They Think I Am Hiding

They think you are hiding from something, and the difficult part is that they might be a quarter right.

Nobody has said it in those words. It comes out sideways. Your sister's comment about how it must be nice not to have a boss. Your mother's question about whether you have looked at anything else recently. Your wife, once, carefully, asking whether you would go back if the right thing came up.

And your first reaction every time is that they do not understand. Which is true.

But there is a thing you do not say out loud, which is that one part of why you started this was that you could not face another interview, and another version of being told no, and another office. That was in it. It was not all of it and it was in it.

I am not going to tell you that your motives are pure, because I do not know and neither do you. I am going to show you a verse about what God looks at, and it is a mercy.

Man looketh on the outward appearance

There is a sentence in 1 Samuel that God says to a prophet who is standing in front of the wrong brother, and it cuts in two directions at once.

Samuel has been looking at a tall man and assuming. And God corrects the method rather than the conclusion.

For the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart. (1 Samuel 16:7, King James Version)

You are seen properly by the one who matters, and that has never once depended on your family reading you right. 1 Samuel 16:7 puts human assessment and God's seeing side by side and says plainly that they are not the same thing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that to an open tailgate on a driveway.

Now hold both edges of that verse, because it has two. The first is that your family are looking at the outward appearance, which is what people do, and their reading of your motives is not authoritative.

And the second edge is for you. God looks at the heart, which means He is not fooled either, and He is also not surprised by what He finds there.

You have been seen all the way through, and nothing in there has ever once disqualified you from the work. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a sentence spoken over a shepherd boy reach a man standing by his own van, and 1 Samuel 16:7 separates what people see from what God sees without pretending either is blind.

The quarter that is true

Let me deal with the quarter, because it is the reason this article exists.

Yes, avoidance was in it. A man can start a real thing for a mixed set of reasons and the thing is still real. The order you delivered last week was real. The money was real. Nobody at the other end of it received avoidance, they received a job done properly.

You are doing real work, and a mixed motive has never once made the work false. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man look at his own reasons without flinching, and the written word says God looks on the heart in 1 Samuel 16:7 and goes on to choose the man anyway.

And here is the useful part, and it is the only practical thing in this article. The avoidance is not in the past, it is in your week. There is one part of this work you have been putting off for two months, and it is the part that involves being turned down, and you know exactly what it is.

That is where the old thing still lives. Not in your reasons for starting. In the thing on the list you keep moving to next week.

You are able to do the thing you have been moving, and doing it has never once required you to be sure of yourself first. His Spirit is the one who makes a man able to walk at the part he has been walking round, and 1 Samuel 16:7 has God see the heart and commission the man in the same scene.

Say it, then do the avoided thing

So here is the exercise, and it is two halves, and the second one is the real one.

Say one true sentence about the work out loud. This is my work. Eleven people paid me this month. It is real, and some of why I started it was not brave.

You are able to say a sentence with a true seam in it, and honesty has never once weakened a thing. 1 Samuel 16:7 has God look at the heart and choose the man, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a plain sentence possible for a man who has been arguing with his family in his head for a year.

Then go and do the avoided thing. The call you have not made. The person you have not asked. The one you need to chase. Today, not Friday.

That is the answer to the accusation and it is not a word. Nobody has to see you do it, and your family will never know you did, and it is still the answer.

You were never required to settle your own motives before you could work, and you are not required to now. The Spirit of God carries a man past the need to be sure of himself, and the written word says the LORD looketh on the heart in 1 Samuel 16:7 and then sends him out to be anointed.