He has been going to the same place for six years and he still calls it theirs.
Not out loud. He is careful about that, because he knows how it would sound and he does not want anybody making a fuss.
But it is in every sentence he thinks. Their building. Their thing on a Thursday. Their way of doing the singing.
And he is welcome there. That is what makes this hard to explain to anybody. Nobody has ever done a single thing to make him feel otherwise. They know his name and they ask after his mother and last year somebody gave him a key.
He has never used the key.
Because underneath all of it is a settled conviction he has never examined, which is that this whole arrangement was set up by other people for other people, and that his position is that of a very long term guest.
A guest is treated well. A guest is glad to be there. A guest also never quite unpacks.
He is fifty-eight and he has been a guest somewhere for six years and he has a key in a drawer.
So let me ask you.
Who do you think this was actually arranged for?
The outsider was named on the opening day
There is a prayer in 1 Kings that runs for most of a chapter, and something happens in the middle of it that I have never got over.
Solomon is dedicating the temple. It is the most inside day imaginable: his own people, their own house, the whole national story arriving at its moment.
And in the middle of that prayer, he stops and prays for somebody who is not there.
As for the foreigner who does not belong to your people Israel but has come from a distant land because of your name, when they come and pray toward this temple, hear from heaven.1 Kings 8:41
He is not asking that outsiders be tolerated later, once things have settled down.
He is writing them into the dedication prayer, on day one, before anybody had ever used the building for anything.
1 Kings 8 puts the foreigner into the prayer on the opening day rather than into an amendment years afterward, and the Spirit was in that prayer as it was prayed, so the position you have quietly assigned yourself has never been the one the arrangement was built with.
Now let me sit beside you a while, because this is delicate and I am not going to rush it.
Your carefulness is a good thing and it comes from somewhere real. You have probably been somewhere, at some point, where being careful was wise, and a man does not develop your kind of watchfulness in a room that was safe.
But watch what six years of it has produced. A key in a drawer.
They gave you the key, which is a specific act with a specific meaning, and you kept the conviction and put the evidence away.
1 Kings 8 has the outsider prayed for by name before the doors were open, and the Spirit was in that naming, which means the guest role you have been carrying was never assigned to you by anybody who is actually there.
And notice something else about the prayer, because it goes further than welcome.
The reason given is because of your name. The foreigner comes because of who God is. That is the same reason everybody else is there.
1 Kings 8 gives the outsider the identical reason for coming as the people whose house it was, and the Spirit put that clause in rather than a lesser one, so the difference you feel between yourself and everybody in that room has never once been in the prayer.
Now, the turn, and it is smaller than six years.
Use the key.
Or whatever your key is. The thing that was handed to you, that you accepted politely and then put somewhere, because accepting it fully would have meant you were not a guest.
You are not being asked to feel like you belong. Feelings arrive late and yours have six years of momentum.
You are being asked to act once as the thing you already are.
1 Kings 8 wrote the foreigner into the prayer before the doors ever opened, and the Spirit was in that dedication, so using what you were given has never once been taking a liberty.
Six years of a key in a drawer. One door.
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.
- Guest, you are a role I assigned myself and I was written into the prayer on the opening day. 1 Kings 8 says as for the foreigner who does not belong to your people, and Solomon prayed it before the doors had ever been used.
- Six years of calling it theirs in every sentence I think, you have put a key in a drawer and kept the conviction, and in the name of Jesus you are put down. The Spirit was in that dedication prayer as it was prayed and the outsider was in it by name.
- Lord, 1 Kings 8 says the foreigner comes because of Your name, which is the same reason everybody else came. I am going in today at an hour when nobody is there, and a guest never quite unpacks and I have unpacked.
1 Kings 8:41
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