A Stone and a Field Was All He Had

He has a bed and about a third of a wardrobe, and that is the whole of what is his in that flat.

Three other men live there. Good enough men, no trouble, but the kitchen has somebody in it from six until midnight, the front room has the television on, and the bathroom is the bathroom. His own room has a wall shared with a man who plays music at a reasonable volume and never at a reasonable hour.

So he has been trying to work out where to pray for about eight months and has never solved it.

He tried the bus once and felt ridiculous. He has sat in his car in the car park twice, in the winter, in a coat, and both times somebody walked past and he stopped. He has settled, mostly, on lying in bed with his eyes shut, and it is fine, and he falls asleep in it four nights out of five.

And the thought that has been forming underneath all of this is not that God is absent. It is that this is not a life in which a person can do this properly, and that it will have to wait until he can afford somewhere of his own, which is not this year and possibly not next.

That is your flat. That is your third of a wardrobe. And I want to speak to that, because the man in this verse had considerably less than you do.

He owned none of it

Jacob is running, with nothing, and the night catches him in open country.

And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows... And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.Genesis 28:16

A certain place. Not a chosen one. Not a prepared one. The text is almost dismissive about it: he ended up there because it got dark, and the furniture was a stone.

He owned none of that field. He had no privacy, no arrangement, no hour set aside. And what he said when he woke was not I should have found somewhere better. It was surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not.

The presence was already there. What was missing was not the venue. It was his knowledge of what was in it.

You are standing on ground where He already is. Not a place you have to secure first. The written word puts God in an unchosen field with a stone in it, and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes that live in a man with a bed and a third of a wardrobe.

Now let me deal with the men you live with, because eight months of this can quietly turn them into an obstacle.

They are not preventing anything. They are three men living their lives in a flat that they also pay for, and the one with the music has no idea, and none of them stand between you and God in any direction.

You are not being kept from Him by anybody. The written word never makes another person's presence the thing that closes the door. The Holy Spirit is in that flat with all four of you tonight.

And now the sentence you have been living on: this will have to wait.

Hear how far it goes. It postpones God until a tenancy improves. It makes a rented room the gatekeeper of a relationship that survived a man sleeping rough on a rock.

You are not waiting for better conditions. Surely the Lord is in this place, and the place was a field. The Holy Spirit has been in that flat every one of the four nights out of five when you fell asleep praying, and He was not disappointed by any of them.