Reading the Week for Signs

The car went on the Monday. The letter came on the Wednesday. By Thursday she had worked out what it meant.

That is the phrase she would use if she were being honest, and she has never been honest about it to anybody, because said out loud it sounds like something she does not believe.

But she does it every time.

Three things go wrong in a week and she begins to look for what she has done. Not consciously at first. It starts as a low unease and then it becomes a search, and the search always finds something, because everybody's week contains something.

She was short with a colleague. She has not been reading. There was a conversation in March she handled badly and never sorted out.

And then the week is explained, and the explanation is that God is displeased, and she goes about her days inside that reading, and it lasts until something good happens.

Then it lifts. And that is the part that ought to worry her more than it does, because it means her sense of standing with God rises and falls with a car and a letter, and neither of those has anything to do with Him.

She has been a Christian for eleven years. She could tell you, correctly, that we are not saved by works. She has said it to other people and meant it.

And she still reads her week like weather, and she still concludes that a hard one means He is disappointed.

That is you, and the reading has no basis at all.

What I am not going to do

I am not going to tell you that God never speaks through circumstances. Sometimes He does, and the Bible has examples.

But that is not what is happening here, and the difference is worth knowing. When God addresses a person about something specific, it is specific: a particular thing, named, with a way forward. What you have is different. You have a general verdict, arrived at afterwards, produced by a search that was always going to find something. Scripture settles that in Romans 8:1, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries it rather than these words.

That is not conviction. That is a mechanism, and it runs the same way whatever week you feed it.

And I am not going to argue you out of this by telling you that you are doing well. You would agree and it would last about a day, because the problem is not your assessment of your conduct. It is where you are getting the verdict from.

You are not being addressed by God through a broken car. Scripture says he will not always chide: neither will he keep his anger for ever, Psalm 103:9, and it is a description of somebody who does not run a rolling account of grievances, and the Holy Spirit is the one who speaks specifically rather than through a mood applied to a week.

The verse with no conditions in it

There is a sentence at the start of Romans 8 that is more radical than most people who quote it have quite taken in.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.Romans 8:1

Take it in pieces.

No condemnation. Not less. Not manageable amounts. None.

Now. Present tense, this week, the week with the car and the letter in it. Not eventually, not once you have sorted out March. I am not putting my own idea over you; Scripture says it in Romans 8:1, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it live.

To them which are in Christ Jesus. That is the only condition in the sentence, and it is about location rather than performance. Where you are, not how you have done. That is not my opinion. Scripture stands behind it in Romans 8:1, and the Holy Spirit brings it near.

And read what comes just before it, because Paul has spent the whole of chapter 7 describing a man in an exhausting loop of doing the thing he does not want to do and failing at the thing he does. He ends it with a cry of wretchedness.

And then chapter 8 opens with therefore.

Therefore, after all that. Not therefore, once he improved.

You are not under a verdict that any week can raise or lower. Scripture says there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, Romans 8:1, and it arrives immediately after a chapter about failing, and the Holy Spirit is named four verses later as the one who lives in the person that sentence is about.

Where you learned it

You did not get this from Romans. It is worth knowing where it came from, because it will help you stop defending it.

You got it from being human. Every human relationship you have ever had works partly this way: if things go badly between you and somebody, one of you is usually displeased, and reading the atmosphere is a genuinely useful skill. Children become expert at it early, especially in houses where the atmosphere moves. Scripture holds that ground in Romans 8:1, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries it into a room like this one.

So when you came to God you brought the skill with you, and you have been applying it ever since to a relationship where it does not work, because there is no atmosphere to read. There is a settled position, established at the cross, which is not affected by a Monday. This rests on Scripture in Romans 8:1, and on the Holy Spirit who makes what is written a living thing.

And there is something else. This reading gives you a kind of control. If a bad week means you did something, then a good week can be produced by doing better. That is more comfortable than the truth, which is that weeks are mostly weather and you are loved through all of them regardless.

You are not managing an atmosphere. Scripture says I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life... nor things present, nor things to come... shall be able to separate us from the love of God, Romans 8:38-39, and things present is exactly the week you are currently in, and the Holy Spirit is not adjusting His posture toward you according to a letter that came on Wednesday.

What the search actually does

Let me describe the search, because it is the machinery and you have never looked at it directly. Scripture already said it in Romans 8:1, and the Holy Spirit is the one doing the work, not the sentence.

Three things go wrong. Unease rises. You begin, without deciding to, to review yourself.

And here is the crucial part: the search never fails. It cannot. Any human being reviewing their own week will find several things, because everybody is short with a colleague and everybody has an unresolved March.

So the search always confirms the hypothesis, which means it is not investigation, it is manufacture. You feed it a bad week and it produces a reason. Feed it a good week and it produces nothing at all, which is why the good weeks feel like approval.

That is not discernment about God. It is a machine, and it has been running for eleven years, and it has never once been examined by the person operating it.

You are not being informed by that search. Scripture says God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things, 1 John 3:20, and it places a higher authority above the one doing the accusing inside you, and the Holy Spirit is not the source of a verdict that a bad week manufactures on demand.