Thirty Days First

There is a note on her phone called Streak and it is the most honest document in her life.

It is a list of dates. Some of them have a small tick. Some of them have nothing. The longest run is eleven, from two Februaries ago, and she remembers that eleven the way other people remember a holiday.

Here is how it started. Eighteen months ago, at about one in the morning, after a night she is not going to describe here and I am not going to ask her to, she got up and stood in her own kitchen in the dark and said out loud to God that she was finished. That was the word. Finished. She meant it completely and she was crying and there was nothing performative about it at all.

She was finished for four days.

And what happened next is the part I actually want to talk about, because the breaking is not the interesting bit and it is not the thing keeping her out.

What happened next is that she made a rule.

She decided, without ever putting it into words, that she would come back to God properly when she had thirty clean days. Thirty was not chosen for any reason. It sounded like a number that meant something. And from that night on she has not prayed, not really, not the way she used to, because praying at day four would be an insult and praying at day nine would be worse, since day nine has further to fall.

So she prays a sort of holding pattern. Thank you for the day. Look after my sister. Nothing that involves telling Him anything.

Eighteen months of that, and a note on her phone called Streak.

You may have a number too. Thirty days, six months, one Christmas without it. Something you decided in the dark and never told anybody, and never examined, and have obeyed with more consistency than you have ever managed to obey anything actually asked of you.

Where did the number come from

Let me ask the question I always want to ask about a rule like this, which is a boring question and it is the one that breaks it open.

Who set it?

Not: is thirty reasonable. Not: is thirty better than sixty. Who wrote it down. Because a rule has an author, and if the author is not God then the rule is not part of the arrangement, however seriously you have been keeping it.

And now look at the sentence everybody knows, and look specifically at who it is addressed to.

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.Matthew 11:28-29

You are the person that invitation is addressed to, and the load on you is how it finds you. Matthew 11:28 calls the ones carrying it in the present tense, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been calling you on every night you filed as a failure.

The tense of it

The invitation is addressed to people who are, at the moment of being addressed, carrying it.

Not: come to me all ye who have put it down. Not: come to me all ye who have managed thirty days. The people being called are described by the load that is on them while He is calling. The load is the address. It is how He finds them.

Which means that at day four, with the note on your phone and the tick missing, you are precisely the person in that sentence. Not an exception to it. Not somebody who will qualify for it later. The one it is written to.

You are the person that invitation is addressed to, and it is addressed to you at your worst hour and not your thirtieth day. Matthew 11:28 is where that is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes it off a page and puts it in a kitchen at one in the morning.

And I want to name what the rule has actually done, because it is doing something clever and it is worth seeing.

Your rule looks like reverence. It presents itself as taking God seriously: I am not going to come to Him casually, I am not going to be one of those people who says sorry and goes straight back. That sounds like respect.

It is not respect. It is a way of keeping control of the door. As long as there is a number, you decide when you are allowed in, and deciding when you are allowed in is a great deal more comfortable than being let in by somebody else whenever you turn up.

You have been holding the key to a door that was never locked. Scripture puts the coming in His mouth and the giving of rest in His hands and no number anywhere in the sentence, and the Spirit of God is the one who has been calling you on every single night you filed as a failure.

The condition comes off and nothing goes back on

Now I have to be careful, because this is the category where people get hurt by well meant preaching.

I am not going to take thirty days off you and hand you three. I am not going to say the real requirement is honesty, or brokenness, or a proper resolve. That would be the same machine with a smaller number in it, and you would be standing outside the same door with a shorter wait.

The condition comes off. Nothing goes on.

You stand inside on His terms this morning, and His terms have already been met by Him. That is what the whole shape of Matthew 11 means when the invitation lands on the heavy laden, and His Spirit is the one who has been carrying you through eighteen months of waiting to qualify.

What about the thing itself? It matters. Of course it matters, and He will deal with it, and some of what He does about it may look like the very sort of ordinary help you have been refusing to ask for. But that is what happens inside, and none of it is the toll on the road in.