The Room Where I Put The Rest Of It

I want to describe the room before we say anything about it, because I think it has been described to you badly and mostly by yourself.

It is not full of junk. That is the first thing.

It is full of a period of time. There is the bag from the hospital. There are the boxes from when you moved things out of somewhere. There is the equipment from the thing you were going to do before everything happened. There are the clothes that belong to a size you were, or a job you had, or a person who was here.

Every one of those went in there for the same reason. There was no capacity that week to decide about it, and there was a door, and behind the door it could wait.

That was not avoidance. That was triage. That is what a person does when they are carrying more than they can hold, and it worked, and it is the reason you got through those years at all.

And now the door is shut and the whole stretch is behind it, stacked, waiting, and every time you pass it in the hall your body does a small thing you have stopped noticing.

Remember ye not the former things

There is a line in Isaiah that I have heard used to tell people to get over things, and that is not what it says.

Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? (Isaiah 43:18 and 19, King James Version)

Now, notice who is speaking and what He is actually asking.

He is not saying the former things did not happen. He is not saying they were small. This is said to a people whose former things included a burned city and a long captivity, and He is not asking them to pretend.

You have never once been asked to pretend those years were small, and no instruction in that chapter has ever required a man to be finished with them. The Spirit of God is the one who redirects a look without dismissing what it was looking at, and Isaiah 43:18 closes off the consulting and leaves the remembering alone.

He is asking them to stop consulting them. There is a difference between remembering a thing and going to it for information about the future. That second one is what the verse is closing off.

And look at what He puts in its place. Not a lecture. A new thing, already springing, and a question about whether they will be able to see it.

You are not required to be finished with those years tonight, and Isaiah 43:18 has never once asked anybody to pretend the hard part did not happen. It is written as an instruction about where to look for information rather than a demand to forget, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a person out of consulting the past without ever making light of it.

You have been going to that door for a verdict, and the room behind it has never once been qualified to give you one. The word turns the eyes to a new thing already springing forth, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that new thing visible to somebody who has been reading old evidence.

The room is not a summary of you

Now here is the thing I most want to hand you, and it is a distinction that shame will not make on its own.

That room is a record. It records what a particular stretch of years cost. It is accurate. Everything in there is genuinely there because something genuinely happened.

But a record is not a verdict. The room can say exactly what those years took out of a man. It cannot say a single thing about who he is, and it has been speaking as though it could.

And it speaks loudest through the door, which is the strange part. Shut, it says everything. Open, it is mostly boxes.

You are looking at a closed door and hearing a whole argument about your life, and none of that argument has ever once been in the room itself. Isaiah 43:18 tells a people to stop consulting the old things for what comes next, and the Spirit of God is the one who cuts a person loose from a room that has been testifying about them.

So tonight we open it. Not to work in it. Not to start. To take the door out of the argument by looking at what is actually behind it.

You are permitted to open that door and do nothing at all, and doing nothing has never once made the opening pointless. It is written that the new thing springs forth by His doing and not by the reader clearing anything first, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is standing in a room that has been shut for two years.

Two minutes, and your hands stay down

So here is the whole of what I am asking, and I want to be exact, because the exactness is the mercy.

You are able to keep your hands in your pockets for two minutes tonight, and doing nothing in there has never once been a wasted evening. It is written that the new thing springs forth by His doing rather than by anybody clearing the way first, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is standing in a room that has been shut for years.

Open the door. Turn the light on. Stand in the doorway, or one step in if that is comfortable, and stay there for two minutes.

Do not touch anything. Do not pick anything up. Do not begin. If you find your hands moving, put them in your pockets.

Look at it. That is the entire task tonight.

Then close the door and go and sit down.

You are able to look at that room tonight, and looking has never once obligated you to fix what you looked at. Isaiah 43:18 moves the eyes forward without ever requiring the old things to be dealt with first, and the Spirit of God is present in a doorway for two minutes exactly as He would be in a room already cleared.