They Have Not Told Me Yet

Nine weeks now.

You wrote in April. You were told it would be looked at. And since then there has been nothing at all, and nothing is not the same as no, and everybody keeps telling you that as though it helps.

Here is the actual difficulty, and it is not the outcome.

You cannot do anything.

There is no lever. There is nothing to prepare, nothing to improve, nothing to send. It has gone somewhere and it is with people you cannot name and it will come back when it comes back.

And a man who cannot do anything about a thing that matters this much does something else instead. He checks. He rereads what he sent. He replays a conversation from March looking for a signal in it.

You have got very good at reading nothing at all.

And the cost of that is not the nine weeks. It is what has been happening in the building while you have been doing it.

You have stopped starting things. Anything that would take more than a few months to be worth doing has quietly gone on a list you are not writing anything on until you hear.

Nine weeks of running a place as though it is already over.

There is a verse about waiting and the thing it does not say is that waiting is passive.

Wait on the LORD: be of good courage

The psalm ends with an instruction that has three parts and they are not all the same kind of thing.

Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD. (Psalm 27:14, King James Version)

Wait on the LORD. Be of good courage. And then he says wait again, as though he knows the first one did not land.

But look at what is in the middle. Be of good courage is not a feeling. In this book it is a doing word: it is what a man is told before a battle or a march or a piece of work.

You have been given something active in the middle of the waiting, and the Holy Spirit is the one who arranged it in that order. Psalm 27:14 puts be of good courage between the two commands to wait, and He put an action inside the silence rather than at the end of it.

Now the redirection, because that is the whole verse.

Wait on the LORD. Not wait for the letter. Not wait on the people who have it.

The object of the waiting is God, and that is not a technicality. A man waiting on a decision is checking an inbox. A man waiting on God is doing something entirely different in the same nine weeks.

You have been waiting on the wrong object, and it is written wait on the LORD rather than wait for the answer. The Spirit of God is the one who receives that kind of waiting, and Psalm 27 says it twice because it does not come naturally.

And there is the promise in the middle, and notice exactly what it promises.

He shall strengthen thine heart. Not: He shall bring the letter. Not: the answer will be yes.

The heart gets strengthened during the waiting. That is what is on offer, and it is available in week nine as much as in week one.

You are being strengthened in the waiting rather than after it, and the Holy Spirit is the one doing that strengthening. Scripture puts the promise on the heart rather than on the outcome, and Psalm 27:14 makes it the thing that happens in the middle.

The list you are not writing on

Let me deal with the practical damage, because it is the real cost of the nine weeks.

Nothing gets started any more. Anything longer than a few months is on hold, and there is a list somewhere in your head with about four items on it, and nothing is being done about any of them.

And here is the trap in that. If the answer comes back yes, you will have lost nine weeks, or fifteen, or however long this runs.

And if it comes back the other way, those nine weeks were also the last nine weeks of something, and running the last nine weeks of a thing as though it is already over is a poor way to finish anything.

You have been losing the weeks in both futures rather than protecting them, and the written word puts courage in the middle of the waiting rather than a pause. The Spirit of God is the one who does not require a man to stop living while a decision sits somewhere.

And there is a way to break it that does not require you to be brave about the outcome.

Do not make a plan. Do not commit to anything long. Just take one item off that list and do it properly this week, as though the answer were already yes.

You are able to do one thing rather than resolve the whole silence, and the Holy Spirit is the one who supplies the courage for one item. It is written be of good courage in the middle of the waiting, and Psalm 27:14 does not ask for a decision about the rest.

One thing, as though it were yes

So here is the thing to do, and it is one item, and it is this week.

Take one thing off that list. The smallest of the four, if that helps.

Do it properly, all the way, as though you already knew the answer was yes.

You are acting inside the silence rather than waiting it out, and Psalm 27:14 says be of good courage right in the middle of the waiting. The Spirit of God is the one who is in that week with you, and He is not waiting for the letter either.

The reason it works is not that it changes anything about the decision. It changes nothing about the decision, and nobody will notice, and it is not a signal to anybody.

It works because a man who has done one thing properly this week is not a man running a place as though it is already over, and that is a different man to be for however long this takes.

You have one week available rather than an outcome to wait for, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does that strengthening. The written word puts the strengthening of the heart in the middle of the waiting, and Psalm 27 tells a man to wait twice because it takes saying twice.

Then open in the morning and do the next one when the week after comes.