She was the best one he had bred in eleven years and everybody who came onto that yard said so.
He is not going to be sentimental about a cow. He has been at this too long. But there are one or two in a working life that make you stand at the gate longer than you need to, and she was one, and he had plans for her that went out about nine years.
He loaded her in March. Frost still on the ramp. Drove four hours with the radio off, handed her over at the other end, shook a man's hand, drove four hours back.
The verse had been read the week before. He is not going to talk about that. He is not interested in taking anybody apart, and the men involved were not crooks, and he has heard enough bitter old men in his life to know what it does to a face.
Here is what he will say.
He believed God that week. Not in a worked-up way. Quietly, at the kitchen table, at half past five in the morning, the way he has believed things his whole life. And loading her up felt like the truest thing he had ever done on that farm.
Six years since.
Two dry summers back to back. The roof on the far shed. A vet bill in the second year that he still does not like to think about. Nothing ruinous. Nothing you could point at. Just six years of the sort of grinding that a man expects, arriving in a way that has not felt like weather.
It has felt like correspondence.
That is the honest word for it and he has never used it out loud. Every hard season landing like a written answer about a man standing on a frosty ramp at six in the morning with a rope in his hand.
And you know that, because there is a run of seasons in your life you have been reading like a letter.
The seasons are not a letter
Let us settle what governs this page. It is not a technique and there is nothing on it being asked of you.
You are looking at an invitation, and the One being tested in it is God. Follow the verb and it lands square on Him. He is the one under examination. He is the one who offered to be found out. There is no appeal at the bottom of this page, no request three paragraphs down, nothing to join and nothing to sign, and there never will be on this site. It is written, put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts (Malachi 3:10), and the Holy Spirit is what turns a famous sentence into an invitation addressed to you.
Now the sentence, standing in its own yard.
Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.Malachi 3:10
Said to a whole nation, in one decade, about one building, where the store room had emptied and the families who served there had gone home hungry. What it names is that the fields would not fail again. It is a sentence about people eating. It was never a switch on a wall, and nothing you ever loaded into a trailer has operated it, in either direction.
Now the thing that has to be said first here, because it never gets said first anywhere else.
You were not taken in, and believing God is not the part of this story to be ashamed of. What happened at that kitchen table at half past five was faith, and faith is not gullibility wearing better boots. It is written that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1), and the roll call that follows is full of men and women who acted on what God said and did not all live to see the end of it, and Scripture calls them commended. It is the Holy Spirit, and not this page, who makes that read like it is addressed to a man on a frosty ramp.
Now the six years.
Scripture is plainer about this than most preaching is, and it does not hedge.
A man born blind is put in front of Jesus and the disciples ask the obvious thing, whose fault, his or his parents. Jesus says neither (John 9:3). Not a smaller fault. Not one to be gone into later. Neither.
A tower falls in Siloam and kills eighteen people, and Jesus raises it Himself and asks whether the crowd reckons those eighteen were worse offenders than everybody else in Jerusalem, and answers it flat: no (Luke 13:4).
And Asaph, in a song that is still in the book, writes down that he looked at how easy life was for people who cared nothing for God and near enough lost his footing over it (Psalm 73:2). Nobody took that out. It is in there because what you have been doing for six years is old, and God is not shocked by it.
A run of hard seasons is not a letter from God, and He has never once written to a man through his rainfall. It is written that He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45). That is not a promise about fairness. It is a plain statement that weather is not correspondence. The Holy Spirit is the one who gets that in underneath six years of reading.
And here is what has not happened, which is the whole subject of this page.
God has not withdrawn from you, and these six years are not the sound of Him backing off. It is written that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, is able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38). Things present. Six years, in the list, already on the losing side of that sentence. And His Spirit is what makes it ground under a man's boots instead of a verse he has known since he was young.
Now the guardrail, and it is why this whole place exists.
Nobody here is going to tell you this is the year it turns. Nobody here is going to hint that because you loaded her up, something is quietly on its way to you instead. That is the same machine with a softer voice on it, and you have had a gutful of machines.
God's faithfulness to you was never payment for what went up that ramp, and that is the best news on this page, because a thing that was never payment can never fall behind. It is written that if we are faithless He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself (2 Timothy 2:13). His faithfulness is not a response to yours. It is what He is made of. The Spirit is the one who makes that the reason a man can stand at a gate without doing arithmetic.
So stand at the gate and stop doing the arithmetic.
You gave something. She was yours, she was real, and you loaded her up believing God. Nobody on this page is going to value her, revalue her, tell you what she was really for, or tell you what she bought. She did not buy anything, and that is not because she was not good enough. It is because God was never selling.
And six years of hard going are not His answer about that morning. They are six years. He has been in every one of them, He has not withdrawn one inch, and none of it is a message about a man with a rope in his hand at six o'clock.
Nothing is required of you for that to be true. It has been true through the whole six.
You are not being repaid and you were never owed, and God's faithfulness to you was never resting on what went up that ramp. It is written that the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable (Romans 11:29), and irrevocable means He does not take back and was not buying. The Holy Spirit is the One who says that plainly to a man who did a straight thing gladly.
Come and look. He has nothing behind His back.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud where you are standing. You have the right to speak them because you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and that standing was handed to you and not bought, which is exactly the thing this verse has been used to cover over. Scripture is the ground under every line and the Holy Spirit is what makes them live in a man. Speak first to the seasons you have been reading, then to the thing you have quietly concluded about yourself since March, and then turn and speak to Him. Whatever He does in the years after you say them is His, and it is not a scoreboard.
- Six dry years, you are not God's answer about that morning. He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust, and weather has never once been correspondence.
- Verdict that a man who believed God at his own kitchen table got had, you are not leaning on this gate. It is written that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, and the Spirit is the One who makes that a commendation and not a caution.
- Jesus, You said neither this man nor his parents sinned when they asked You whose fault a life was, and You have never answered anybody that way since. I set this down in Your name and I keep no account of it, because Your faithfulness was never payment, and I have spent long enough trying to learn from a thing with nothing in it to learn.
Malachi 3:10
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