I Decided In Advance

It is under the magnet shaped like a lemon, on the left hand side of the fridge, at eye level.

You put it there yourself. You could have put it in a drawer. You did not, and there is a reason for that, and the reason is that a card in a drawer is a surprise waiting to happen and a card on a fridge is something you can get used to.

Twelve days away, now.

And about four days after you stuck it up there, standing in the kitchen with the kettle on, you decided what it was going to say.

You did not use those words. Nobody stands in a kitchen and says, I hereby determine the outcome. What happened was quieter. You looked at it and something in you went, well, we know how this goes, and then the tight thing under your ribs let go slightly, and you felt better, and you have felt better since.

That is the part you have not said to anybody. Deciding it was bad news made you feel better.

Because now it cannot get you. If it is bad, you were right. If it is good, that is a bonus and you will take it and nobody will know that you had already written it off.

You have made yourself unhittable and it has cost you the whole twelve days.

Let me say something straight away.

I am not telling you off.

There is nothing here to be ashamed of. That is not pessimism and it is not a lack of faith, it is armor, and you did not put it on because you are weak. You put it on because something got through once, and probably more than once, and you remember what that was like.

I am saying I see the armor. That is all. And I am not going to ask you to take it off in a kitchen with a stranger.

Hope that does not make a fool of you

I want to be careful with this next part, because there is a version of it that is cruel and I have heard people preach it.

The cruel version says: get your hopes up, God is going to come through. And then sometimes He does not come through the way it was promised, and the person who preached it has moved on, and the person who believed it is sitting in a kitchen with a piece of paper in their hand feeling like an idiot for the second time.

I am not going to do that to you. I do not know what the card says. Nobody writing anything anywhere knows what the card says.

Here is what is actually written.

And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.Romans 5:5

Read what the guarantee is attached to, because it is not attached to the outcome.

Hope maketh not ashamed. And then immediately, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. The reason hope does not humiliate a person is not that the thing always turns out. The reason is that the love is already in, already poured, already resident, and it is not being held back pending results.

So let me turn and speak straight at you, standing in front of that fridge.

You are already loved with the thing poured in rather than promised. Not one day, not when the card is opened, not depending which way it goes. Right now, twelve days out, the love of God is shed abroad in your heart by the Holy Spirit who has already been given, and that is stated in the past tense in the verse itself. That is not my reassurance. That is what is written, and it is the Holy Spirit, the very one the verse names, who takes a written line and lays it on a real person in a real kitchen.

Now, what does that actually change about the twelve days?

Not the card. I want to be honest with you about that. This does not change what is on the card.

What it changes is where the standing happens while the waiting runs. At the moment the whole weight sits on your own forecast, which is why the forecast had to be bad, because nobody can stand on a forecast that might swing. Standing on something that might swing is unbearable, and getting off it was the sensible thing to do.

But there is a third place to stand that is not the good forecast or the bad one, and it is the only one in the room that does not move.

And hear this, because it is settled and not still open. You are held on the twelfth day regardless of what is on that paper, and the holding was arranged long before the appointment was made. The word says the love is shed abroad, poured out, past tense, done, and it is His Spirit who carries that from a written page into a real chest at a real kitchen counter.

You can put the armor down and not be exposed. That is the whole point. There is something underneath it that is not your forecast.