It Runs Perfectly Without Him

She built it and it is beautiful.

I want to say that first because a lot of people say what I am about to say in a way that sneers at the work, and I am not going to, because the work is real and most of the people who sneer at it could not do it.

Eleven years ago that hall was a shambles. Nobody knew who was doing what. The sound was terrible. Nothing started on time and half the people who visited never came back because nobody spoke to them.

She fixed all of it. Every bit. She built a team and a rota and a way of doing things, and she trained people, and she has a folder.

And now it runs.

Every Sunday, on time, warm, competent. Visitors get spoken to. The sound is good. The transition between the songs and the talk is smooth in a way that took her two years to get right.

And about four months ago she was standing at the back watching it all work, and a thought went through her that she has not been able to get rid of since.

If God did nothing at all this morning, nobody in this room would notice.

Not because the people are shallow. Because she has built something so good that it produces the whole experience by itself, and the seam where the machine ends and God begins used to be visible and she cannot find it any more.

So let me ask you.

What in your church would carry on perfectly if God did nothing this Sunday?

The man who wrote it knew exactly how to build a house

There is a psalm that gets quoted at people who are working too hard and it is not really about that.

Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labour in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain.Psalm 127:1

Notice that he does not tell the builders to stop building. You have built something good and it is not the problem, and the Holy Spirit has never been offended by a rota or required a mess in order to move.

Now, the thing to notice is who this is attributed to, and it is Solomon, and Solomon is the single most competent builder in the Old Testament.

That man built the temple. He organized labor on a scale nobody in that region had seen. He knew about materials and timetables and management and he was, by every account, extremely good at all of it.

This is not a poem by somebody who could not build. It is a poem by the best builder there was.

And look at what he does not say. He does not say building is vanity. He does not say the guards should go home, or that competence is worldly, or that a badly run house is more spiritual than a well run one.

He says unless. Which is a conditional, and a conditional is about a relationship between two things and not a criticism of either one.

Hear where you stand, beloved, standing at the back of a room you made.

You are not a woman who has built the wrong thing. Scripture puts that psalm in the mouth of the greatest builder in the book, and the Spirit He poured out has never once been offended by a rota.

And now let me say the thing you actually came for.

The problem is not that your machine is too good. That is how it will feel and it is not accurate, and if you go away from this and start letting things run badly on purpose you will have understood nothing and hurt a lot of people.

But you are not a woman who has lost her hunger, whatever four months of standing at the back has suggested. The word says the Lord builds the house alongside the builders, and the Spirit has been keeping something awake in you that a well run morning cannot satisfy, which is precisely why the thought will not leave.

The problem is that nobody in that building is asking any more.

Not because anybody decided to stop. Because asking is what people do when there is a gap, and you closed all the gaps, and you closed them for eleven years with enormous skill, and a room with no gaps in it does not generate a request from anybody.

Including you. That is the part that has been sitting on your chest for four months.

The word says unless the Lord builds it, the builders labor in vain, and Solomon wrote that with a temple standing behind him.

And you are not a woman who has built the wrong thing. Psalm 127 puts that line in the mouth of the greatest builder in the book, with a temple standing behind him, and the Spirit has never been offended by a rota.