Nothing Happened, So It Was Me

You went up because they said come, and you went up quickly, before you could talk yourself out of it.

Two people prayed. They were kind and they were not rushing and one of them had a hand on your shoulder for the whole of it.

And you stood there and you waited.

And nothing happened.

Nothing at all. No warmth, no shaking, nothing behind your eyes. The room was going and the music was going and there were people around you weeping, and you were standing in the middle of it with your eyes shut being extremely polite about the fact that you could not feel a single thing.

And then they finished, and you said thank you, and you walked back down the side aisle to your seat, and that walk took about eleven seconds.

Somewhere in those eleven seconds you reached a conclusion.

It was you.

Not stated in words. It arrived fully formed the way conclusions do, and it said: everybody else in this room can receive and you cannot, and the reason is something about you.

Listen to me before anything else.

I am not correcting you.

You did nothing wrong going up and you did nothing wrong feeling nothing. And I want to be extremely clear that I am not going to hint that a shortage of faith is why the room was going and you were not.

I am saying I know about the eleven seconds. That is all. And I want to talk about a mountain.

Some doubted, and He sent them

Here is the last scene in Matthew and it contains a sentence that nobody preaches.

Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted. And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations.Matthew 28:16-19

But some doubted.

Read the sequence. They are looking at the risen Christ. In person. After everything. And Matthew, who was standing there, records that some of them doubted, and he does not tell us which ones and he does not tell us that it got resolved.

And then, in the very next verse, Jesus commissions them. All of them. He does not separate the doubting ones out and deal with them first. He does not require a show of hands. The Great Commission is handed to a group that included people who were not sure while it was being handed over.

So I want to turn now and speak this over you, in that hall with the lights coming up.

You are commissioned in the state you are actually in. Not one day, not once you can feel something, not when you receive like the woman two rows in front. Right now, walking back down a side aisle, you are standing in the same group as the ones Matthew names, and they were sent anyway with no remedial process attached. That is not my comfort to you. That is what is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who sets a written line down in a real person in a real building.

Now, the plain thing, and there will be no clause on the end of it.

Your doubt is not why nothing happened.

Not that night and not since. I am not going to add a qualification and I am not going to say something careful about receiving with an open heart, because every one of those sentences lands on you as blame with a bow on it.

Feeling is not the same as receiving. It never was. Half the people weeping in that room were having a genuine encounter and half of them were having an emotion, and neither they nor you nor anybody else in that building could tell you which was which from the outside.

That is not sin. That is a nervous system, and the God who made it is not confused about the difference between His work and your adrenaline.

And this next part is settled rather than pending, so hear it. You have a standing in that mountain crowd that nobody put to a vote. The word says some doubted, and the next sentence is go ye therefore, and it is His Spirit who carries a written line into a real hall on a real night with the chairs going back.

The eleven seconds reached a verdict. The verdict was not issued by any court.