Nobody From That Church Ever Turned Up For Me

It was a bad two weeks and you did not tell anybody.

That is the first thing and it is worth putting down straight, because it changes the shape of the rest. You did not ring anybody. You did not say anything on the Sunday. You did not put it anywhere.

And nobody came.

And you know both of those facts are sitting in the same paragraph, and you know what that means, and it has not helped even slightly.

Because for eleven years you have been the one who turns up. Chairs, lifts, the awkward jobs, the man you can call at nine at night. And in your own two weeks there was nobody, and the arithmetic of that has been running in you since.

And now you are deciding something about the next year.

Before anything else: nothing in this article says that giving to people produces anything back. Not help in your hard week, not gratitude, not a turn in the account. That is not what this site teaches and it is not what happened here.

God is not unrighteous to forget

Here it is.

For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister. (Hebrews 6:10, King James Version)

That is written to people in exactly your position, and the first thing to notice is the phrase he chooses.

God is not unrighteous to forget. Not: God remembers. He puts it as a matter of justice. Forgetting that work would be an injustice, and God does not commit injustices.

You have a record held by somebody for whom losing it would be a wrong, and the Holy Spirit is the one who framed it as righteousness. Hebrews 6:10 says He is not unrighteous to forget rather than that He happens to recall, and that framing puts the whole thing beyond anybody's mood.

And say what it does not say, because that matters here.

It does not say people will remember. It does not say the saints will show up when you need them. It does not promise one single thing about the behavior of anybody in that hall.

What is guaranteed is that the work is not lost. Who does the not losing is named, and it is not them.

You are not owed anything by anybody in that building, and it is written that God does not forget rather than that the people do not. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps that boundary, and if it moves an inch the whole thing becomes an arrangement with a debtor.

Now the last two words of the verse, which are easy to miss and are doing a great deal.

Ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister. Past tense and then present tense, in the same breath.

He is writing to people who are still doing it. Not people who stopped and are being consoled. People in the middle of it, being told that none of it has gone anywhere.

You are being spoken to in the present tense, and the Holy Spirit is the one who put both tenses in. Scripture says and do minister rather than treating any of it as finished, and the second one is addressed to a man who has not decided yet.

What the two weeks actually was

Now let me say something honest about what happened, because the arithmetic has been running on incomplete figures.

Nobody knew. You did not tell anybody.

That is not a defense of those people and it does not undo what those two weeks were like. But it changes what the silence proves, and the silence has been proving a great deal in your head for weeks.

You have been reading a result from a test nobody was given, and it is written that God does not forget rather than that anybody else was informed. The Spirit of God is the one who separates what happened from what it means, and there is a real distance between them here.

And here is the harder half, said straight.

There is a reason you did not tell anybody, and it is the same reason the arithmetic hurts. A man who has been the one who turns up for eleven years does not know how to be the one who asks.

He has no practice at it. There is no version of himself in that building that needs anything, and there has not been for eleven years.

You have been in a role that had nowhere for this in it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man what his own position cost him. The written word names the ministering without ever describing the man being ministered to, and it cost him a phone call he could not make.

And one thing about them, held loosely.

Some of those people would have come. Not all of them, and probably not the ones you would expect, but some, and quickly, and they still do not know.

You have never found out who would have come, and it is written that the ministering is what is recorded rather than who reciprocated. The Spirit of God is the one who knows which of them would have been at the door, and the list exists whether or not it was ever tested.

Decide the next year without an invoice in it

So here is what to do, and the decision in front of you is not the one you think it is.

The question is not whether to keep doing it. The question is whether the next year has an invoice in it.

Because a man can keep turning up and be quietly running an account at the same time, and that is a far worse year for him than stopping would be.

You have a decision about the account rather than about the work, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that distinction available. Hebrews 6:10 puts the keeping of the record in God's hands rather than in anybody's, and it is the only one that makes the next year survivable.

So take the invoice out before you start.

Write one sentence down if it helps, the way you would write anything you needed to be sure of. I am doing this year with nothing owing to me from anybody in it.

You are able to settle that in advance, and it is written that God is not unrighteous to forget rather than that a man should keep his own ledger in case. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a written thing hold for twelve months, and it has to hold for twelve.

And then do the second thing, which is harder than all of the above.

Tell one person the next time. Not the whole building. One man, and preferably not the obvious one.

Because you have now got evidence about what happens when nobody is told, and it is the only variable in the whole of those two weeks that was in your hands.

You have one thing you can change and it is not them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gets a phone call out of a man who has never made one. His word records the ministering without once requiring anybody to ask for help correctly, and the first one is the only difficult one.