I Think They Only Want What I Make

You are the one who makes things.

That is your place and it has been your place for about fifteen years. Nobody assigned it. It grew, the way those things grow, out of being good at something and being willing.

And it is genuinely good. People are glad. Things get made that would not otherwise exist and a great many people have been fed and warmed and given something by your hands.

And you are tired in a way that sleep does not touch.

It is not the making. You still like the making. You sat down last week and did some of it and it was fine.

It is a sentence that arrived about a year ago and has been getting louder, and the sentence is: if I turned up with nothing, would anybody be pleased.

Let me say plainly, before we go on, that nothing in this article promises you anything in return for what you have given. Not gratitude, not a reaction, not anything coming back. That trade is not made on this site.

Let us not be weary in well doing

Here it is.

And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. (Galatians 6:9, King James Version)

Start with what he takes for granted.

He assumes people doing good get weary. That is not treated as a failure of love or a sign that somebody has lost their way. It is named as an ordinary hazard of the work itself, in a letter written to people who were doing the work.

You have been weary in exactly the way that verse expects, and Galatians 6:9 names the weariness rather than warning anybody against being the kind of person who feels it. The Holy Spirit is the one who put that risk in writing, and He put it there for people who had been going a long time.

And the last three words are worth staying with, because they are the actual instruction.

If we faint not. Faint is not the same as weary. Weary is tired. Fainting is stopping altogether, going down, not getting up.

The verse does not ask anybody not to be tired. It asks them not to collapse, which is a far smaller and more possible thing.

You are being asked for something much smaller than you thought, and it is written that the instruction is not to faint rather than not to feel it. The Spirit of God is the one who set the bar there, and He set it low enough for somebody fifteen years in.

And about the middle of the verse, said clearly because this site does not trade in it.

The reaping in that sentence is God's business and His timing, and it is not a promise that generosity produces gratitude, or provision, or a better reception at any gathering. Nobody here is telling you that if you keep going, people will start noticing.

You are not owed anything by anybody in that room, and His word puts the harvest in God's hands rather than in the hands of the people being served. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps that distinction clean, and it has to be clean or the whole thing rots.

What the tiredness actually is

Now let me name the tiredness, because it is not physical and you already know that.

It is the tiredness of being certain that the welcome is for an output.

That is a specific kind of exhaustion and it does not come from hands. It comes from the suspicion that the person would not be missed if the production stopped, and that suspicion cannot be rested off.

You have been carrying a question rather than a workload, and it is written that the weariness comes in well doing rather than from it. The Spirit of God is the one who tells a woman what is actually heavy, and it has not been the making for about a year.

And here is the thing about that suspicion. It has never been tested.

Fifteen years and you have never once arrived with nothing. Not once. Which means the sentence that has been getting louder for a year is running on absolutely no evidence in either direction.

You have been living under an unexamined verdict, and Scripture asks for the not fainting rather than for the question to be answered first. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a person that a thing they are certain of has never once been checked.

And there is a second thing, and it is the honest one.

Making has been a way of being sure of a welcome. If the hands are full, the place in the room is settled and does not have to be risked. That is not a fault. It is one of the most human arrangements there is.

You have been buying certainty with your own hours, and it is written that the weariness in well doing is expected rather than deserved. The Spirit of God is the one who names an arrangement without condemning the woman who built it.

Arrive once with nothing

So here is what to do, and it is one occasion rather than a change of life.

Go to one thing this week with nothing made. Nothing carried in. Empty hands at the door.

Not because making is wrong and not because anybody needs to be taught a lesson. Because the question has been running for a year with no evidence and one evening is enough to get some.

You are able to test it once, and Galatians 6:9 asks for the not fainting rather than for the question to go unasked. The Holy Spirit is the one who gets a woman through a door with empty hands, and the door is the entire difficulty.

And then stay the whole time.

That is the part that matters more than the arriving. Do not go and help in the kitchen. Do not find a job within ten minutes, which is what hands like yours do when there is nothing in them.

Sit down with somebody and stay there.

You are able to sit in a room with nothing in your hands, and it is written that the well doing wearies people rather than that it must never stop. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps a woman out of a kitchen for one evening, and out of the kitchen is where the answer is.

And notice what happens, without deciding in advance what it will be.

Somebody will probably ask where the thing is. That question is not the verdict either way, and how it is asked will tell you more than the fact that it was asked.

And somebody will very likely sit down next to you, because for fifteen years you have been standing up.

You have something to find out either way, and the written word puts the reaping in God's own season rather than in any evening's evidence. The Holy Spirit is the one who arranges what happens in a room like that, and He has been waiting for a woman to walk into one empty handed.