The Brace Was Never the Building

For the believer who has been carrying a load that was never put on them.

What exactly do you think you are holding up?

Ask it plainly, because most people who carry this never state it and would be embarrassed by it if they did. Somewhere in you there is a sense that the distance between Christians is partly your responsibility. If you were better at it, or kinder, or more patient in one particular conversation, some of it would close.

Nobody assigned you that. You would not be able to name the moment it arrived. It simply turned up, the way most of the heaviest loads do. It has been sitting on your shoulders through every conversation you have ever had about church with somebody who does not go to yours.

He's a builder and he thinks about this in terms of a brace, which is how he thinks about most of his life.

A brace goes in while the work is setting. It takes real load, it is genuinely necessary, and a man who forgets to fit one has made a serious mistake. It is also temporary by design, and it is never, under any circumstances, the thing holding the building up.

You are a brace in a work that is setting, and you were never the building. The written Word gives the asking to Christ alone, and the Holy Spirit bears the weight of it.

The Load You Picked Up Without Noticing

Here's how the weight actually gets on you, and it happens to the kindest people first.

You care about the distance. That's the start of it and it is entirely right. Caring turns into responsibility somewhere in the second decade, usually after a conversation that went badly and that you have replayed a great many times since.

Then responsibility turns into load. You start entering rooms slightly braced, choosing words in advance, listening to yourself as you speak. Every time a conversation about church goes stiff you feel a small failure, and you file it as a thing you could have handled better. It goes in the same drawer as the church hall, the car park, the coffee that went cold, the sentence you should not have said.

Nobody ever handed that to you as a job. You inherited it out of caring, which is the most honorable possible source and makes it almost impossible to put down, because putting it down feels like caring less.

The Prayer and Who Is Praying It

Here's Jesus, on the last night, praying out loud with His friends listening:

Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one.John 17:20-21, the opening lines (KJV)

Read who is doing the asking. He is. Not the eleven men in the room, who are about to scatter, and not the people who would believe later through their word, which is where you come in.

You are inside that sentence as somebody being prayed for. You are not standing beside Him, joining in the request as a partner with a share of the outcome.

You are inside the prayer as somebody prayed for, not beside it as somebody responsible. The written Word puts the asking in His mouth and you in the sentence, and the Holy Spirit keeps it that way rather than handing you the work.

A Brace Takes Real Load and Never Takes the Roof

Here's what I'd carry off that site if I could take a single thing away with me.

A brace is not decorative. Take it out too early and something moves, sometimes catastrophically. The load it carries while it is in place is a real load, and a man can feel the weight of it in his arms as he fits it.

And no brace has ever held a building up. The building is held by what is setting behind it, and the brace exists so that the setting can happen undisturbed. That distinction is invisible from inside the effort, because the brace is under strain either way.

That's the whole of what you have been getting wrong, and it is a very small error with an enormous weight attached. Your kindness in those conversations is a real load honestly carried. It was never the thing holding the church of God together.

Your part takes real load and has never once been what holds it up. The written Word puts the holding in Christ's hands where He put it that night, and the Holy Spirit is the one doing the setting behind you.

No Part of This Is an Accusation

Let me be plain, because there's a version of this message that would do you real harm and I refuse to write it.

You have not failed it. That is not a thing that is available to you to fail, because it was not given to you, and a prayer prayed by Christ is not waiting on your competence in a car park in 1998.

I am also not handing you a project. Nothing here asks you to go and mend anything, contact anybody, or take on the distance in your town as a piece of work. That would be the same weight with a more spiritual coat on.

You can care about the distance and carry none of the responsibility for closing it. Scripture hands the request to nobody, and the Holy Spirit does the work rather than handing it on.

Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.