He carries this the way a man carries something he took up recently, and he took it up nine years ago.
That is the strange thing about him. Nine years is not recent. He has prayed through two bereavements and one very bad stretch at work, and none of that is a phase.
But it sits in him as a current arrangement. Something he is doing at the moment. A thing about his life now, the way a job is, or a town you have moved to and might move on from.
And here is how you can tell, because he would deny it if you asked him directly.
He thinks of it in terms of years. His years. He has been doing this nine years, and when he measures the thing itself, the measurement he reaches for is the length of his own involvement in it.
So the whole enormous business is nine years old, because that is how long he has been in the room.
He is forty-three. He has never once had a sense of the age of what he is standing inside, and a man who thinks he is in something recent holds it lightly, watches it for signs of not working, and half expects it to end.
So let me ask you.
How old did you think this was?
The address is a dwelling place
There is a psalm attributed to Moses, and it opens by calling God something domestic, and the word does a great deal of work.
Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations.Psalm 90:1
A dwelling place.
Not a discovery. Not a movement. Not a position somebody takes up. A house, which people live in, which was standing before any particular resident walked through the door.
Psalm 90 addresses God as a house occupied continuously across generations rather than as anything anybody founded recently, and the Spirit who moved that psalm put the word dwelling in the opening line, so what you are inside has never once been as young as your own nine years in it.
Now let me be a friend to you and say the plain thing.
You have been using the wrong ruler. That is the whole of the problem and it is a very small thing to correct. Psalm 90 dates the dwelling place by generations rather than by residents, and the Spirit was in the house long before anybody now living found the door.
When you measure how long this has been going on, you measure from the moment you arrived, because that is the only stretch you can see from the inside. Everybody does it. It is not arrogance, it is the ordinary limit of a pair of eyes.
Psalm 90 goes on immediately to a thousand years being like a day, and the Spirit put that scale beside the dwelling place deliberately, which means you have been dating the house from the day you found the door.
And notice what the psalm does with our. Our dwelling place.
Moses is not claiming it for his own generation. He is speaking as one of many who have lived in it, and he says throughout all generations, which puts everybody who came before him in the sentence and everybody after him too.
Psalm 90 has a man speaking as a resident among generations of residents rather than as a founder, and the Spirit was in that plural, so being nine years into this has never made this nine years old.
Now the move, and it is a change of ruler.
Stop measuring from your arrival.
You have been dating something ancient from the day you walked into it, which is like dating a house from the day you got the keys. The nine years are yours. They are not its. Psalm 90 puts a thousand years beside a single day in the same psalm, and the Spirit has never once measured that house by how long you have been standing in it.
Get one fact about its actual age into your hands. One person, dead, who held this. One century that is not yours.
Psalm 90 calls Him a dwelling place throughout all generations, and the Spirit put the whole span into the first line, so holding this lightly because you found it recently has never once been the right weight for it.
Nine years of your own. A floor worn to the depth of a thumb.
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.
- Recent, you are how I have dated this and the dwelling place was standing a very long time before I found the door. Psalm 90 says Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations, and a dwelling place is a house with people already in it.
- Ruler that measures the age of this by the length of my own nine years, you are the ordinary limit of one pair of eyes and you have had me holding something ancient lightly, and in the name of Jesus you are put down. The Spirit put a thousand years being like a day right beside that opening line.
- Lord, Psalm 90 says our dwelling place, and Moses said it as one resident among generations of them rather than as a founder. I am saying one name out loud today and roughly when they lived, and my nine years are mine and they were never the age of the house.
Psalm 90:1
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