She can take a room and she has done it for twenty three years and she has never once faked a minute of it.
That is worth having on the record before anything else. When she praises, something rises that she did not manufacture, and people who were skeptical about her in the beginning stopped being skeptical, and there are men in that congregation who would follow her into a fire.
She is forty two.
She has not wept in front of God since she was nineteen.
She knows the year exactly. She is not going to say what happened in it and she does not have to; it is hers and it is not required for any of this, and I am not going to guess and neither should anybody.
What matters here is what happened afterward, which is that the crying stopped and the shouting started, and both of those were real, and one of them has carried a church and the other one has been gone for twenty three years.
She noticed the shape of it in July.
There was a woman in that hall who had had bad news, and she went and sat with her, and the woman cried for a long time and she held her hand and said almost nothing, which is the right thing and she knows it is.
And afterward she drove home and thought: I could not do what she just did. Not for her. For me.
She could not, in front of God, on her own, in a room, do the thing that woman did in a hall.
She has one register. It is a magnificent one and it is not a lie and it is not going anywhere.
But if you took the volume off, and there are hours in every life when the volume has to come off, she has no idea what is left.
You know that register. Yours may be quieter than hers. But you know what it is to have one true way of being with God, built in a particular year for a particular reason, and to have found out at some point that it is the only one you have.
Only one of the two has any volume in it
Let me name the pit before we go to the verse, because if this becomes a criticism of praise it will be false and half that congregation would say so first.
The pit is not the shouting. The shouting is real, and it is a gift, and it has held people up in rooms where nothing else would have.
The pit is that it is the only door, and it was built in a hard year for a good reason, and a door built in a hard year has a shape that fits that year, and there are hours it will not open for.
Here is the verse. It is out of a song Moses sang to a nation.
Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee.Deuteronomy 32:18
Two halves in one line, and one God in both of them.
The Rock that begat thee. A father's word, strong, and it sits perfectly at home with the way you already come to God. A Rock is a thing you stand on and shout from.
And the second half, in the Hebrew, is the word for a woman bringing a child to birth, which is why a good many translations render the clause as the God who gave you birth.
Now notice this, because it is the whole article for a woman with your voice: only one of those two has any volume in it.
Standing on a Rock is a loud posture. Being given birth is not a posture at all; it is a relation, and there is no volume in it anywhere, and a person cannot shout their way into it and does not need to.
Here I draw the line in the same paragraph, because on this ground the two never travel apart. God is neither male nor female. Numbers 23:19 says God is not a man, and He is not a woman either; He is spirit. Deuteronomy 32:18 does not make God half a father and half a mother, and it does not give Him a quieter side to go with the strong one. It uses two pictures, both chosen by Him, for one God whom neither exhausts. He is never addressed by any title Scripture does not give Him, and the pictures stay in the form He gave them.
Take that in the car on the way home, and know it is not my correction, it is what is written. There is a half of God that has no volume in it, and it is not the lesser half. Deuteronomy 32:18 has both in one line, and it is the Holy Spirit who opens the second register in a woman who has had one since she was nineteen.
You started in a hard year and the volume was right that year.
You are not shut out of the quiet half, and you were made by a God who holds both without changing. Deuteronomy 32:18 has the Rock and the birthing in the same line, and it is the Holy Spirit who opens what a woman has kept shut since she was nineteen, and He does not force it open.
I want to say that clearly before anything else, because a woman like you will read this and hear an accusation about nineteen, and there is none. Whatever happened, the register that came out of it has been used by God to hold a great many people up, and God is not sitting in judgement on a nineteen year old's way of surviving.
But there is a half of Him with no volume in it, and you have not been in that room since, and there are hours coming in every life when the volume has to come off.
So do the small deliberate thing.
Sit somewhere nobody can hear you, and pray one sentence with no volume at all. Not quietly, which is a lower setting of the same voice. With no lift in it whatsoever, the way you would say something to somebody sitting next to you on a sofa.
Say something true and unremarkable: I am tired. Or: I am glad about my sister. Or: I do not know what to do about that.
And then stop, and do not build.
You were given birth by God, and that half of Him needs nothing from your voice. That is Deuteronomy 32:18 read as it stands, and it is the Holy Spirit who opens the register with no volume in it, and He is not less present in it, and He has been waiting in a car on the way home since July.
I am not going to tell you the weeping comes back. I do not know, and a woman who has not wept in front of God for twenty three years deserves better than a guess from somebody who has not been in that year with her.
What I will tell you is that the room is open, and that the half of God without any volume in it is the same God at full strength, and that a person who has been standing and shouting for twenty three years is allowed to sit down.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud with no lift in them, which is the point. You are in Christ, and the authority to speak over a register built when you were nineteen is delegated to you in Him; it does not depend on your producing anything tonight. These stand on what is written in Deuteronomy and are carried by the Holy Spirit, not by your voice. Whether the tears come, and when, is His to decide, and He answers in His own way and in His own timing.
- One register I have had since I was nineteen, you are a gift and you are not the whole of how He has me, and I say so in the name of Jesus. Deuteronomy 32:18 says the Rock begat me and God gave me birth, and only one of those two has any volume in it.
- Idea that with the volume off there is nothing left of me in front of God, you have no ground in this car. It is written that both halves stand in one line about one God, and His Spirit is the one who opens the second room, which I have not been in for twenty three years.
- Lord, You are neither male nor female, and You both begat me and gave me birth. I sit down where nobody can hear me and say one small true sentence with no lift in it, and I am not building on it.
Deuteronomy 32:18
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