The Gap Between Knowing And Monday

Kalani could give you the answer right now. He has been able to give you the answer for about fourteen months.

That is not a figure of speech. If you sat him down and asked him what the right thing to do is, he would tell you in one sentence, without hesitating, and he would be right, and he knows he would be right.

He has all the information. There is nothing missing. He has thought about it from every side, he has weighed what it costs, he has considered the people involved, and there is no piece of data that would change the answer if it arrived tomorrow.

And it is Sunday night again.

That is the thing about this particular difficulty. It is not a decision problem. It is a Monday problem. The knowing is complete and it goes precisely as far as the edge of the week, and then something happens between the knowing and the doing that Kalani has never once been able to describe.

He has tried calling it fear. It does not quite fit; he is not frightened of the outcome and he has done harder things.

He has tried calling it laziness. That does not fit either, and it is unkind, and it is the sort of thing a man says about himself when he has run out of accurate words.

The honest version is that there is a gap, and the gap is not made of information, and he has spent fourteen months trying to fill it with more information because information is the thing he knows how to get.

He is forty-seven. Every so often somebody says what you need to do is and tells him the thing he already knows, and he says thank you, and means it, and nothing moves.

You may know that Sunday night.

Maybe you could give the answer right now too. Maybe you have been reading and asking and turning it over for a year, and you have known since about the second week, and you keep going back for more of the one thing that was never the shortage.

What revelation is said to be for

There is a verse in Deuteronomy that divides everything into two categories, and the second one has a purpose clause attached that almost nobody reads to the end.

The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.Deuteronomy 29:29

That we may do.

That is what revealed things are described as being for. Not to be held. Not to be understood more thoroughly. Not to be assembled into a complete picture and admired.

To be done.

Which means the category you have been operating in is finished. The revealed part of this has been in your hands for fourteen months. There is nothing further coming in that column, because the column exists to be spent rather than accumulated, and you have been treating an inbox as a storeroom.

And what you have been given was given so that you could do it. The written word attaches a purpose clause to revelation and the purpose is doing, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my paragraph who makes that reach a man on a Sunday night with everything he needs.

And you are not waiting on a missing piece. The word divides the secret things from the revealed and puts the revealed in your hands already, and the Spirit bears witness with your spirit rather than preparing a further delivery.

What is actually in the gap

Now let me say something about the gap, since neither fear nor laziness fits and you deserve a better word than either.

A gap between knowing and doing is almost always made of a cost you have priced but not accepted.

That is different from being afraid of it. You are not afraid of the outcome; you have said so and I believe you. But there is something the right course takes from you, and you have calculated it accurately, and calculating is not the same as agreeing to pay.

Fourteen months of gathering more information is what a person does while not yet agreeing to pay. It feels like diligence from the inside. It is genuinely indistinguishable from diligence from the inside, which is why you cannot name it.

And I am not going to tell you the cost is small. I do not know what it is.

And you are able to accept a cost and it will not be more than you can carry. The word says God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, and the Spirit is the one who makes that a floor rather than a slogan under a man on a Sunday night.

And nothing about you is under review for the fourteen months. The word says there is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, and the Spirit supplies that to somebody who has been calling himself lazy for want of an accurate word.

The one thing this article will not do

I am not going to tell you what the answer is, and I want to be plain about why, because it would be easy to read this as coyness.

You already know it. That is the entire premise. A stranger repeating your own sentence back to you would add nothing except the fourteenth person who has done that, and you have said thank you to all of them and nothing has moved.

And it is not mine to direct your life from here. That is not what wisdom is.

And the wisdom you have been asking for is a capacity rather than a fact. The word says if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, and it offers wisdom instead of an answer, and the Spirit is the one who makes that a dignity rather than a withholding.