She has had the best year of teaching she has ever had and she has not felt a thing.
That sounds ungrateful and it is not. It is worse than ungrateful. It is baffling.
She has read more this year than in the previous five. She sat under something in the spring that reorganized how she understands about four things. She has had two conversations that she will carry for the rest of her life, and a book that she has now given away three copies of.
Her understanding has genuinely moved. She could show you where.
And somewhere around September she noticed that she has not been met.
Not once. Not in a way she could point at. She has been explained to, magnificently, for eleven months, by God and by good people and by good books, and she has come out of all of it clearer and colder than she went in.
She feels like somebody who has been given directions all day by a stranger she never looked at.
So let me ask you.
How long have you been walking with somebody you have not recognized?
Seven miles of the best teaching there has ever been
There are two men on a road out of Jerusalem on the Sunday afternoon, and what happens to them is almost funny if you let it be.
A stranger joins them and asks what they are discussing, and they tell him, sadly, and then he explains the entire Scriptures to them. Moses and all the Prophets. Everything concerning himself.
Seven miles of the finest exposition in the history of the world, delivered by its subject.
And they do not know Him. The text says their eyes were kept from recognizing Him, and it lets that stand for the whole walk.
Then they get to the village and press him to stay, and they sit down, and this happens.
When He was at the table with them, He took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him.Luke 24:30 and 31
Four verbs. Took. Gave thanks. Broke. Gave.
Luke 24 puts the recognition inside four physical actions at a table rather than inside seven miles of explanation, and the Spirit who opened those Scriptures on the road was equally in the hands at the table, so understanding has never been the same thing as being met.
Now, I am going to be careful here, and you will see why immediately.
I am not going to tell you what that moment was or was not, and I am not going to rule on anything anybody has ever argued about concerning a table. In any direction. That is not what this is and I have no interest in it.
I am pointing at something much plainer, and it is in the text and nowhere else.
The teaching was perfect and it did not do it. The bread did it. Or rather, He did it, in the middle of doing something with His hands that people do every day of their lives.
Luke 24 has them saying afterward that their hearts had been burning on the road, which means the teaching was working the whole time, and the Spirit was in it, and they still did not know Him until a loaf came apart.
So your eleven months are not wasted. Your heart has been burning. You have simply not yet sat down.
Here is where it breaks open, and it is not more input.
Sit down and use your hands.
That is the whole prescription and it is going to feel like an anticlimax after eleven months of magnificent teaching, which is exactly the shape of the passage. Seven miles of explanation, then four verbs at a table. Luke 24 has their eyes opened at the table rather than on the road, and the Spirit was in the four ordinary verbs, so you have had eleven months of the road and none of the table.
You are not being asked to stop reading or to distrust the year. Keep every bit of it. Their hearts were burning on that road and it counted.
Luke 24 puts the opening of their eyes inside took, gave thanks, broke and gave, and the Spirit who had been opening the Scriptures for seven miles was in those four ordinary movements too, so being met has never required one more chapter.
You have been walking. Now sit down.
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.
- Explanation, you are good and you are not the moment. Luke 24 has seven miles of perfect teaching from its own subject, and their eyes were kept from recognizing Him for every mile of it.
- Coldness I have carried since September, you are not evidence against a single thing I have learned this year, and in the name of Jesus I put you down. The Spirit who opened those Scriptures on the road was in the hands at the table just as much.
- Lord, Luke 24 says He took bread, gave thanks, broke it and gave it to them, and then their eyes were opened. I am breaking a loaf at my own table tonight, and my heart has been burning on the road the whole time.
Luke 24:30
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