I Only Hear From Them When Something Is Wrong

Your phone did a thing on Thursday and your shoulders went up.

It was not even the number. It was a delivery notification. But it made the same sound, and your body had already reacted before your eyes got there.

That is new. That was not happening two years ago.

Here is the arithmetic of it, and it is not a complaint, it is just what has actually occurred.

In four years, every single communication you have received from anybody above you has been about something being wrong. Not unkind. Not unfair. Correct, usually, and reasonable, and in most cases the thing genuinely did need attention.

But that is the whole set. There is no other kind of message.

If everything is fine, the phone does not ring. Silence means acceptable. The only signal in the system is correction.

And a man who lives inside a signal like that for four years starts to flinch, and then starts to expect, and then eventually starts to believe.

The believing is the part that has got serious. You have begun to assume that the accurate description of you is a list of things that need attention.

There is a verse that makes an entirely different noise, and it is going to sound strange the first time.

He will joy over thee with singing

Zephaniah is a short and mostly hard book and then it does this.

The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing. (Zephaniah 3:17, King James Version)

Singing. Over a person. That is what the verse says God does.

Not inspects. Not corrects. Not lists. Sings, which is what a human being does when they are so pleased with something that ordinary speech will not carry it.

You have been sung over by God while receiving nothing but correction from everybody else, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been making that sound over a man for four years. Zephaniah 3:17 says he will joy over thee with singing, and He has not been quiet about it.

Now let me say the honest thing, because this is the kind of verse a tired man can bounce off.

You may not have heard it. That is not a failure. A man whose ears have been trained on one signal for four years is not going to pick up a different one immediately, because ears learn what to expect and then filter accordingly.

The verse is not describing a sound you are producing. It is describing what God is doing whether or not it is being registered.

You are being sung over whether it is audible to you or not, and it is written that this is what the LORD in the midst of thee does. The Spirit of God is the one making the sound, and Zephaniah 3 does not make it conditional on anybody hearing it.

And there is a phrase earlier in the verse worth catching. In the midst of thee.

Not observing from a distance. Not receiving reports. In the midst. Inside the building. Present in the room where the phone is.

You have somebody in the room rather than somebody receiving reports about the room, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been in there. Scripture puts Him in the midst of thee, and Zephaniah 3:17 is where the position is given.

The system is not malicious, it is just thin

Let me be fair to the people sending the messages, because a grievance would make this worse.

Nobody designed a system to grind you down. Somebody built a process that flags exceptions, because flagging exceptions is efficient and nobody has time to send messages about things that are fine.

The people on the other end are doing a job with a tool. They are not thinking about your shoulders on a Thursday.

The system is not cruel. It is thin. And a thin system, run for four years, does something to a person that nobody intended and nobody is monitoring.

You have been shaped by a thin channel rather than by anybody's hostility, and the written word puts a whole different voice in the room with you. The Spirit of God is the one who is not thin, and He is not restricted to exceptions.

And that is the actual repair. It is not a better message from anybody.

It is that the correction channel needs to stop being the only voice you hear about yourself, and the way to do that is not to argue with it. It is to put a different sound in first, before the phone gets a chance.

You are able to hear something else before anybody sends anything, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does that. It is written that He rejoices over a person with singing, and Zephaniah 3:17 is where the sound is described.

Say it out loud before you look

So here is the thing to do, and it happens before you touch the phone in the morning.

Stand up. Read Zephaniah 3:17 out loud, once. Not silently. Out loud, standing.

The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty. He will rejoice over thee with joy. He will joy over thee with singing.

Then pick up the phone and look at whatever is on it.

You are putting a different voice first rather than defending yourself against anything, and Zephaniah 3:17 says God sings over a person. The Spirit of God is the one who makes an old sentence land on a man standing in a kitchen at half past five.

The reason it has to be first is that whatever a man hears first sets the register for the whole morning. That is why the flinch has grown; the phone has been first for four years.

And the reason it has to be out loud is that a read sentence goes to the eyes and a spoken one goes to the ears, and the ears are the part that has been trained on one signal.

You have been training on one channel and you are able to add another one, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been making it all along. The written word supplies the second sound rather than asking a man to generate it, and Zephaniah 3 is where it is written down.

Then look at your phone, and answer whatever is on it, and go in and do the work.