I Cannot Remember Where I Left Off

You genuinely do not know what state it is in.

That is not a figure of speech. If somebody stopped you tonight and asked what is actually left to do on that job, you would give them a vague answer and you would know while you were giving it that you were guessing.

And that is odd, because it is your house, and you did the work, and it is thirty feet from where you are sitting.

What happened is simple enough. The work stopped, and after a while the room stopped being visited, and after that the only version of it you had was the one in your head, and that version has been quietly edited every month since without any new information.

So now there are two problems. There is a job, and there is a fog, and the fog is the one stopping you.

Because a man will not walk into a job he cannot describe. It could be anything. It could be twenty minutes or it could be a whole weekend, and nobody starts a thing that could be either.

You are a man who is allowed to go and look before he decides anything, and not knowing where a job stands has never once meant the job has to begin again.

And viewed the walls

There is a moment early in Nehemiah where a man does something before he does anything else, and it is worth noticing what it is.

And I went out by night by the gate of the valley, even before the dragon well, and to the dung port, and viewed the walls of Jerusalem, which were broken down, and the gates thereof were consumed with fire. (Nehemiah 2:13, King James Version)

And viewed the walls.

He goes out at night, on his own, before he has told anybody his plan, and he inspects. He is not working. He is not rallying anybody. He is finding out what is actually there.

And the language is precise about what he found. Broken down. Consumed with fire. He came back with specifics rather than an impression, and specifics are what a man can plan on.

You have a survey available to you before any of the work, and going out to look has never once been the same as committing to build. Nehemiah 2:13 puts the viewing before everything else, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a man walking around a job he has been avoiding.

And notice that it is at night, quietly, with nobody watching. There is no announcement. He has not told the officials, he has not told the priests, he has not committed to anything in front of anybody.

That is not secrecy. It is a man giving himself room to find out the truth without having to perform a decision at the same time.

You were never required to announce anything in order to go and look, and a survey has never once obliged a man to tell anybody what he found. The Spirit of God is the one who goes out at night with a person, and the written word has the viewing happen before a single word is spoken to anybody.

The fog is the thing that costs

So here is the practical claim, and it is not about motivation.

The fog is more expensive than the job. That is the finding, and it holds up in almost every house.

A job with a known size can be scheduled, refused, delegated or done. Any of those is a resolution. A job with an unknown size cannot be any of them, so it sits, and sitting is the one state that costs something every day.

You are being stopped by a missing measurement and not by a missing weekend, and a fog has never once been a thing anybody could pick up and work on. Nehemiah 2:13 sends a man to view the walls before anything else happens, and the Holy Spirit is the one who turns an impression into a set of facts.

And here is why the fog thickens rather than staying put.

An unvisited job gets updated by feeling rather than by fact. Every month without going in, the version in your head absorbs a little of whatever else is being carried that month, and it grows, because nothing is contradicting it.

The wall does not grow. The account of the wall grows.

You have an account in your head that has been growing without any evidence, and an unvisited job has never once stayed the size it actually is in the mind of the man avoiding it. The Spirit of God is the one who brings a real measurement back, and Nehemiah 2:13 records exactly what was found rather than how it felt.

And there is one more piece, and it is the permission in it. Nehemiah surveyed and then he decided. The survey did not obligate him.

You have a look available tonight that decides nothing, and finding out what is left has never once been the same as agreeing to do it. Nehemiah 2:13 has a man view the walls before he commits to anything, and the Holy Spirit is the one walking the site with him.

Take a flashlight and touch three things

Here is the assignment and it is deliberately physical.

Go and survey the job. Take a flashlight, even if the light works, because a flashlight makes a man look at one thing at a time and overhead light lets the eye slide over everything at once.

Then touch three things and write down what state each one is in.

You have three things in that job that can be touched tonight, and putting a hand on something has never once committed anybody to finishing it. Nehemiah 2:13 viewed the walls and recorded what was broken, and the Holy Spirit is the one out there while a man shines a flashlight on his own unfinished work.

Write it down in plain words. Second coat needed on the long wall. Trim is cut but not fixed. That box has the screws in it.

Three specific sentences. Not a plan, not a list of jobs, not an estimate of hours. Three facts about the condition of three things.

And then come inside and do nothing else with it tonight. The fact of having three true sentences is the whole of the change, and it is bigger than it sounds, because tomorrow the version in your head will have something to argue with for the first time in two years.