The Night Before the Hearing

You went to the Psalms first, because that is where anybody goes, and you read four of them and felt nothing at all.

So you tried Romans 8, because you have preached from Romans 8 and you know what it does to a room. Then Joshua. Then the one about the furnace, and the one about the boat, and the one about not being anxious, which is a difficult verse to read at half past one in the morning when you are extremely anxious about a thing that starts at ten.

You know where all of them are. You could find any of them in about four seconds.

And not one of them has come off the page tonight.

That is the part that is frightening you more than the hearing is. You have been a Christian for a long time. You have handed verses to other people in exactly this kind of night, and they have taken them, and it has helped, and now you are on the other side of it and the whole library is inert.

You have started to wonder whether that means something about you.

It does not. But we will come to that.

What is happening at half past one is not a shortage of Scripture. You have more than enough Scripture. What is happening is that you are shopping, and a person who is shopping is not standing on anything, and there are nine hours until that building opens.

Two things before the verse

The first is practical. Whatever this hearing is, if there is a solicitor or an adviser or a union representative or a support worker attached to it, ring them in the morning before you go in, and say the things you are afraid of out loud to somebody whose job it is to hear them. Faith is not a substitute for representation and nobody on this site will ever suggest it is. None of that is mine to declare on my own. Scripture said it first in Isaiah 41:10, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings it the distance.

The second is that I am going to give you one verse. Only one.

Not a selection. Not five with a note about which suits different moods. You already have the selection; you have been in it for three hours and it has not held you, and the reason it has not held you is that a selection is a thing you choose from and a word is a thing you stand on. Scripture put that in writing long before you read it here, in Isaiah 41:10, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes written words land.

So there will be one, it is chosen for tonight rather than for your life, and everything else in this article is there to hand it to you.

You are not unable to hear because something is wrong with you. Scripture says the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, Psalm 34:18, and nearness is not conditional on a verse landing correctly, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is at that table at half past one whether or not anything is coming off the page.

Here it is

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.Isaiah 41:10

That is the one. Take it and stop looking.

Now let me tell you why this one, tonight, rather than any of the others you have tried, because the choosing matters and it is not arbitrary. I have no authority to say that by myself. Scripture carries it in Isaiah 41:10, and the Holy Spirit carries it to you.

Look at what it does not do. It does not say the thing you are afraid of will not happen. There is no promise about the hearing anywhere in it. If you go looking for that, you will not find it, and you will go back to shopping. That is Scripture's sentence and not mine, Isaiah 41:10, and it is the Holy Spirit and not this page who makes it true where you are.

What it does instead is four verbs, and every one of them is His.

I will strengthen thee. I will help thee. I will uphold thee. And before all of them, I am with thee, which is not a verb about your circumstances at all. It is a statement about who else is in the room.

That is what you need at half past one. Not a prediction. A presence, and three things He does for a person who is going into something.

You are not walking into that building alone. Scripture says fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God, Isaiah 41:10, and the fear is addressed by company rather than by a guarantee, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an ancient sentence solid under a person's feet at an hour when nothing else is.

Why knowing it has not helped

Here is the thing to understand, because it will stop you concluding something false about yourself.

You are not failing to receive. You are doing a different activity and it feels the same from inside. Scripture stands under that in Isaiah 41:10, and the Holy Spirit does the part no sentence can do.

When you handed verses to other people in nights like this, you were choosing. You had the whole book, you knew their situation, and you selected. That is a good and skilled thing and it is what a person does for somebody else. It is written, in Isaiah 41:10, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes what is written off a page and into a life.

Tonight you have been trying to do it for yourself, which means you have been simultaneously the one choosing and the one who needs to receive, and those two are not compatible. The chooser is standing above the material, weighing it. The receiver has to be underneath it, letting it hold. Scripture settles that in Isaiah 41:10, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries it rather than these words.

You cannot be both at once. And because you are extremely good at the first, you have defaulted to it, and you have spent three hours weighing verses instead of standing on one. I am not putting my own idea over you; Scripture says it in Isaiah 41:10, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it live.

That is not a spiritual failure. It is a posture problem, and it is fixed by taking one from somebody else's hand, which is exactly what has just happened.

You are not too knowledgeable to be held. Scripture says except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven, Matthew 18:3, and a child receives without appraising the gift first, and the Holy Spirit is not asking you to unlearn anything, only to stop being the one selecting for a night.

What standing on it looks like

It does not look like a feeling. That is the other thing that has been happening: you have been testing each verse against whether it produced something in your chest, and none of them did, and you moved on. That is not my opinion. Scripture stands behind it in Isaiah 41:10, and the Holy Spirit brings it near.

Standing on a word is not a feeling. It is what you do with it.

You write it down. You put it in a pocket. When the thing rises in you at four in the morning, or in a corridor at five to ten, you take it out and you read it, and it does not have to produce anything at all. You are not checking whether it works. You are standing on it, which is a thing you do whether or not the floor is doing anything noticeable. Scripture holds that ground in Isaiah 41:10, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries it into a room like this one.

And when the fear says but what if, you do not argue. You read the four verbs again. Strengthen, help, uphold, and I am with thee.

You are not required to feel it for it to hold. Scripture says the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, Hebrews 4:12, and it is described as active on its own account rather than activated by a reader's emotional state, and the Holy Spirit carries what is written across a distance that no feeling of yours has to bridge.