The Number Did Not Move So I Quit

Thirty four days. You counted them at the time and you can still tell me the number.

You went out every single one. You did not miss one for weather and you did not miss one for being tired, and on two of them you went out at ten past nine at night because the day had eaten itself.

That is not nothing. That is the most consistent you have been about anything in about a decade.

And on day thirty five you looked at the figure you had been watching, and it had done almost nothing, and by the following evening you had stopped, and you have not been out since the twelfth.

Here is what I do not want to do, and I want to be clear about it at the front.

I am not going to tell you that the number does not matter, and I am not going to tell you that it moved in ways you cannot see, and I am not going to promise you it will move next time if you go again. Nobody knows that and a man who says it is guessing.

What I am going to do is much narrower.

I want to look at what you actually handed over on day thirty five, because it was not the walking. The walking was going fine. What you handed over was thirty four days of a thing you were doing with your daughter, and you handed it to a reading that had no information about any of that.

Let us lay aside every weight

There is an instruction at the top of Hebrews twelve that uses the language of running, and the first move in it is a subtraction.

Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us. (Hebrews 12:1, King James Version)

Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily besets us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.

Two things get laid aside and they are named separately for a reason. There is the sin, and then there is the other category: weight.

You have a verse that names something which is not sin and still has to be put down, and Hebrews 12:1 has never once required a thing to be wicked before it becomes worth laying aside. The weight is named on its own, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man what he has been carrying that is simply slowing him.

You are able to see how useful that second category is, because the thing you are carrying is not wrong.

Watching a number is not a sin. It is reasonable, it is what everybody does, and there is nothing in it to repent of. It is simply a thing being carried while trying to run, and it is heavy, and it has stopped one man already.

And notice the third element: run with patience. The word carries the sense of remaining under something for a long time, which is exactly what thirty four days is not, and exactly what you were capable of doing and did.

You are able to put down something that is not wrong, and Hebrews 12:1 has never once made that a lesser kind of putting down than repentance. The Spirit of God is the one who unburdens somebody who is trying to keep going, and the verse names the weight separately from the sin on purpose.

What thirty four days was actually worth

Here is the part I want you to sit with, and it has nothing to do with your body.

Your daughter came with you on nineteen of them.

You have thirty four days that produced something no reading was ever going to report, and none of that has never once been erased by a figure on day thirty five. It is written that we lay aside every weight and run with patience, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps the account of what actually happened in five weeks.

You know exactly which nineteen. You know she talked about the thing with her friend on about the ninth one, and that she would not have said it across a table.

And then on day thirty five you consulted an instrument about whether the five weeks had been worth doing, and the instrument answered on the only subject it knows about, and you accepted its answer as a verdict on the whole thing.

That is the actual error, and it is not a failure of persistence. The persistence was there. By your own account it was more persistence than anything else in ten years received.

You asked the wrong thing to grade it.

You are able to keep an accurate account of what happened, and a reading that knows nothing about nineteen evenings has never once been in a position to grade them. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in a conversation on a road on day nine, and Hebrews 12:1 tells a man to lay the weight down rather than to try harder while carrying it.

Go tomorrow, as if it never stopped

So here is the assignment, and there is a deliberate refusal in it.

Go out tomorrow at the same time you used to, with somebody, as if the five weeks never stopped.

You are able to walk back into something without starting it again, and picking it up has never once required a restart or a fresh commitment. It is written let us run with patience the race that is set before us, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a man going out of a door on the second day of a thing he thinks he has already lost.

Not day one. This is important and it is not a trick. You did thirty four days. Those days happened, they were real, and they are not annulled by an interruption.

So this is day thirty five, arriving late.

Do not announce it as a new attempt. Nothing gets said to your daughter about starting again. Coat on at the same time, ask her the same way, go the same route.

And do not look at the number. Not this week and not next week and not when you feel strong enough to handle it. Put the whole instrument down, which is the laying aside the verse is describing.

You have permission to run this without any measurement at all, and doing it unmeasured has never once been the same as doing it carelessly. Hebrews 12:1 puts the laying aside before the running, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a man under something for a long time.