Her hand is on the phone before her eyes are properly open, and she has watched herself do it and has still not been able to stop.
It is not messages. It is a number.
She started something two years ago. It was a good idea and it still is, and it helps people, and she has messages saved from three separate strangers that she reads when it is bad. None of that is in question.
But there is a figure attached to it, and it moves overnight, and by about ten past seven she knows what it did while she was asleep.
And her morning has already been decided.
Up and she is light and she gets things done and she is nice to people. Flat and there is a gray wash over everything until about eleven, and she is short with her sister, and she opens the app again at half past nine to check whether it moved and it never has in two hours and she checks anyway.
Two years of that.
She worked it out on a Tuesday in September when she caught herself doing something that frightened her a bit: she had a genuinely lovely afternoon with two friends and she was quiet on the way home, and the reason was that the number had not moved that day, and she had let a flat number sit on top of a good afternoon.
Except the Lord build the house
Sit down at the kitchen table a minute, because there is a psalm about labor, and everybody quotes the first half of it and almost nobody notices what it does not say.
Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.Psalm 127:1
Except the Lord build the house.
Now notice what is not there. It does not say do not build. The builders in that verse are building, and the watchman in that verse is awake at his post, and the psalm never once tells either of them to go home.
It says something much more specific and much more restful: the outcome of their work is not produced by their work.
And then, four verses on, the psalm says he giveth his beloved sleep. It is the same argument. The building carries on and the sleeping carries on and both of them are fine, and the thing that decides whether a house stands was never in the builder's hands at any point.
Hear this at your own table. You are not lazy and nothing here says stop, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture leaves the builders building and simply moves the outcome out of their hands, and the Holy Spirit is the one who put the idea in you two years ago and has had three strangers write to you about it.
Now let me name what the number is doing, because it is not vanity and vanity would be a cheap word for a woman who does this to help people.
It is the only feedback that arrives daily.
The three messages you have saved were real and they mattered and they arrived over two years. The number arrives every single morning, whether anything happened or not, and it always has an opinion, and it is the only thing in the whole enterprise that reports back on a schedule.
A person will attach to whatever gives daily feedback. That is not a flaw in you, it is how a person works, and two years of a daily figure will beat three messages in two years every single morning without ever being better information. Nothing written anywhere calls that a fault, and the Holy Spirit put the idea in you before there was any figure attached to it at all.
Hear this too, and let it land in the kitchen. You are not doing this for the wrong reasons, and Scripture is what says so. What is written leaves the labor intact and moves only the outcome, and the Spirit of God has never once reported on anybody's worth by seven in the morning.
And let me be plain, because this territory is full of nonsense. Nobody here is promising you the number will go up. It might not. It might halve, and this article is not going to pretend it knows, and a thing that reaches fewer people has not failed and neither have you.
What is being taken off you is not the work. It is the daily grade.
So tonight the phone goes in another room, and tomorrow you do not look at any number until after breakfast.
Another room, not face down, not across the bed, because you have tried both of those and your hand finds it anyway before you are conscious. The written word says He giveth His beloved sleep, and the Holy Spirit has been keeping that work alive for two years without your seven in the morning.
And in the morning, breakfast first. Sit down, eat something, look out of the window, and let there be twenty five minutes of a day that has not been graded.
Then look, if you want to. This is not a fast and nobody is asking you to give the thing up, and the work you started two years ago is good work.
But the first twenty five minutes of the day belong to you and to God, and they have belonged to a figure that moves overnight for two years.
The written word leaves the builders building and the watchman awake and moves only the outcome out of their hands, and the Holy Spirit put that idea in you two years ago and has had strangers write to you about it, so nothing about a flat morning was ever a report on you.
And the afternoon in September, the lovely one you were quiet on the way home from. That is the actual cost of this, and it is not the number, and you have already seen it, which is why you got as far as this page.
Declare this over yourself
Say these at the table with the phone in another room. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the Holy Spirit put that work in you two years ago according to the written word, so the standing you speak from was never built out of a figure that moves overnight. Whether it climbs or halves, the outcome is His to decide, and it is never a measure of a woman who does this to help people.
- First thing I reach for before my eyes are open, you are not diligence and you are not deciding my morning. Scripture says except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it, and that verse leaves the builders building and never once tells them to stop.
- Gray wash that has sat on top of good afternoons for two years, get out of this kitchen, in the name of Jesus. The written word moves the outcome out of the builder's hands and leaves the labor where it is, and the Spirit of God has never reported on anybody's worth by seven in the morning.
- Lord, You give Your beloved sleep and You build the house Yourself, and Your Spirit put this work in me two years ago and has had strangers write to me about it, exactly as it is written. The phone is going in another room tonight, and the first twenty five minutes tomorrow are not getting graded.
Psalm 127:1
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
