The roof is the coolest place in the house after about ten o'clock, and everybody in this street knows it, and half of them are up on theirs too, and you can hear a television two doors down and a woman laughing somewhere further off.
He comes up most nights. He has done since he was a boy, when it was his father who came up, and he would follow and be sent back down, and then eventually not be sent back down, which is how he learned that he had become a man in that house.
His father used to talk up here. Out loud. Not preaching, not performing. Talking. About the day, about a man who had annoyed him, about his own mother, about the price of things, and then, without changing his voice at all, to God, so that you often could not tell which one he had moved to.
That is what the roof is, in his head. It is the place where the talking is the same in both directions.
A fortnight ago a man at a gathering prayed over him with real warmth and said that heaven was open above him, and then described what that meant, and everything he described was increase.
Everything.
And he thanked him, because he was raised properly and because the man meant it.
But he is up here tonight and he is not thinking about any of it.
He is thinking about his father's voice going from the price of things to God without a gear change, and he is thinking: that. That is what I came up for. That is what I have been up here every night for two years hoping would happen again.
And you know that, because there is something somebody once had in front of you, easily and without ceremony, that you would take over anything you have ever been promised.
What comes down when the sky opens
Let us settle what governs this whole page. It is not a technique and there is nothing on it being asked of you.
You are looking at an invitation, and the One being tested inside it is God. Follow the verb and it lands on Him. He is the one under examination. He is the one who offered to be found out. Nothing is being asked of you here: no appeal at the bottom, no request three paragraphs down where a man usually stops bracing. It is written, put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts (Malachi 3:10), and the Holy Spirit is the One who lets a reader hear that verb land where it actually lands.
Now the phrase, because it has been furnished for you by other people for years.
Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.Malachi 3:10
That was said to a nation in one decade about one building, where the store room had emptied and the families who served there had gone home hungry, and what was named was that the fields would not fail again. It is a sentence about people eating. It was never a lever, and nothing you have or have not done has ever worked it. It is the Holy Spirit who does the carrying here, which is what separates a word being spoken over you from a phrase being repeated at you.
So the honest question is what an open sky is for in Scripture, when nobody is standing in front of it describing things.
Go and look. It is the same answer every time, and it is not a delivery.
At the Jordan, the heavens are torn open, the Spirit comes down like a dove, and a voice says, this is my beloved Son (Matthew 3:16). Nothing is handed over. A Son is named, and God is there.
Stephen looks up in the worst hour of his life and says, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God (Acts 7:56). Nothing arrives in his hands. He sees a Person, and it holds him.
Jacob sleeps on a stone in an ordinary field, sees a stairway, and wakes saying, surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it (Genesis 28:16). He does not wake up richer. He wakes up with a God who was already in the field.
What comes down through an open heaven is God Himself, and He has never once sent something in His own place. It is written that He will pour out His Spirit on all flesh (Joel 2:28), and on the day that happened there was wind and fire and God in a room, and the crowd in the street did not report deliveries. They reported people speaking about the mighty works of God. It is the Holy Spirit, not this paragraph, who lifts a phrase off a page and sets it down on a roof at eleven at night.
Now the part that is yours.
You are allowed to want the nearness of God more than you want your circumstances improved, and that is not ingratitude, it is the truest thing in you. The psalmist said one thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord (Psalm 27:4). One thing, out of a whole kingdom's worth of concerns. The Spirit is the one who makes that a permission and not a poem.
And about your father's voice, and the gear change that was not there.
The nearness you are remembering is not a thing that belonged to a previous generation, and God has not made Himself less available to you than He was to the man who taught you this roof. It is written that the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Himself (Acts 2:39). That sentence was said on the day the Spirit was poured out, and its whole purpose was to stop anybody standing outside a thing and calling it somebody else's. His Spirit is what makes that read like an address rather than a fact.
Now the guardrail, and it is why this site exists.
Nothing here connects what you have or have not put anywhere to what God does, in either direction. Nothing on this page predicts a change in your circumstances and nothing on it will tell you your year is about to turn, because nobody writing to you has been given the right to say that. What is being said is what is written: God pours out Himself, His nearness is the gift and not the deposit on one, and He is not rationing it. The Holy Spirit is the One who moves a written line the last few feet, into the room and into the person.
And for the reader who arrived with their jaw set: some of you did what that verse was used to ask of you. Sincerely, at cost, and you watched, and nothing opened. Nobody here will explain that away, defend anybody, or hint you misread the terms. Nobody will tell you it was too little or that you believed it wrong, because that is a lie and it has hurt enough people already. Your disappointment is welcome on this roof exactly as it is.
So stay up here a while and say the true thing out loud.
An open heaven is not a delivery slot. What comes down through it is God, and He is not sending furniture ahead of Himself, and He is not rationing His own presence to anybody.
You do not have to want what was described over you. You are allowed to want Him, and to want the ease your father had, and that wanting is not a lesser prayer than the ones with things in them.
Nothing is required of you for that to be true. It was true before you came up the stairs.
You are on your own roof under a heaven that is open, and what is coming down through it is His nearness and not an increase. It is written that the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Romans 5:5). The Holy Spirit is the gift itself, and He was given rather than promised.
Come and see. He has nothing behind His back.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud where you are standing. You have the right to speak them because you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and that standing was given rather than earned, which is exactly what this verse has been used to obscure. Scripture is the ground under every line and the Holy Spirit is what makes them live in a person. Speak first to what was described over you, then to the thing you have quietly concluded about your own generation, and then turn and speak to Him. Whatever He does in the weeks after you say them is His, and it is not a scoreboard.
- Word spoken over me about increase, you are not the reason I am standing on this roof. What God pours out is Himself, He is not rationing it, and I did not come up here for furniture.
- Idea that the nearness of God belonged to my father and not to me, you are going back down these stairs on your own. It is written that the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, and the Spirit is the One who makes that an address with my name on it.
- Jesus, You tore the sky open at a river and the Father said, this is My Son, and that is what an open heaven has always been for. I stand under it in Your name with nothing in my hands, because the nearness is the gift, and nobody had to hand my father the hour.
Malachi 3:10
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
