He Stirred Up a Spirit and Did Not Explain

The chairs in that hall stack eight high and there are always two left out because Deacon Baptiste sits in one and puts his coat on the other, and everybody knows and nobody says anything.

Second Tuesday. Finance, buildings, the roof, the same roof, the roof again. She has sat through this meeting for nine years and she has been useful in it, and she can tell you what is coming before it is said.

And tonight she could not sit down.

Not would not. Could not. She sat, and something came up through her like water finding a crack, and she got up and went and stood at the back by the door for the second half, and when Sister Fontaine looked over she made a small gesture about her knee, which was a lie.

It has been three weeks of this. In the car. In the choir loft. At the sink. Something pushing up in her with no name and no direction and no message attached to it.

Now, she is not a woman who invents things. That is important. Nobody who knows her would say she chases experiences. Which is exactly why this is bothering her, and why she is doing the thing she is doing, which is trying to work out what it is for so she can obey it properly.

Sister, come and stand at the back with me. Because there is a verse in Haggai where God stirs somebody up and the sentence just ends, and the ending is the part I want you to see.

He stirred up a spirit, and the text moves on

Haggai is a short book about getting a house rebuilt. There has been a long stall, the people are discouraged, and then this happens.

And the LORD stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people; and they came and did work in the house of the LORD of hosts.Haggai 1:14

Read what is not in that verse.

There is no message. There is no explanation given to Zerubbabel about what has just happened inside him. Nobody sits him down. The Lord stirs up a spirit, and the very next clause is and they came and did work.

The stirring is reported like weather. It happens, God does it, and the story carries on.

Which means the thing you are trying to do right now, which is to understand it before you can honor it, is not what happened to any of the three parties in that verse. They did not analyze it. They did not name it. Something moved on them and they turned up.

You are experiencing something the text reports without explaining, and none of the people it happened to were given an interpretation either. That is not a way of ducking your question; Haggai 1:14 puts the stirring and the coming to work in one sentence with nothing in between, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a builder's verse and stands it up at the back of a church hall on a second Tuesday. You are not missing a briefing. There was not one.

Now the second half, and this is aimed at the woman who cannot sit down.

You want to know what it is for so you can obey it properly. Hear how good that is. That is not a wandering heart, that is a servant's instinct, and it is why people trust you with things.

But it has a failure mode, and you are in it. When a servant cannot identify the assignment, a servant starts inventing one, because inventing an assignment feels more faithful than waiting empty handed.

And an invented assignment is heavy. You will build it, staff it, defend it, and carry it, and it will not have His weight in it because it did not come from Him.

You have permission to stand at the back with empty hands, and waiting without a plan is not the same as disobedience. Psalm 27:14 says wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes waiting an active thing a woman can do rather than a failure to act.

What God does after He stirs somebody

One more thing, because it is the part that will let you sleep.

In that chapter, the stirring comes first and the clarity comes after. God moves on them, they move, and the instructions unfold as they go. There is no version of that story where they were told everything on the first night.

That is nearly always the order in Scripture. Abraham is told to go to a land God will show him, which means he leaves without the address. Philip is told to go south to a desert road, which is not a reason. The clarity arrives while somebody is already moving, and almost never before.

So the absence of a message is not evidence that this is nothing. In that book, it is the ordinary shape of the beginning.

You are at the beginning of something rather than in the middle of a mistake, and the order in that book is nearly always the stirring first and the sense of it afterward. Hebrews 11:8 says he went out, not knowing whither he went, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes not knowing a bearable place to stand rather than an accusation.

And here is the last piece, because you have a mouth and it does more than second a motion.

Jesus said in Matthew 17:20 that faith the size of a mustard seed, spoken to a mountain, is enough to move it. The smallest seed there is. Not how well you have understood what is happening in you. That a person opens their mouth and says what God has said. You have that standing because you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and speaking is the appointed way this works. We flip the switch. He sends the current.