I Can Stand There Without Starting

The rule is not written down anywhere.

Nobody ever said it to you. You would not be able to name the day you adopted it. And it has governed your relationship with that room for about three years.

The rule is: if I go in, I have to start.

That is why you do not go in. Not because the room is frightening and not because you lack resolve. Because under that rule, opening the door is signing up for an afternoon, and you do not have an afternoon, and you are not willing to open the door on false pretenses.

Which is, incidentally, a kind of integrity. You will not go in and pretend to begin. You would rather stay out than do a dishonest version of it.

So the honest woman stays in the hall.

And the room stays shut, not out of weakness, but because a self imposed rule that nobody has ever examined is being enforced with complete consistency by somebody who keeps her word.

Let me examine the rule, then, because I think it came from nowhere and it has had three years of obedience.

Stand still and watch what He does

There is an instruction at the Red Sea that is almost never given anywhere in scripture.

Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will shew to you to day. (Exodus 14:13, King James Version)

Stand still. That is the command. To a nation with an army behind them and water in front, with every reason to be doing something, the instruction is to stop moving and watch.

And it is an instruction. Not permission, not a concession, not an allowance for the weak. It is what they are told to do, and doing anything else at that moment would have been disobedience.

You are allowed to stand still and start nothing, and standing still has never once been the same as doing nothing that matters. Exodus 14:13 gives standing still as a command in the most urgent moment in the book, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman who has been keeping a rule for three years.

And notice who was going to do the work.

Not them. The salvation is described as His, shown to them, on that day. Their part was the standing, and the standing was not a smaller contribution, it was the assigned one.

You have a part that is genuinely standing, and standing has never once been the leftover role. The written word makes stillness the instruction at the point of maximum pressure, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a woman in a hallway who will not go in dishonestly.

Where the rule came from

So let me deal with the rule, because it deserves a proper look after three years of service.

It almost certainly came from ordinary competence. This is a woman who finishes things. Open a cupboard to deal with it, and it gets dealt with. That has been true for decades and it is why people rely on her.

And that instinct, applied to a room of forty unmade decisions, produces a rule that locks the door.

You have a rule made out of your own reliability, and reliability has never once been a fault in anybody. Exodus 14:13 suspends the doing entirely for one specific moment, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land for a woman whose best quality is currently keeping her out of a room.

And here is the thing nobody has pointed out.

The rule has an unexamined premise: that being in a room commits you to working in it. Say that out loud about any other room in your house and it falls over immediately. You stand in your own kitchen without cooking. You sit in the living room without rearranging it.

It is one rule, for one room, and it was never adopted deliberately.

You have one rule for one room, and it has never once applied anywhere else in that house. The written word commands standing still and calls it the right thing to be doing, and the Spirit of God is the one who steadies a woman who has just tested a three year rule and watched it fail.

Two minutes of standing still

So here is today, and it is the rule tested in practice.

Walk into the room. Stay for two minutes. Leave without moving anything.

You are not going in under false pretenses, because the whole agreement is that nothing gets started. There is no dishonesty in it anywhere.

You are going in on entirely honest terms, and honest terms have never once required you to begin anything. Exodus 14:13 tells them to stand and see, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman standing among boxes with her hands free.

And here is what happens to a rule when it is tested.

You will go in, stand, start nothing, and come out. And the rule will have been proved wrong by your own body, which is the only proof that ever works on a rule like that.

You are testing it with your own feet, and no argument has ever once been able to do what two minutes will. The written word suspends action and calls the standing obedience, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that land for a woman walking out of a room having begun nothing.