Every Visit I Make Has A Job In It

You went through the last year in your head.

Eleven or twelve visits, and every one of them had something in it. A thing to drop off. A tap. A lift somewhere. Paperwork somebody could not make sense of. A door that was sticking.

Not one visit in a year where you turned up with nothing and left with nothing done.

And that would be fine, and it was fine for a long time, except that last month you caught yourself doing something before you went out.

You looked round for something to take. Not because anybody needed it. Because you were not sure you could arrive without it.

And once you saw that, you could not unsee it, and now there is a question sitting in you that you have not said to anybody, which is whether you have any standing in those houses that is not a service.

There is a line in Thessalonians where somebody names the most useful thing he could possibly bring and then says it was not the whole of what he brought.

Not the gospel only, but also our own souls

Here it is.

So being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you, not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were dear unto us. (1 Thessalonians 2:8, King James Version)

Look at what he puts on one side of that sentence.

The gospel of God. That is the most useful thing a man in his position had to bring anybody. There was nothing more valuable in his hands and nothing he could have done for those people that mattered more.

And he says it was not enough on its own.

You have been measuring your visits by their usefulness, and 1 Thessalonians 2:8 takes the single most useful thing there is and calls it not the only thing. The Holy Spirit is the one who put the word only in that sentence, and one word is doing the whole job.

Now what he adds to it, which is the whole point.

But also our own souls. Himself. The man, handed over alongside the useful thing.

He is not saying he did less work. He is saying the work was not the whole of what he gave and was never meant to be.

You have been giving one half of something, and it is written that he imparted his own soul alongside rather than instead. The Spirit of God is the one who put both in the same breath, and both are what a visit is supposed to carry.

And then the reason, which answers the question you have been sitting with.

Because ye were dear unto us. Not because they needed him. Not because he had something they lacked. Because they were dear.

That is not a service relationship being described. There is no ticket anywhere in it.

You have been looking for a reason to be let in when the passage gives affection as the reason, and it is written that they were dear unto us rather than that they required anything. The Holy Spirit is the one who names the reason plainly, and the reason has never once been usefulness.

Why usefulness became the ticket

Now let me say how this happened, because there is no failure in it, whatever the suspicion has been saying.

Useful is a real thing about a man and it has been true of this one for fifty years. People ring you because things get done, and that is a good reputation and you came by it honestly.

And a man who is useful gets asked for things. And after enough years of being asked, being asked becomes the shape of every relationship he has, and nobody chose that and nobody noticed it happening.

You have been carried into a shape by your own competence, and Scripture names affection as the reason rather than capability. The Spirit of God is the one who tells a man how a shape formed, and it formed out of something good.

And here is the specific thing that makes it hard to stop.

An errand is a reason. A reason means nobody has to wonder why you came, including you. Turning up with nothing means arriving on the strength of yourself, and a man who has been the useful one for fifty years has no idea what that is worth.

That is the actual question underneath. Not whether they want you. Whether there is a version of you that is not the jobs.

You have been asking a question about your own worth in the language of a tap and a door, and it is written that he gave his own soul as well as the useful thing. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes a question out of the wrong language, and this one has been in the wrong language for years.

And one plain thing about the people in those houses.

They ask you for things because you have made that easy and because you are good at it. It does not follow that it is why they want you there, and they have almost certainly never been asked to distinguish between the two.

You have never once tested the thing you are afraid of, and the written word puts the dearness ahead of everything that got imparted. The Spirit of God is the one who knows what is in those houses, and it is not an account of services rendered.

Come with nothing to fix

So here is what to do, and it is one visit and it is deliberately the plainest possible version.

Go and see one person this week with nothing in the truck.

No tool. Nothing to drop off. Nothing that needs looking at, and nothing you have quietly noticed and intend to sort out while you are there.

You are able to arrive with empty hands, and 1 Thessalonians 2:8 puts the imparting of a man's own soul alongside the useful thing rather than after it. The Holy Spirit is the one who gets a man out of a shed without picking anything up, and the shed is where this gets decided.

And when you get there, do not look round.

That is the discipline. A man like you will spot three things inside four minutes and one of them will genuinely need doing, and every one of those is a way back into the old shape.

Note them if you have to and do them another day. Not today.

You are able to see something and leave it, and it is written that the souls were imparted because they were dear rather than because anything wanted doing. The Spirit of God is the one who holds a man in a chair while a door sticks in the next room, and holding him there is the whole work of the afternoon.

And stay an hour.

Not twenty minutes. An hour, which is long enough that the visit stops being a call and becomes a visit, and long enough that the two of you get past the part where somebody is being entertained.

You are able to stay past the easy part, and His word describes an affectionate desire rather than a scheduled call. The Holy Spirit is the one who is in the second half of an hour, and the second half is where everything in this actually happens.

And if they ask why you came, say something ordinary.

I was passing. I had an hour. It is good to see you. Do not make a speech and do not explain what you are doing and do not turn it into a moment.

You are able to keep it ordinary, and it is written that he was affectionately desirous of them rather than that he announced anything. The Spirit of God is the one who makes an ordinary hour do what nobody could arrange, and it does it without being named.