I Do Not Know Who I Am Without This

Somebody asked you a simple question at a wedding and it went in a long way.

They asked what you do when you are not working.

And you gave an answer, and the answer was made of things you used to do, and the most recent of them was about six years old, and you heard the dates as they came out of your mouth.

Nine years in this. Six days most weeks and the seventh one thinking about it.

And there is a date coming and either way there is going to be a Tuesday with nothing on it, and the thought of that Tuesday frightens you more than any figure on any page.

Here is the exact fear, and it is worth saying precisely.

You are not afraid of being bored. You are afraid that on that Tuesday you will find out there is nobody there.

That the woman who runs that place is the whole of it, and that when the place is gone there will be a house and an ordinary morning and a person with nothing in her.

You have not said that to anybody, obviously. It sounds absurd out loud and it does not feel absurd at four o'clock.

There is a verse about where a life is actually kept, and it says something startling about location.

Your life is hid with Christ

Paul says something about where a believer's life is stored.

For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:3, King James Version)

Hid with Christ in God. That is a location and it is two removes away from anything anybody can reach.

Not held by you. Not held in what you do. Kept somewhere else entirely, by somebody else, with a second enclosure around it.

You have a life kept two removes from anything a date on a page can touch, and the Holy Spirit is the one who put it there. Colossians 3:3 puts it hid with Christ in God rather than in a person's own hands, and He put it there long before any of this was signed.

Now the word hid, because it is the one that answers the four o'clock fear.

Hid does not mean lost. It means deliberately kept out of reach, the way a person puts something valuable somewhere it cannot be got at.

Which means the reason you cannot find it when you look for it is not that it is not there. It is that it is not kept where you have been looking.

You have been looking in the wrong place rather than finding nothing, and it is written that the life is hid rather than absent. The Spirit of God is the one holding it, and Colossians 3 says where.

And here is what that does to the Tuesday.

That Tuesday has been getting treated as a test. As the morning when the truth gets revealed and either there is somebody there or there is not.

It is not a test. It cannot be, because what would be tested is not stored in the place the Tuesday can look.

You are not going to be exposed by an empty morning, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been keeping it for nine years. Scripture keeps the life somewhere a Tuesday has no access to, and Colossians 3:3 is where the keeping is described.

The fusing was real and it is not the whole story

Let me be honest about the nine years, because pretending it did not do anything would be no use to you.

The fusing happened. Six days a week for nine years and the seventh one thinking about it will fuse anybody to anything, and there are things about you that have genuinely grown around the shape of that building.

And the woman at the wedding with six year old answers is real. That is not imagination and it is not self-pity.

But growing around a shape is not the same as being the shape, and a plant that has grown around a post is not made of the post.

You have grown around something rather than been made of it, and the written word keeps a life hid with Christ rather than in a structure. The Spirit of God is the one who knows the difference exactly, and Colossians 3 puts the storing outside anything that can be dismantled.

And there is one practical thing about the Tuesday, and it is not a reassurance.

You cannot find out what is there by thinking about it. Nine years of thinking has produced a fear rather than an answer, because a thing like this is only ever found out by being in it.

So the answer is not a longer think. It is one Tuesday, early, on purpose, before the date arrives.

You are able to find out before you have to, and the Holy Spirit is the one who will be in that morning. It is written that the life is kept and not lost, and Colossians 3:3 is why He was in it before you got there.

Take one Tuesday morning

So here is the thing to do, and it is one morning, and it is this month.

Take a Tuesday morning off. Not a day. A morning. Arrange it properly so nothing can reach you.

Put nothing in it. No jobs at home, no errands, no list. That is the whole point and it will be very hard.

Be in your own house with the door shut and find out what a woman does with three hours.

You are finding out rather than being tested, and Colossians 3:3 says your life is hid with Christ in God. The Spirit of God is the one who is in that house for those three hours, and He was there before nine years ago.

It will be uncomfortable for the first hour and possibly longer. Let it be.

And something will happen in the third hour that will not happen in the first, and that is the entire reason it has to be three and not one.

You have three hours available rather than a date to dread, and the Holy Spirit is the one who meets somebody in the third hour. The written word keeps the life somewhere an empty morning cannot reach in to check, and Colossians 3:3 is why there is somebody there to meet.

Then open in the morning on Wednesday, because the date is not yet.