand you the word hypocrite, because the word does not fit and using it on yourself for six months has done nothing except make the six months heavier.

I am saying I noticed you were at the door rather than in the room. That is all.

Where the strength was coming from

Here is Paul, and he is not describing a season of strength.

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.2 Corinthians 12:9

Read what the promise is attached to, because it is not attached to Paul's condition improving.

My strength is made perfect in weakness. Not despite weakness. Not after it. In it. The weakness is the place where the strength gets fully expressed, which is not how anybody would design it and is exactly how God did.

And notice the shape of the last clause. That the power of Christ may rest upon me. Rest. Come down on. Settle. Not be generated by, not be summoned out of. It comes from somewhere else and it lands.

So let me turn and speak straight at you, sitting on the edge of that platform.

You are not disqualified by the distance. Not one day, not when you get back inside the room, not once you feel what you are saying again. Right now, with your shoes off and the chairs half stacked, you are the exact person 2 Corinthians 12 is describing, and Paul is not apologizing in that passage, he is glorying in it. That is not my flattery. That is what is written, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a written line and lays it on a real woman in a real empty hall.

Now, what actually happened in February?

I do not need to know and you do not have to tell anybody here. But I know what it does.

Something took more out of you than you had, and you kept working, because the work does not stop and the room still needs somebody at the front and there was nobody else standing there.

And a person who keeps leading through something like that ends up in a peculiar position: every word said is true, and true things keep coming out, and she watches them work on other people from a position slightly outside the effect.

That is not sin and it is not decline. That is what carrying looks like from the inside, and almost nobody describes it because almost nobody in that position can afford to.

And hear this, because it is settled and not still open. You have the power of Christ resting on you rather than being produced by you, and the resting did not stop in February. The word says the strength is made perfect in weakness, which means it is at its most complete in exactly the condition you have been hiding, and it is His Spirit who carries a written promise into a real hall after everybody has gone.

The woman at the back was not helped by your condition. She was helped by what rested on you while you were at the door.