Eleven Podcasts And Nothing Stays

Somebody asked him a straight question in a car park in June and he could not answer it.

What is the best thing you have learned this year?

He drives an hour each way. Eleven subscriptions. Two of them daily. He listens on the treadmill and while he cooks and while he does the shopping, and he estimates five hours a week and he thinks that is conservative.

Six years of that.

He stood there with his keys in his hand and got as far as: there was a thing about Habakkuk that was really good.

And then nothing. Not the point of it. Not who said it. Not what it changed.

He is not a stupid man and he is not distracted while he listens, and he can tell you the names of about thirty teachers and which of them he rates and why. He would win an argument about most of them.

Here is the thing he has been sitting on since June.

He could not name one thing he does differently because of five hours a week for six years. Not one. Fifteen hundred hours, and the way he speaks to his wife when he is tired is exactly what it was in the first year.

By reason of use have their senses exercised

Sit down on that bench a minute, because the writer to the Hebrews says something about maturity, and the mechanism he names is not intake.

But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.Hebrews 5:14

By reason of use.

Not by reason of hearing. Not by reason of how much, and not by reason of how good the teacher was. By reason of use, which is a word about a thing being taken out and put to work repeatedly until the person handling it changes.

And senses exercised. That is a training word. A muscle under load, doing the same movement enough times that it becomes a different muscle.

Hear this on your own bench. You are not shallow, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture names use rather than intake as the thing that makes a person of full age, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has kept you hungry enough to listen for five hours a week for six years running.

Now let me name what the eleven subscriptions are actually doing, because it is not laziness and laziness is a ridiculous word for a man who listens while he does the shopping.

Intake feels like progress and requires nothing.

Every hour genuinely feels like it is doing something. There is a sensation of understanding, and it is not fake: you really did understand it while he was saying it. And then the hour ends and the next one starts, and nothing was ever taken out and used on a Thursday afternoon, and the sensation was the entire event.

Six years of a sensation you were right to trust and wrong to count.

Hear this too, and let it land in the car park. You have not wasted six years, and Scripture is what says so. What is written puts the maturing in the use rather than in the quantity, and the Spirit of God has never once measured a man by how many hours he has listened to anybody.

And now the arithmetic, because you are a man who will respect it.

Fifteen hundred hours in six years. If one thing in fifty had been taken out and used, that would be thirty things you now do differently, and any one of them would have been worth more than the other fourteen hundred and seventy hours.

You do not have a supply problem. You have never had a supply problem. You have had a use problem for six years, and it has been hidden by the fact that the supply is excellent and you were genuinely learning something every single time. The written word puts maturity in the use, and the Holy Spirit has kept you hungry the whole six years without once withholding anything.