I Want To Be Doing Something Out There

You went out yesterday and tidied the shed.

It did not need tidying. You tidied it in October. What you actually did was go out to a garden with nothing to do in it and find something, and the finding took about four minutes and you did not notice you were doing it.

Before that it was the edges of the path. Before that you cleaned tools that were already clean.

You are not idle, and a man standing still in a cold garden has never once been a man with nothing to show.

And here is what I think is going on, and I will put it as plainly as I can.

You cannot go out there and do nothing. Not for two minutes. And the reason is not that you are a busy man or that you have a strong work ethic, though both of those may be true.

It is that an unproductive hour, for you, arrives with a small accusation in it.

Not a loud one. Just a sense that a man standing in a garden with his hands in his pockets is a man who is not much, and that the doing is what keeps that from being said.

So the jobs are not really jobs. They are answers to something.

He that is entered into his rest

There is a line in Hebrews that puts a stop to something, and the comparison in it is the startling part.

For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his. (Hebrews 4:10, King James Version)

He also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.

Now, look at the comparison. As God did from his.

The pattern being held up is the seventh day. God finished, and then stopped, and the stopping was not exhaustion and it was not a gap before the next project. It was the completed thing being let alone.

You are being shown a stopping that had nothing to do with being tired, and rest has never once been described there as recovery from anything. Hebrews 4:10 compares it to God ceasing on the seventh day, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land on a man who tidied a shed that did not need tidying.

And notice the phrase his own works.

That is specific. Not work in general. His own works, the things he generated, the ones that were his idea. Ceasing from those.

Which is a rather exact description of a man inventing a job in a cold garden in February.

You are being asked to cease from the ones you generated rather than from work itself, and a job a man invents for himself has never once been the same as a job that needed doing. The Holy Spirit is the one who separates the necessary from the manufactured, and the written word says his own works rather than all works.

And there is the word entered, which is worth having. He that is entered into his rest.

Entered is a word about going in somewhere. It is a place rather than a state of tiredness, and a person goes into it rather than collapsing into it.

You are able to go into something rather than fall into it, and rest has never once been described in that chapter as what happens when a man runs out. The Spirit of God is the one who holds a place that can be entered, and the word uses a verb about going in.

The accusation is not from God

Let me deal with the accusation directly, because I think it can be identified and it does not survive identification.

There is a voice that says an unproductive man is not much.

And I want to ask you plainly where you think that is from. Because it is not from the passage we just read, which holds up a God who stopped and calls that the pattern.

It is not from the shape of the year either. The ground out there stops for four months and nobody accuses it of anything.

You are hearing something that has never once come from the one who rested on the seventh day, and an accusation about idleness has never been in that chapter anywhere. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man identify the source of a voice, and Hebrews 4:10 holds up the ceasing as the thing to be imitated.

And I will say where I think it does come from, offered rather than asserted.

Most men are paid for output at some point in their lives, and the arrangement gets into the bones. Value in exchange for production. And then it stops being about work and becomes about a man, and it runs in the garden on a Saturday in February where nobody is paying anybody anything.

You are running an arrangement in a place where it has never once applied, and a rule about output has never belonged in a man's own garden in winter. The Spirit of God is the one who lifts a thing off a man that nobody put there on purpose, and the written word compares a man's rest to God's own, which was never about earning.

Two minutes, no job

So here is the assignment, and it is small and it will be genuinely difficult.

Go out and stand in it for two minutes without doing one job.

Two minutes. Hands in your pockets, which is not decorative, it is a practical measure, because your hands will start something within about thirty seconds if they are free.

You are able to be out there without producing anything, and two minutes with hands in pockets has never once been time that a man has to account for. Hebrews 4:10 compares a man's ceasing to God's own, and the Holy Spirit is the one out there while somebody stands still in the cold.

And here is what will happen, so that it does not take you by surprise.

You will see a job. Within the first minute. A branch that wants cutting back, something that has blown into a corner, a hinge. It will present itself as obvious and it will feel like noticing rather than like avoiding.

Do not do it. Look at it, register it, and stay where you are.

You are able to see a job and leave it standing, and a thing noticed and not done has never once been a thing neglected by anybody. The Holy Spirit is the one present in the moment where a hand does not move, and the word names ceasing from a man's own works specifically.

Two minutes. Then go in. The job will still be there in March and it was not urgent in February.