If I Give Only Me There Is Nothing There

You do not arrive anywhere without something.

Not once. Not to a house, not to a gathering, not to a hospital, not to anybody's kitchen on a Tuesday. There is always something in your hands, and there always has been, and everybody would tell you it is one of the loveliest things about you.

And it is. None of that is a lie and none of it is going to be taken off you here.

But you know what it is for.

There is a thought you have had for about twenty years and have never said in one piece to anybody. It goes: if I turn up with nothing, there will be nothing there.

Not that people would be disappointed. Worse than that. That they would look at what arrived, which would be you, and there would be nothing to it.

There is a man in Exodus who says almost exactly that, to God, out loud, at some length.

I am not eloquent

Here it is.

And Moses said unto the LORD, O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant: but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue. (Exodus 4:10, King James Version)

Look at the shape of the objection.

It is not about the task. He does not say the task is too hard or the people are too difficult or the timing is wrong. Every one of those would have been available to him.

He says the problem is him. What he is, and what he has always been, and what he still is now.

You are looking at an objection made about a person rather than about a job, and Exodus 4:10 has him name himself as the difficulty rather than the assignment. The Holy Spirit is the one who left that in, and it is the most honest sentence anybody says in that whole conversation.

And notice the timeframe he puts on it.

Neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant. Not before, and not now either. He is saying this is a settled fact about him, of long standing, unchanged by anything that has happened recently.

You have a settled fact about yourself that is the same shape as his, and it is written as neither heretofore nor since rather than as a passing doubt. The Spirit of God is the one who recorded a long standing self assessment, and He recorded it because a great many people have one.

And here is what does not happen next, which is the part that matters.

God does not argue with him about it. There is no verse where somebody explains to Moses that he is actually a good speaker, or lists his qualities, or tells him to have more confidence in himself.

The answer goes somewhere else entirely: who hath made man's mouth. And then: I will be with thy mouth.

You are not going to be argued out of this and you were never going to be, and the written word answers with who made the mouth rather than with an assessment of it. The Holy Spirit is the one who declined that argument, and declining it is a mercy rather than a dodge.

The objection is about the self

Now let me name what twenty years of full hands has been doing, because it is not generosity even though it looks exactly like it.

Every object is an answer to the objection.

If there is something in your hands, then the question of what arrived never comes up, because something visible arrived and it can be looked at and thanked for and put on a table.

You have been answering an objection nobody has ever raised, several hundred times, for twenty years.

You have been in a conversation with yourself that everybody else has been included in, and it is written as an objection stated once rather than as a thing that had to be settled again and again. The Spirit of God is the one who shows a woman what a habit has been for, and this one has been for exactly one thing.

And here is what that has cost, said gently because there is no accusation in it.

Nobody has ever met you empty handed. Nobody in twenty years has had the experience of you walking in with nothing, which means nobody has ever been able to tell you what that is like.

The evidence you need cannot be gathered, because the experiment has never been run.

You have a question with no data because you have never once allowed any to exist, and His word has a man state a fixed conclusion about himself rather than test it. The Holy Spirit is the one who points out that the experiment has never been run, and it is the only thing that would settle anything.

And one plain thing about the fear itself, since it deserves respect.

It is not vanity and it is not fishing and it is not attention seeking. It is an old fear about whether a person on her own is enough, and it is one of the commonest fears there is, and Moses said it to God's face.

You are in reasonable company, and it is written that he said it out loud to the LORD rather than that he kept it to himself. The Spirit of God is the one who is not embarrassed by that fear, and He was not embarrassed by it in a burning bush either.

Arrive with nothing once

So here is what to do, and it is one room and one occasion.

Go to one thing this week with empty hands.

Not a small thing to take the edge off. Not something in the car in case. Nothing at all, and nothing to go back out for.

You are able to walk in with nothing once, and Exodus 4:10 has a man make the objection and then go anyway. The Holy Spirit is the one who gets a woman through a door with empty hands, and the door is where the whole twenty years is standing.

And then stay the whole time.

That is the part that makes it count. A person with empty hands will find a reason to leave early inside about forty minutes, and the reason will be excellent.

Stay to the end, when the chairs get pushed back and people stand about in a loose circle and nothing in particular is happening.

You are able to stay past the point of leaving, and it is written that the answer was I will be with thy mouth rather than that he was let off. The Spirit of God is the one who holds a woman in a room past the forty minute mark, and the last hour is where the answer to all of this is.

And do not explain yourself.

Do not say you did not have time. Do not say you meant to bring something. Do not apologize at the door, which is what the hands will want to do through your mouth instead.

Walk in, say hello, and let there be nothing.

You are able to arrive without an explanation, and Scripture records the objection and then the going rather than a speech about it. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes a sentence off a woman at a doorway, and that doorway sentence is the last piece of armor in this.

And then watch what actually happens, because that is the whole point of the exercise.

Somebody will talk to you. Somebody will sit next to you. The evening will proceed. Nobody will look at your hands, and nothing will be missing from the room, and you will go home with information you have never had.

You have evidence coming, and it is written that the LORD answered the objection by naming who made the mouth rather than by reassuring anybody. The Spirit of God is the one who supplies what an argument could not, and He supplies it through an ordinary evening.