I Check It Four Times A Day

The soil looks the same as it did at breakfast.

You know this. You knew it before you walked over there. There is no mechanism by which a seed produces a visible change in ninety minutes, and you are not a foolish woman and you understand perfectly well how this works.

And you went anyway. And you will go again after lunch, and once more before the light goes.

Four times a day, minimum, for eleven days.

So let me ask the question the way you would ask it of somebody else. What are you hoping to find?

Because the honest answer is nothing. You are not going over there expecting a shoot. You have been at this long enough to know the timescale. Something else is sending you.

You are allowed to want it badly and to stop going to look, and wanting something has never once obliged you to stand over it.

Now, here is the thing you have been turning over and cannot settle, and it is the actual question of this article.

Is that devotion, or is it anxiety?

Because from the outside they look identical. Both of them produce a woman at a windowsill several times a day. And you have been trying to decide which one you are, and the trying has quietly become a third thing to be uneasy about.

Be careful for nothing

There is an instruction in Philippians that people read as a command to stop feeling something, and it is not that at all.

Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. (Philippians 4:6, King James Version)

Be careful for nothing.

In the older English, careful means full of care, weighed down with it, carrying it about. So the instruction is not be casual. It is not stop caring. It is closer to: do not go on carrying it.

You are not being told to want it less, and Scripture has never once asked a person to care about a thing more lightly than they actually do. Philippians 4:6 uses careful in the sense of weighed down rather than in the sense of attentive, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a command from being heard as a rebuke.

And notice that the verse does not stop there, because half of it would be cruel.

But in every thing by prayer and supplication let your requests be made known unto God.

It is not be careful for nothing, full stop. It is be careful for nothing, and here is where it goes instead. There is a destination in the sentence. The carrying is not being confiscated, it is being redirected.

You are being offered somewhere to put it rather than being told to drop it, and a request made known has never once been the same thing as a feeling suppressed. The Holy Spirit is the one who receives what a person hands over, and the written word gives the address in the same sentence as the instruction.

That matters here, because the pot has been functioning as the address.

Every time you walk over there, some part of you is filing the request. The going is the prayer, in a sense. It is just that it is being said to a windowsill, and a windowsill has no way of answering.

You have been taking a real request to something that cannot receive it, and eleven days of asking a pot has never once been a failure of faith in you. The word puts the destination plainly in the verse, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes what has been going to a windowsill and lets it arrive somewhere.

Devotion or anxiety is the wrong question

Let me deal with the question underneath all of it, because I think it is unanswerable and I think that is why it will not settle.

The question keeps coming back as: is this devotion, or is this anxiety?

But look at what that question does. It sets up an examination of your own interior with no way to conclude, because the two things feel almost the same from the inside and they overlap constantly in ordinary people.

And there is a worse thing about it. If the answer comes back anxious, you have a fault. So the question is not neutral. It is a trial with only one adverse verdict available, and you have been running it for eleven days.

You are not required to sort your own motives before you are allowed to be at peace, and a mixed motive has never once disqualified anybody from anything. The Holy Spirit is the one who sorts what a person cannot sort in themselves, and Philippians 4:6 asks for the request to be made known rather than for the motive to be certified first.

The verse does not ask you to arrive with clean reasons. It says in every thing. Every thing includes the requests that are half worry and half hope, which is most requests that anybody has ever made.

So let the question go. It is not a question you were ever going to answer and it was never the question that mattered.

You are able to bring a request with mixed reasons in it, and God has never once required a sorted heart as the entry condition. The written word says in every thing, which covers a woman who cannot tell her own devotion from her own worry, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes it either way.

Walk past it once

So here is the assignment and it is deliberately tiny, because a large one would just become another thing to check on.

Walk past the pot once today without stopping.

Once. Not all four times. I am not asking you to give up the checking, and if I did you would fail by lunchtime and add that to the list.

One time today, you will be heading toward it, and you will keep walking.

You are able to keep walking one single time, and one skipped look has never once been too small a thing to be worth doing. Philippians 4:6 asks for the request to go somewhere rather than for the person to stop wanting, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman in the two steps where she does not turn.

And here is the second half, which is where the verse actually gets used.

As you walk past, say it. Out loud or not, it does not matter. Whatever the sentence is that keeps taking a person over there. I want this to come up. I am tired of waiting. Please.

Say it to God rather than to the soil, and keep moving.

You are handing the same request to somebody who can actually receive it, and a sentence said walking past has never once been a lesser prayer than one said standing still. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes it in the doorway, and the word puts prayer and supplication as the destination for exactly the thing you have been carrying to a sill.

That is the whole exercise. One walk past, one sentence, and then go and do whatever you were doing.