I Agree With None Of It And I Do All Of It

There is not one part of it you would have written.

That sounds like an exaggeration and it is not. You have thought about this properly. The order is wrong, the timing is wrong, and the part in the middle solves a problem your building does not have.

You do all of it. Correctly. Every day. For six years.

And two weeks ago something happened that has bothered you more than any of the rest of it.

Somebody asked you a straight question. A young man, thinking of getting into this kind of work, asked you how you would do it if it were up to you.

And you did not have an answer.

Not a hesitation. Nothing. You said something general and moved the conversation on and he did not notice, and you have not stopped thinking about it since.

Because you used to be a man with opinions about this. Detailed ones. You could have talked for an hour.

Now you spend eleven hours a day executing something you disagree with, and apparently at the end of six years of that there is nothing left underneath it to say.

That is the fear. Not the pattern. The fear is that the pattern is all there is now, and that whatever you used to think has quietly been worn away.

There is a verse that deals with a man's own mind, and it is more protective of it than most people realize.

Fully persuaded in his own mind

Paul is writing about a genuine disagreement between believers and he does something unusual. He refuses to settle it.

One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. (Romans 14:5, King James Version)

His own mind. That is the phrase, and every word in it is load bearing.

Not persuaded by the room. Not persuaded by whoever is senior. Fully persuaded in his own mind, which is a possession the verse assumes a man has and intends him to keep.

You have a mind of your own that Scripture treats as yours to hold, and Romans 14:5 says fully persuaded in his own mind rather than persuaded by anybody. The Holy Spirit is the one who works in that place, and He has been at work in yours for six years whether or not it produced an answer for a young man.

Now the thing that will actually reach the fear.

A judgment is not lost by disuse. It is a faculty, not a muscle memory. What happens with disuse is that it goes quiet, and quiet is not gone.

Look at the evidence in your own account. You know the order is wrong. You know the timing is wrong. You know the part in the middle solves a problem this building does not have.

You have just given three detailed judgments in the space of one paragraph, and it is written that a man is to be fully persuaded in his own mind. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps that faculty alive under six years of doing it another way, and Romans 14 assumes it is still there to be persuaded.

The young man did not get an answer for a different reason, and it is not the one you are afraid of.

You have spent six years actively not saying what you think, on purpose, all day, every day. That is a discipline you built and it worked. When somebody asked, the discipline answered before the man did.

You were not empty in that conversation, and the written word never once required a man to give up his own mind in order to do a piece of work well. The Holy Spirit is the one who can tell a silence from an absence, and Romans 14:5 is where the mind stays the man's own.

A trained silence is not an empty room

Let me push on that, because the distinction is the whole article.

A trained silence is a good thing that has grown a side effect. You learned not to say it, because saying it every day would have poisoned your own team and made a hard job harder for everybody.

That was wisdom. It cost something and you paid it.

The side effect is that the silence became automatic, and automatic silence does not know the difference between a Tuesday at work and a young man asking a real question at a counter.

You are dealing with a trained response rather than an emptied man, and Scripture puts the persuading inside a man's own mind where nobody else can reach it. The Spirit of God is the one who shows a man which of those two he is looking at, and He does not leave it ambiguous.

And there is a way to prove it that takes about twenty minutes and costs nothing.

Write it down. Not for anybody. Not as a proposal. On one page, in your own handwriting, how you would do it if the whole thing were up to you.

You will find that you cannot stop at one page. That is what is going to happen, and when it happens the fear will be over.

You have six years of detailed observation sitting under that silence, and it is written that a man is to be fully persuaded in his own mind rather than emptied of it. The Holy Spirit is the one who brings it back up when a man finally gives it somewhere to go, and Romans 14:5 is the warrant for having it at all.

One page, and then put it away

So here is the thing to do this week.

Take one page. Write how you would do it if it were entirely up to you. Order, timing, the part in the middle. Be specific. Use the actual details.

Then put the page away. In a drawer. That is not a defeat, and here is why it matters.

You are proving something to yourself rather than preparing anything for anybody, and the written word puts the persuading in a man's own mind and stops there. The Spirit of God is the one who receives a page nobody will ever read, and He does not think it wasted.

This is not a proposal and it is not a first step toward one. Nothing about the arrangement changes and nothing needs to.

What changes is that the next time a young man asks, there will be an answer in the room, because you will have heard yourself give it once.

You have not been worn away by six years, and Romans 14 leaves a man's own mind in his own hands no matter whose pattern his hands are running. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps it whole in there, and He has been keeping it for six years without a word from anybody.

Then you go in and run the pattern exactly as written, the way you have every day.