The framework is genuinely good. She wants to say that at the start because it is the reason this is difficult.
It is four moves. It takes about eleven minutes to explain and it opens a passage up for somebody who has never been shown how to open one, and she has watched it happen in a room maybe two hundred times over nine years.
She learned it from him. Obviously. That is the whole of the problem.
He has since fallen, in public, in a way that is not ambiguous and that this page is not going to describe, because it belongs to the people it happened to and not to an illustration.
And she still teaches on a Tuesday.
She has thought about stopping. She thought about it seriously for about three weeks last autumn and then a woman in that class, who had never opened a Bible before she was fifty-eight, showed her something she had found on her own in Nehemiah, and she went home and put the kettle on and cried for a bit and did not stop teaching.
But something has moved in her and it happens every single week.
At about ten past seven, while people are still getting their coats off, she runs an apology in her head. Not to God, exactly. It is more like a statement she makes to an imagined room, and the statement is something along the lines of: I know where this came from, and I know, and I am not defending anybody, and I am aware.
It takes about forty seconds. Nobody sees it. And then she teaches, and she teaches well.
Nine years of material, four moves, two hundred rooms, and a forty second toll every Tuesday at ten past seven.
And she has never once asked who is collecting it.
And you have a toll like that. Something you do well and go on doing, with a small private payment made before you start, to a room that is not there.
The planter and the waterer are neither anything
There is a passage in First Corinthians written into a church that had split itself into camps over which teacher people belonged to, which is close enough to your Tuesday to be useful.
Some said they were of Paul, some of Apollos. And Paul, who is one of the two names being argued about, answers it like this.
So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.1 Corinthians 3:7
Neither is anything.
That is not modesty and it is not a hard word about ministry. It is a statement about where growth comes from, and it is aimed exactly at people who had begun to attach the value of what they had received to the person it came through.
You received something and the man who handed it to you was never anything, in the specific sense Paul means, which is that he was never the one making it work. It is written that neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth (1 Corinthians 3:7), and it is the Holy Spirit who has been giving the growth in two hundred rooms over nine years, which is what a woman at fifty-eight found in Nehemiah on her own.
Now the toll, because it is worth looking at closely.
Forty seconds, every Tuesday, at ten past seven, addressed to an imagined room.
Ask the question you have never asked: who is in that room. Not the people who were hurt, because they are not at your class and they would not be helped by a private statement they will never hear. Not God, because you said yourself it is not really to Him. Not the actual people getting their coats off, because they are thinking about parking.
The room is empty. You have been paying a toll to an empty room for a year, and the payment does not reach anybody and it does not repay anything and it costs you forty seconds of your own composure before you stand up.
You are paying something to nobody, and stopping costs no one anything at all. Scripture says there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1), and it is the Holy Spirit who bears witness with your spirit about where you actually stand, which is a witness that has been available at ten past seven the whole time.
And there is something in that toll worth honoring before it goes.
It comes from a real place. You do not want to be the person who carries on smoothly as though nothing happened, and you do not want anybody to think you have not noticed. That is decency and it is right, and the church has been damaged more than once by people who did carry on smoothly.
But decency that has turned into a private ritual with no recipient is not doing the work you built it for.
You are a woman who noticed, and the noticing does not require a weekly payment to prove itself. It is written that the Lord looks on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7), and it is the Holy Spirit who sees the three weeks last autumn when you seriously considered stopping, which nobody else knows about and which is the actual evidence of what you think.
And the woman at fifty-eight, who deserves the last word on the framework.
She found something in Nehemiah on her own. That is the whole point of the four moves: they hand somebody the ability to go and read without you. She does not need you now and she certainly does not need him, and what she has is hers.
You have been handing people something that makes them independent of you, which is the only kind of teaching worth doing. Scripture says the anointing you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you (1 John 2:27), and it is His Spirit who is the teacher who takes over, which is exactly what happened in a kitchen with a Bible open at Nehemiah.
So do not run it next Tuesday.
At ten past seven, when the coats are coming off and the forty seconds is due, notice it arriving and simply do not pay it. Put the chairs out instead. Ask somebody how their week was.
Because what is happening in that hall on a Tuesday is that a woman is handing people the ability to open the Bible on their own, and God is giving the growth, and He has been giving it in two hundred rooms across nine years.
The four moves are not his. They are a method, and methods get passed along, and the passing along is how the whole thing has always worked.
You are carrying something that never belonged to the man who handed it over, and God has been the one giving growth in every single room. It is written that neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth (1 Corinthians 3:7), and it is the Holy Spirit who has been doing exactly that in your Tuesday class, week after week, throughout everything.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud in the hall before anybody arrives, with the chairs half out. You have the right to speak them because you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and that standing was given to you rather than earned by receiving from clean hands. Scripture is the ground under every line and the Holy Spirit is what makes them live in a person. Speak first to the toll, then to the fear underneath it about being a woman who carried on smoothly, then turn and speak to Him. Whatever He does in that room, the outcome is His to decide.
- Apology I make before every class, you are a toll and you are not repentance. The Word says neither the planter nor the waterer is anything, and you have been collected by an empty room for a year.
- Fear of carrying on smoothly, you are answered in the name of Jesus. It is written that the Lord looks on the heart, and the Spirit saw the three weeks last autumn when I nearly stopped, and that is the evidence of what I think.
- Lord, a woman of fifty-eight who had never opened a Bible found something in Nehemiah on her own, and You gave that growth and nobody else did. I am putting the chairs out at ten past seven this week instead, and the growth in that room is Yours.
1 Corinthians 3:7
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
