It was his daughter's birthday and Wesley checked in the car park before they went in.
Nobody saw. It took six seconds. And he would tell you, if you asked, that it was so he could relax, which is true and is exactly the thing worth looking at.
Because that is the arrangement. He cannot settle into a good thing until he has looked, and once he has looked he is properly there. He is not a distracted father. He was fully in that restaurant, he was funny, his daughter had a good evening, and if you had walked in at any point after the first ten minutes you would have seen a man entirely present.
The looking is not spoiling anything. It is the toll on the way in.
He does it before holidays. He did it before a wedding. He did it once, and this is the one he thinks about, in the corridor outside a room where he was about to see a new grandchild, and he stood there for four seconds getting clearance to be glad.
He is fifty-three and there is no crisis in that account. If you asked what he trusts he would say God without a pause and he would mean it.
Ask him what signs off his gladness, and the honest answer is a different answer, and he has never put those two answers next to each other.
Your version might be smaller. It might be that you cannot sit down on a Friday evening until you have had a look, and that once you have, you genuinely can.
Nobody is accusing you of anything. The evidence here is sequence, and a sequence is observable.
Something has been given the signing off.
Nothing has to be wrong for something to be out of place
Let me put the freeing thing first, or you will spend this page defending yourself and hear none of it.
Looking is not sin. Knowing what you have is not sin. Being careful with what you are responsible for is not sin, and Scripture never treats a man who knows the state of his own house as a man of small faith. If you arrived braced to be told that carefulness is faithlessness, put that down. It is not true and this page will not say it.
The question is not whether you look. It is what has to happen before you are allowed to be glad, and whether you ever chose it.
Habakkuk ends a short and difficult book with a sentence that deliberately unhooks two things everybody assumes are joined.
Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.Habakkuk 3:17-18
Read what he does there, because it is not optimism.
He lists everything. Fig, vine, olive, field, flock, herd. In that economy that is not a bad year; that is the complete failure of every single source of provision a person had, itemized, with nothing left off.
And then: yet I will rejoice.
Not and I am sure it will improve. Not one word about recovery, and no prediction about next season. He does not say the herd is coming back and this page will not say it either. He detaches the rejoicing from the state of everything and reattaches it somewhere else: in the Lord, in the God of my salvation.
You have a gladness that does not require clearance. Not a joy that waits for a reading. The written word itemizes total failure and puts the rejoicing on the far side of it anyway, and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes that live in a man standing in a car park before a birthday.
Now let me say something about the app, because it has done nothing wrong.
It is a tool. It does its job and does it accurately. Nothing here wants you to delete it and there is no rule coming about car parks. The trouble is not that you look. The trouble is that a tool has been given the authority to sign off gladness, and gladness is not in its remit, and it has been issuing that clearance for years without anybody appointing it.
You are not being asked to become careless. The written word never scolds a man for knowing where he stands, and the Holy Spirit is not embarrassed by a man who keeps track.
And now the corridor, because that is the one that stays with you.
Four seconds outside a room with a new grandchild in it. Nothing went wrong; you went in and you were glad and you held the baby. But something was consulted first, in a doorway, about whether joy was permitted, and it answered, and you accepted the answer.
You are not required to get permission to be glad. Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, and the yet is doing the whole job of separating the two things. The Holy Spirit was in that corridor with you and did not think one hard thing about it.
The breakthrough is not skipping the check.
You may keep checking before every good evening you ever have, and this page will not set you a test or ask what you did in the car park.
The breakthrough is that the gladness stops waiting for clearance.
Something narrow has been given authority over whether joy is allowed, and it never applied for the position. It has been signing things off accurately, on good information, and it was never the right office to issue them from.
You are not accused of anything here. The written word describes an order without ever making the looking a crime. The Holy Spirit has not thought one hard thing about you today.
What God does about your circumstances is His and this page will not predict a thing about it, in either direction, and nothing here promises the fig tree.
You have a rejoicing that survives an itemized failure of everything. Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation, written by a man who had just listed the lot. The Holy Spirit is on that porch this evening, and He does not need six seconds first.
Declare this over yourself
Say these with the phone face down. You are not working up authority here. It was given to you in Christ, and you speak as one who represents the King rather than as a man trying to sound impressive. Say them plainly, and leave the outcome to Him, because the outcome is His and He orders a house in His own way.
- Balance, you are a tool and you have been signing off my gladness. Come out of that office now, in the name of Jesus. Whether I am allowed to be glad is settled by the God of my salvation and not by a reading in a car park.
- Six seconds at the door of every good thing, you are a toll and you were never appointed. The Word of God puts a yet between the state of everything and the rejoicing, and that yet has already separated you from it.
- God, yet I will rejoice in You, and I will joy in the God of my salvation because that is who You are and not because I have earned the right to say it. Money, you keep your job in this house and you lose the gladness, and a good tool is never insulted by being told where it sits.
Habakkuk 3:17-18
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
