Three Nights at the Conference Hotel

The itinerary came through on Monday as a PDF and the part Rob keeps going back to is not the sessions, it is the line at the bottom of each day that says Evening: free, drinks reception in the Atrium from 7pm.

Three nights. Wednesday to Saturday. A hotel by an airport with a lobby the size of a church and a room on the ninth floor with a bed, a desk, a kettle and a television.

He has done this trip four times. The first two were before. The third one was after, and he handled it, and he does not really remember how. The fourth one he nearly did not handle and he has never told anybody that, not his wife, not the friend he tells things to. Nothing happened. He wants to be precise about that. Nothing happened, and he sat on the end of a hotel bed at eleven at night for a long time, and the not happening was closer than it had ever been.

And now it is the fifth trip and it is next week and the difference between this one and all the others is that he already knows exactly what Thursday at nine o'clock is going to feel like.

Nobody at work has any idea. He is well liked. He will be in the Atrium at seven with a lime and soda and he will be good company, and at about nine the room will start to change and he will get in a lift and go up nine floors, and that is the part.

It is Monday. He has read the PDF four times.

You know that trip. It might be a conference, a job away, a stay with family, a week in a hotel for a funeral. Home is the thing that holds your day in shape, and it has been removed for a fixed number of nights, and there is a door in the evening and you already know where it is.

You are provided with a way out that God Himself makes, and you were never assigned the job of finding one. Paul says God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape; that is exactly what stands written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a live arrangement on the ninth floor of a hotel by an airport.

He will make a way to escape

Let me name the weight, because the conference is not the weight.

Home is scaffolding. It is not just people you love; it is a shape. Meals at times. Someone who notices what time you come in. A route. A dog. And when a man is put in a hotel for three nights, the scaffolding comes off, and what he finds out is how much of standing up was being done by the shape rather than by him. That is not a character flaw. That is architecture, and every honest person who has traveled alone knows it.

So here is the verse, and I want to look at who does what in it.

There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.1 Corinthians 10:13

Three things about God and none about your strength.

First: common to man. Before anything else, Paul takes away the isolation. There is not a special category for you. Every man who has ever sat on the end of a hotel bed at eleven o'clock is in that sentence.

You are inside something common and you were never a special case, and that is the first thing the verse does before it does anything else. That is what stands written in 1 Corinthians 10, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the loneliness out of a ninth floor room before He takes anything else out of it.

Second: God is faithful. The reliability named in that sentence is His, not yours. The verse never once says you are strong enough. It says He is faithful, and then draws the conclusion from that.

You are standing on His faithfulness and you were never standing on your own track record, and that is why the verse can promise anything at all. Scripture says God is faithful in the middle of a sentence about temptation, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps that the subject of the sentence when a man's own record is what he is staring at.

Third, and this is the one to take to the hotel: will with the temptation also make a way to escape. Make. God makes it. It is not sitting there waiting for you to be clever enough to spot it. And with the temptation, at the same time, in the same delivery. The way out arrives with the thing, not afterward, not once you have proved something.

You have a way out that is made and not found, and you have it arriving at the same moment as the pressure. The written word says He makes it with the temptation, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has it in place at nine o'clock on Thursday before nine o'clock happens.

And notice the purpose clause at the end: that ye may be able to bear it. Not that you may be removed from the room. Not that the conference will be canceled. That you may be able to bear it. God's stated aim in that verse is a man who can stand in the situation, which is a much more useful thing to be than a man who never had to.

And the plain things, said here as everywhere. You owe nobody at that conference an explanation and a lime and soda needs no commentary. Tell one person before you go, and I mean this one seriously: your wife, the friend you tell things to, somebody. Not for permission. So that one human being knows where you are on Thursday at nine. And the doctor, the counselor, the room with the circle of chairs, the number you can call from a hotel corridor, all of it is God's kindness with a face on it, and it works at eleven at night in another city.