She went. That is the part most people never do, and she did it.
Eighteen months of looking. Two different churches for a season each, honestly and openly, with no bad word said about anybody on the way out. Four conferences. A prayer network she joined online and stayed with for nearly a year.
She was not shopping. I want that understood, because that is the accusation people make and it is not true of her. She was thirsty, and she went where thirsty people are told to go, and she went with her whole heart every time.
And she came back.
Not defeated, exactly. She came back because she reached a conclusion, and the conclusion was that she had gone looking for a thing in places rather than for a thing, and that she could not tell any more which one she was doing.
So she is back in the same room she left. Fourth row from the front, on the left, which is where she sat before.
And here is the sentence she has not said to anybody, and it is not a bitter one, and that is what makes it heavy.
I have now proved that it is not out there, and I already knew it was not in here.
So let me ask you.
Where did you go looking, and what did you bring back?
The room that got shaken was the one they were already in
I teach this passage carefully because it is the one people reach for when they want to promise a room something, and I am not going to promise you a room anything.
But look at where they were.
Peter and John have been arrested and questioned and let go, and they go back to their own people and report what happened. And then the whole group prays out loud together.
They do not ask for protection. Read it. They ask for boldness, and they ask God to stretch out His hand, and they quote a psalm at Him for about four verses first.
After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.Acts 4:31
Read where they were standing when it happened. Not a venue they had traveled to. The room they had come back to. You are sitting in a room like that on Sunday, and the Holy Spirit has not yet required a building with anything special about it.
The place where they were meeting.
Not a new venue. Not somewhere they had traveled to. The room they were already in, which was almost certainly somebody's house, and which had no property whatsoever that made it the right room.
They had not gone anywhere. They had come back from somewhere, actually, which is closer to your situation than most people notice.
And here is the doctrinal point and I want it precise.
The passage does not say the room was special. It says they asked, and then something happened, and the two are joined by a single word: after.
That is not a formula and I am not handing you one. Nothing in that verse promises anybody a repeat, and I am not going to tell you what will happen in your building because I do not know and neither does anybody who says otherwise, and this house does not put a date on God for anybody.
What the verse does establish, plainly, is the location. It happened where they already were.
Hear where you stand, eighteen months of looking behind you.
You are not a woman who has run out of places. Scripture puts that shaking in an ordinary room that a group had come back to, and the Spirit has never required a venue.
And now the sentence you have not said, and I am going to take it apart, because it has a flaw in it and you are precise enough to see it once it is pointed out.
I already knew it was not in here.
You do not know that. What you know is that it has not happened here, which is a fact about the past. You have converted it into a fact about the room, and those are not the same claim, and the second one is not available to anybody.
And there is a second flaw, and it is the bigger one.
In eighteen months of going to places, has anybody in that fourth row ever asked out loud, together, in that building, the way those people did in Acts 4?
So you are not a woman who has run out of places. Acts 4 puts that shaking in an ordinary room that a group had come back to, with no property that made it the right one, and the Spirit He poured out has not once required a venue.
So this is the part that matters, and it is the one thing the eighteen months never included.
Ask, out loud, in that building.
Not go somewhere. Not come back with something. Ask, in the room, in the state it is in, with whoever will stay.
Because when you list what you actually did in eighteen months, it is all travel. Two churches, four conferences, a network. Everything you tried was a change of location, and the one thing that never happened, in any of it, was the thing those people in Acts 4 did in a house.
Acts says after they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken, and they were in an ordinary room they had come back to. The Holy Spirit who did the pouring has never once required a venue, and the fire this house is named for fell in a building that had been a livery stable and then a lumber store.
I cannot tell you what will happen. Nobody can and I will not.
I can tell you that you have never asked in that room, and that you came home eighteen months ago and have been sitting in the fourth row ever since with a sentence that has a hole in it.
Declare this over yourself
Say these where you can hear yourself. Know what holds them up. This authority is not yours by nature, it is Christ's, and in Christ it has been given to you, so you speak as one representing the King. And you speak under His will, never over it. However He answers, and in whatever way He comes, the outcome is His.
- Search, you were honest and thirsty and you were pointed at the wrong thing. Acts 4 says the place where they were meeting was shaken, and the fire fell in an ordinary room that people had come home to rather than traveled to.
- Sentence that says I already knew it was not in here, you turned a fact about the past into a claim about a room, and in the name of Jesus I take you apart. The Spirit He poured out never once required a venue, and He fell in a place that had been a livery stable.
- Lord, Acts 4 says the place where they were meeting was shaken after they asked out loud, and Your Spirit never once required a venue. I am staying behind on Sunday and saying it here, and I came home for a reason I could not name and now I can.
Acts 4:31
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