Before I Can Make It Stick

She was nine and she came down for a glass of water at about eleven at night and he was in the kitchen, and she stood in the doorway and looked at him for a second and then turned around and went back up the stairs without the water.

That is all that happened. Nobody shouted. He did not do anything. She just looked at him and decided not to come in.

He sat on the back step afterward until it got cold and told God he was done. Not the way a man says it in the morning, meaning it a bit. He was done, and he said so out loud, on that step, and he has never in his life meant anything more.

He made it eleven weeks. Which, for the record, is the longest he has managed since he was twenty two, and there is a version of this story where eleven weeks is the good news, and that version is true, and it is not the version he tells himself.

That was three years ago.

Here is where he is now, and it is not where you think. He is not drinking the way he was. It is much less, and it is manageable, and he would tell you that himself. He is also not praying, at all, and he has not said one word to God since about week twelve.

The reason is exact and he has never said it out loud. He will not go back to God about this until he can be sure it will hold. Because he has now stood in front of God twice and said done, and been wrong twice, and a man cannot keep doing that. There is a point at which saying it again is not faith, it is just noise, and he is not going to be a man who makes noise at God.

So he is waiting until he can make it stick. And then he will bring Him the real thing.

You may be waiting for the same guarantee. You may be refusing to say anything to God about the thing because you have said it before and it did not hold, and you have decided that the honest move is silence until you can back it up.

Whose work is it

Now, I have been on a lot of long roads with men like you and I want to say this the way it needs saying, which is plainly, and without a speech about how the drinking does not matter, because it does and you know it does.

The question is not whether the thing matters. The question is who is responsible for making it hold.

Paul writes to a church he loves, from a prison, and he tells them what he is confident about. And notice that his confidence is not in them.

Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.Philippians 1:6

You are a work that somebody else began and somebody else is carrying, and the carrying was never assigned to you. Philippians 1:6 puts both verbs in the same hand, and the Holy Spirit is the one who started something in you on a back step three years ago.

He which hath begun

Two verbs in that sentence and both of them belong to the same person.

He hath begun. He will perform it. Not: he began it and now you carry it. Not: he began it and will help you finish. The beginning and the performing are the same hand, and Paul says he is confident of this very thing, which is the language of a man staking something on it.

Now think about what you have been demanding. You have been requiring a guarantee before you will speak. And the guarantee you want is that you can perform it, which is the one thing this verse takes out of your hands entirely.

You have been holding out for a guarantee that was never yours to give. Philippians 1:6 is where that is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes it out of a letter from a prison and sets it on a back step at eleven at night.

And here is the thing about the eleven weeks that I do not want you to walk past.

You called them a failure. Read them again. Eleven weeks, after a life of not managing eleven days. That is not a man proving he cannot. That is a good work begun, visibly, in a man who could not have done that at twenty two, at thirty, or at forty. Something started. You have been treating the evidence of the beginning as evidence against yourself.

You are already the site of a work somebody else started, and it showed. Scripture puts the beginning in His hands, and His Spirit is the one who did it, three years ago, on a back step, in a man who thinks he has been failing ever since.

The condition comes off and nothing goes on

Let me be careful here, because this is where a well meant preacher does harm.

I am not going to take your guarantee off you and hand you a smaller one. I am not going to say you need not be sure it will hold, you only need to be sincere, or honest, or willing. That is the same lock with a different key and you would still be standing outside it, on the step, in the cold, testing yourself.

The condition comes off. Nothing goes on.

You are held inside on His terms tonight, and His terms have already been met by Him. The word puts it plainly, and that is the whole shape of a work begun and performed by one hand, and the Spirit of God has been carrying that work through three years of your silence.

Will you say it again and be wrong again? Possibly. I am not going to promise you an outcome and this site never does. But saying it again is not noise, because the value of what you say has never been what held it up.