For the believer whose prayer circle lives in a thread on a phone.
Distance has never once been a discount, and you've been paying one for three years without anybody charging it.
Look at what you have. Four women in a thread, one of them in another country, none of them in your town. Between them they've prayed you through a redundancy, a hospital week, and the matter with your brother that you still haven't told anybody face to face.
They know the names. They know which week is bad. When you went quiet for eleven days in February, two of them rang and the third sent a photograph of her kettle with no caption, which is a whole sentence in your particular language.
And you describe this, when you describe it at all, as not having anybody nearby.
Nearby has quietly become the entire measurement. Somewhere along the way you decided that care arriving from far off counts for less, and you've been applying that discount to yourself every week since.
Distance was never a discount, and nobody with authority set that rate. It is written that believers into one body without measuring the miles between them, and the Spirit holds you to four women you can't reach by car.
Who Taught You the Exchange Rate
Nobody sat you down and set the rate. You worked it out from the shape of the questions people ask you.
They ask whether you have anybody local. Whether somebody could come round. Whether you're on your own really. Every one of those is kind, and every one of them prices proximity as the currency, and you've started paying in it.
So a forty second message from eight hundred miles away goes into the ledger at a fraction of its value. A casserole from next door would go in at full price, and you couldn't explain the difference if anybody asked you to.
I'm not against the casserole. I'd like you to have one. What I'm against is a rate you didn't set, applied to your own life, in a currency God never named.
You can stop converting real care into a lesser figure, because that rate has no authority behind it. Scripture makes the members one body in Christ rather than one body in a postcode, and the Spirit carries their supply across every mile without charging you.
One Body, and Not One Street
The verse is short, and it says nothing at all about geography, which is exactly the point.
Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.1 Corinthians 12:27 (KJV)
Read it looking for a clause about distance. There isn't one. No mention of a shared street, a shared hour, or any way of getting to each other.
The people it was written to were spread across a large port city and beyond it, in a world where a letter took weeks and many of them would never meet the others in the room it was read to.
Those words went first into that scattered crowd, and they arrive in a thread on a phone without narrowing. Your four women are members in particular, so are you, and no mile between you appears anywhere in the sentence.
You're one body with women you can't drive to, and the miles were never part of the definition. Scripture's sentence states the membership with no geography in it, and the Spirit makes it a present fact in a thread.
The Kettle Photograph
Stay on that photograph a moment, because it's doing more than you've given it credit for.
She could have typed something. She chose an image of her own kettle, taken at her own counter, on a morning you weren't answering anybody. In your shared language it says she's having tea and thinking about you and isn't going to press you for a reply.
That isn't a lesser form of presence. It's a form of presence that required her to know you well enough to choose it, which is more than most people standing in a doorway manage.
There's a fierce thing to say here and it's worth saying plainly. Somebody who knows your February well enough to send a kettle instead of a question hasn't been kept at a distance from you. They've been let closer in than most.
You did the letting. That's the part you keep leaving out of your own account. Four women know the state of your brother because you told them, over three years, in a thread, which is not what a person does with strangers.
You're known closely by people you aren't near, and closeness was never a matter of miles. Scripture joins the members inside Christ rather than inside a street, and the Spirit makes that knowing real on a morning you're not answering.
I Am Not Telling You to Stop Wanting a Door
Be honest about what this won't do, because you've been given cheerful answers before and they cost you.
I'm not going to tell you it's the same as somebody on your step. It isn't, and you know the difference in your body when a week is bad. Wanting a person who could actually come round isn't ingratitude, and I won't write a paragraph that quietly tells you it is.
Nor am I telling you to go and find a local congregation so this gets solved. If that happens and it's good, I'll be glad. This doesn't depend on it and doesn't expire if it never happens.
What I want canceled is the discount. The wanting can stay. It's honest.
Count It at Full Price
The turn here happens in your ledger rather than in your circumstances, and nothing about your Tuesday needs to change for it.
The four women are still where they are. You're still here. No door is going to open on your step because you read something.
What changes is the figure you've been writing down. Three years of real prayer, real knowledge and real presence have been entered at a discount, and the sum at the bottom of the page has been telling you that you're poorer than you are.
Enter it at full price once and look at the total. You're one of the better held people on your street, and you've been walking around feeling like the least.
You can count what you have at what it's worth, because Christ never discounted it. The written Word's sentence names you and them members of one body with no rate attached, and the Spirit makes that total true on a Tuesday.
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 authority here is borrowed, and it was given rather than seized. You are His and He is in you, the Spirit carries the words, and what follows stays God's to decide.
Read it slowly enough to hear yourself.
Distance was never a discount, and I stop entering real care at a fraction of its value. Scripture stands written, that now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular, and no mile appears anywhere in that sentence. The Spirit holds me to four women I cannot drive to and carries every word they pray. I am not the least held person on this street. I have been keeping my own books at a rate nobody with authority ever set. I want a door and I count what I have at full price, and neither one cancels the other.
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.
1 Corinthians 12:27
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