For the reader whose Bible closed when the Tuesday group ended.
It's on the end of the kitchen counter, between the marmalade and a stack of unopened post, and there's a ring on the cover where somebody put a mug down.
The ribbon is still in Luke. You could open it now and land on the page you were on in April of the year before last, because nothing has moved it since.
You haven't hidden it. That would take a decision, and there hasn't been one. It simply stopped being picked up on a Wednesday when the Tuesday group ended, then it stayed not picked up, and then eighteen months went by without anybody mentioning it.
Some mornings you move it to wipe underneath. Something small and unpleasant happens while you are doing that, and then you put it back in the same place.
Nobody's waiting to hear what you got out of it. That's the part that surprised you most, and the part you have never said out loud to anybody.
You'd expected to miss the room. What you actually miss is being asked, which is a smaller and more awkward admission, and it has taken eighteen months to arrive at.
You are not being sentimental. Missing a room is respectable. Missing the question is closer to the bone, because it means part of what kept the book moving was somebody else's attention rather than your own appetite.
The room Christ named for prayer is the one with nobody in it, and this morning is enough. Scripture that instruction down in His own words, and the Spirit keeps that meeting real when nobody's watching.
What the Group Was Actually Supplying
The group was good. That's worth saying before anything else, because you loved those people and I'm not about to tidy them into a lesson.
What it also did, quietly, was supply a reason. Somebody would ask on Tuesday. You'd want something to say. So Wednesday morning acquired a small gravity of its own, and the book came off the counter.
That isn't hypocrisy, and please don't start reading it that way. Almost every good habit any of us keeps is propped up by something outside itself, and being asked about it on a Tuesday is one of the more honorable supports available to anybody.
You are not looking at a root. A prop isn't the same thing. When the prop went, the habit went with it inside about three weeks, which tells you what had been holding it up and tells you nothing at all about whether you love God.
You lost a prop without having lost a root, and the two were never the same object. Scripture says so. Christ's recorded instruction puts the Father in secret rather than in an audience, and the Spirit holds the root while the prop is gone.
The Room He Sends You Into
Here's the verse, and what matters is where Jesus sends a person who wants to pray.
But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.Matthew 6:6 (KJV)
A closet with the door shut. The smallest, least visible room in the house, chosen deliberately, with nobody in it and nobody informed about what's happening there.
He's contrasting it with people who prayed where they'd be seen, and His correction isn't that they prayed too much. It's that the seeing had got into the praying and spoiled it from the inside.
Those words were first spoken to a crowd on a hillside who mostly had no private room at all, and they arrive on your counter without narrowing. The room with nobody in it isn't the second best room. It's the one He named.
You are standing in the room the Lord Himself recommended, and it's empty on purpose. Scripture says so. His instruction as written sends you behind a shut door to a Father who is in secret, and the Spirit makes Him present in a kitchen where nobody asks.
Eighteen Months Is Not a Debt
Deal with the arithmetic, because it's sitting on you heavier than the book is.
Somewhere in you there's a ledger. Eighteen months of mornings, none of them opened, and the number has been climbing while you weren't looking at it. It feels like a debt, debts have to be worked off, and working this one off would take about eighteen months.
There's no such ledger. Nobody's keeping it, and nothing in Scripture suggests God opened an account in your name in April of the year before last.
His compassions are described as new every morning, which is a strange and generous arrangement once you stop and consider it. Not topped up from a reserve. Not carried over with a balance attached. New, meaning this morning's are this morning's.
That word rules out the ledger by itself. A balance requires something to carry forward, and there is nothing to carry. Whatever yesterday held closed with yesterday, and today opened with a full supply that has no relationship to it.
You aren't in arrears with God, because no account was ever opened against you. Scripture describes His mercies as new every morning rather than as a running total, and the Spirit isn't holding a number over your head.
I Am Not Giving You a Plan
Be plain about what this refuses to do, because you'd smell it coming a mile off.
I'm not handing you a reading plan, a minimum, or a fortnight of easy chapters to get you started. The place you came out of measured you, and the last thing you need now is a smaller ruler in a friendlier font.
Nor am I telling you to find another group so somebody asks again. If one turns up and you love it, I'll be glad. This doesn't depend on it and doesn't expire without it.
What I want off that counter is the weight. The ribbon can stay in Luke. The marmalade can stay where it is.
Open It and Leave It Open
The turn here is smaller than a decision to start again, and it's designed so that it cannot fail.
You have been waiting to feel ready, because starting again implies a commitment and you know perfectly well that you can't guarantee tomorrow. So you keep not starting, the not starting compounds, and by now the book has become a monument to it.
Try something that can't go wrong. Open the book on the counter and leave it open. That's the whole instruction. You needn't read it, and you certainly needn't promise to read it tomorrow.
An open book can be walked past without costing anybody anything. A closed one is a small locked door you keep meeting in your own kitchen, and you have been meeting it every morning for eighteen months.
That's the whole reason for the instruction. Not to get you reading. To take a door out of a room you have to walk through before breakfast.
You can open a book without owing anybody a habit, and that's allowed to be the whole of it. Scripture's instruction puts the Father in the secret room with no schedule attached, and the Spirit meets you there on a morning you read nothing at all.
Declare this over yourself
You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so what follows is not a claim made out of your own authority. It is agreement, said back to God in His own words, while the Holy Spirit carries it. How He orders the rest of it is His to decide, and He answers in His own way and in His own time.
The ground under this is Christ rather than your run of good weeks. He lives in you, the Spirit carries agreement, and the outcome is left where it has always been.
Say it once and do not repeat it.
The room He named is the one with nobody in it, and this morning is enough. It is written. Matthew wrote down what Christ said about it: enter into thy closet, shut thy door, and pray to thy Father which is in secret. The Spirit makes Him present at this counter whether or not I read a word today. I am not in arrears. No account was opened against me in April of the year before last, and His mercies are new this morning rather than carried over. I leave the book open and stop waiting to feel ready.
Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.
This message is free. Nothing here is locked, nothing is for sale, and nothing is being asked of you.
Matthew 6:6
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.
