I Am Ashamed Of The State Of It

The garden is not that bad.

I want to open with that, because it is probably true and because you will not believe it, and the not believing it is the actual subject here.

It is a yard that got away over two seasons. That is all it is, physically. Somebody who did not know you could walk into it and would see a job of some hours and would not think anything else about it at all.

But that is not what you see, and it has not been what you see for a long time.

What you see is evidence. And the evidence is not about the ground. It is about the sort of person who lets a thing go like that, and the sort of person who then does not deal with it, and the sort of person who has now let two seasons pass while knowing perfectly well that it is there.

Somewhere in the last year, the feeling got bigger than the garden.

You are not under any condemnation out there, and a piece of ground has never once been able to convict anybody of anything.

And here is the trap that shame builds, and it is worth naming because it is the reason nothing has happened.

Shame does not make people act. That is the common assumption and it is wrong. Guilt about a thing done can move a person toward repair. Shame about the sort of person somebody is moves them away from whatever is producing it.

So the worse you feel about that ground, the less able you are to walk into it. The feeling is not motivating you. It is standing in the doorway.

There is therefore now no condemnation

There is a sentence at the start of Romans 8 that people quote so often it has gone smooth, and I want to slow it down.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. (Romans 8:1, King James Version)

There is therefore now no condemnation.

Now. That word is doing a great deal and almost nobody stops on it. Not eventually. Not once the yard is sorted. Not when a person has demonstrated that they are the sort of person who deals with things.

Now, in the state a person is currently in, with everything currently true about them still true.

You are standing under a sentence with the word now in it, and a condemnation has never once been waiting somewhere to be lifted after the ground gets cleared. Romans 8:1 puts the no condemnation in the present tense, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an over-quoted line land on a woman who cannot walk into her own yard.

And notice what is being denied. Not the facts. Nobody is saying the yard is fine, and Paul is not in the business of pretending things did not happen.

Condemnation is not a fact, it is a verdict. It is the step after the facts where somebody says what those facts mean about a person. And that step is what the verse removes.

You are able to hold the facts about that ground without the verdict that has been attached to them, and a thing that is genuinely true has never once had to come with a sentence about your character. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes the verdict off while leaving a person honest about the facts, and the written word removes the condemnation and never once disputes the evidence.

And there is one more word worth having. Therefore.

Therefore means because of what came before, and what came before is seven chapters of Paul describing a man who does the thing he does not want to do and cannot get himself to do the thing he does want. Romans 7 is a man stuck. Romans 8:1 is what comes immediately after being stuck.

You are exactly where that verse arrives, and the sentence about no condemnation has never once been written for people who were managing. The Spirit of God is the one who speaks after seven chapters of a man not being able to act, and the word puts therefore at the front of it, joining it to the stuckness rather than to any recovery.

Shame is not a motivator

Let me be practical, because knowing the mechanism helps more than being reassured about it.

The feeling has probably been getting used as fuel. Most people try it.

The theory is that if it gets bad enough, it will push you out there. So there is a part of you that has been keeping the feeling sharp, going out to look at the yard occasionally in order to feel it properly, on the assumption that eventually enough pressure produces action.

It does not. It has now been two seasons of that particular experiment and the results are in.

You have been running an engine that has never once been able to move anybody, and pressure applied to a person has never once produced the walk to the door. The Holy Spirit is the one who moves a person by removing something rather than by adding to it, and Romans 8:1 begins by taking a weight off rather than by applying one.

And here is what does move people, and it is almost the opposite.

Being out of the dock. Not being on trial about it. Being a woman who is going to pull some weeds because there are weeds, rather than a woman proving something about herself in her own back yard.

The action gets easier the moment it stops being evidence.

You are able to do a thing that is not being submitted anywhere, and pulling a weed has never once been an exhibit in a case about anybody. The Spirit of God is the one who empties the courtroom, and the written word says no condemnation and does not replace it with a lighter sentence.

One weed, and say it out loud

So here is the assignment, and it has two halves that have to go together.

Go out and pull one weed. And say out loud that there is no condemnation.

One weed. The nearest one to the door. Not a good one, not a satisfying one, the first thing your hand reaches.

You are able to do a thing so small that it cannot be evidence either way, and one weed has never once been enough material for a verdict. Romans 8:1 removes the condemnation before anything is put right, and the Holy Spirit is the one out there while a woman bends down at the nearest edge.

And say it. That is the half that will feel strange and it is the half that matters.

Out loud, in the yard: there is no condemnation. You can say the whole verse or just those four words. It does not have to sound like anything.

Because the yard has had one voice in it for two seasons and that voice has been saying the opposite. Putting a sentence into that air, in your own voice, changes what is being said out there.

You are able to put a true sentence into a place that has only been hearing one thing, and four words said out loud have never once been too small to change what a yard sounds like. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a person speaks in an empty garden, and the word puts the no condemnation in the present tense, which makes it sayable today.

Then come in. One weed. That is the whole of it.