Everybody on this headland would tell you the same thing about yourself.
He is solid. That is the word. If something goes wrong, he is who you call, and he will be there before you have finished explaining, and he will not make it about him.
Three families here would not have gotten through the last few years without you. That is not flattery, it is arithmetic, and everybody knows it including you.
Here is what nobody knows.
You built him.
You were nineteen and something happened that required somebody in that house to be unshakeable, and there was nobody, so you assembled one. You worked out what he would say and how he would stand and what his face would do when bad news came in, and then you got inside him and you have not been out since.
He has held. That is the honest thing to say about him. He has held for a long time and he has held a great many people, and there would be real losses if he went.
But you are carrying him now. That happened at some point. He used to carry you and now it is the other way round, and he weighs what a person weighs.
Let me be careful before we go on, because this is a wound and not a fault.
I am not accusing you of anything.
You did not deceive anybody. A nineteen year old who builds what is missing in the house is not a liar, he is a child doing an adult's job with whatever material is lying about, and I am not going to hand him a rebuke for it thirty years later.
I am naming it first. That is a wound. It was made at nineteen and it has been load bearing ever since and nobody has ever looked at it.
A different yoke
Here is Jesus, and He is speaking to people who were already carrying something.
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.Matthew 11:28-30
Notice what He does not offer. He does not offer no yoke.
He offers a different one. That is a strange kind of comfort until you understand who He is talking to: people who are already yoked to something, and who cannot simply stop pulling, because things depend on them.
He is not saying put it all down and stand in a field. He is saying the harness on your shoulders was not made for you, and here is one that was.
So here it is, said directly to you, out on that path with the sea going below.
You are offered a different harness. Not one day, not once the families here stop needing you, not when the solid one is no longer required. Right now, walking this headland with three friends behind you, you are one of the laboring and heavy laden that verse names out loud, and He names them without a word of criticism. That is not my kindness. That is what is written, and it is His Spirit who takes a written line and lands it on a real man on a real evening.
Now, here is the thing about him.
The solid one is not the problem, and I want to be clear about that, because half the advice you would get on this would tell you to tear him down and be your authentic self, and that is a young person's advice.
He does real work. He has done real work here.
The problem is that he was built to be unshakeable, which means he cannot be tired, and there is tiredness in the man wearing him. So it has nowhere to go, because he does not have a category for it, and it has been accumulating since roughly the year you turned twenty.
That is not sin. That is thirty years of a nineteen year old's design decision, made under pressure, never reviewed.
And hear this, because it is settled rather than pending. You have somewhere to be tired that does not require the solid one, and the offer was open the whole time. The word says rest unto your souls, and souls is a word about the inside rather than the schedule, and it is His Spirit who carries a written promise into a real body on a real headland at the end of a long day.
You do not have to be unshakeable in order to be trusted. He is meek and lowly and He is the most trusted man who ever lived.
So we are going to set him down where you picked him up.
Not destroy him. He is useful and other people need him and there is nothing false in the work he does.
We are going to change who is carrying whom, and that starts with saying out loud, once, that he was made rather than born.
If your hands want to clench while you do it, that is expected and it is not a failure. Thirty years inside a built man does that.
So take this in before you open them. You are offered rest that does not require the harness you built at nineteen, and the offer has stood open through every one of those years; Matthew 11 was written long before that house, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries what is written and sets it down in a real body, on a real path, with the light going off the water.
And it does not start being true when you feel it. It is true now. This is not about producing relief on a headland. It is about a man saying out loud that the solid one was built rather than born.
Declare this over yourself
Say these with your hands open. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and that has been true since long before the solid one was built; the authority in these words is His, delegated to you and carried in His Name, and His Spirit is the one who makes what is written speakable. And however He answers about what has been accumulating in you since you were twenty, and He answers in His own way and His own manner, you are inside the promise the whole time He is doing it.
- Solid one I built at nineteen, you are not me, and I am setting you down where I picked you up. Matthew 11 says come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and He named that condition out loud without one word of criticism in it.
- Rule that says a man who is trusted cannot be tired, you are not from Him and you are finished here, in the name of Jesus. The Holy Spirit has carried this headland through three bad years, and He never once needed me to be unshakeable to do it.
- Lord, You are meek and lowly in heart and Your word says Your yoke is easy and Your burden is light. My hands are open on this path tonight, and I am wearing the harness You made rather than the one I built.
Matthew 11:29
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