I Counted And The Number Was Humiliating

You counted, and then you wished you had not.

It was a reasonable impulse. You had been at this eight months and you wanted to know where you actually stood, so one evening you sat down and went through and made an honest list of every word you could produce without help.

Two hundred and something.

And you sat looking at it, and the eight months arrived in the room with the number, and something went out of you.

You have not opened it since. That was nineteen days ago.

Let me describe what the number did, because it did something quite specific and I do not think you have named it.

Before the count, the thing was open ended. You were somebody learning a language, and how far along was a question with no answer, and that turned out to be doing more work than you knew. After the count, you were somebody with two hundred words after eight months, and that is a rate, and a rate can be extended forward, and the arithmetic that followed was not survivable.

I want to say the true thing before anything useful.

The count was accurate and the conclusion you drew from it was not, and those are two very different things that arrived in the same evening.

So I am not going to tell you two hundred is more than you think. It is what it is and you counted it properly and I have no interest in massaging your number. Let me show you something that happened to an army.

By the three hundred men

There is a passage in Judges where God counts somebody's resources and then reduces them twice.

Gideon had thirty two thousand men. God sent twenty two thousand home, which left ten. Then he took the ten thousand to the water and watched them drink, and sent nine thousand seven hundred more away.

And the LORD said unto Gideon, By the three hundred men that lapped will I save you, and deliver the Midianites into thine hand. (Judges 7:7, King James Version)

Three hundred, out of thirty two thousand.

Now the striking thing is not the smallness. It is who did the reducing. Gideon did not lose those men. They were not taken from him by an enemy and he did not fail to recruit them. The number was cut deliberately, by God, on purpose, and the cutting is presented as part of the plan rather than as a setback.

You have a number that was never the measure of what happens next, and a small count has never once been the same thing as a small outcome. Judges 7:7 has the reduction done deliberately rather than suffered, and the Holy Spirit is the one sitting with a man who has not opened it in nineteen days.

Now look at what the verse actually attaches the outcome to.

By the three hundred men will I save you. The saving is done by God, and the three hundred is simply what he is working with. The verse does not say the three hundred were sufficient. It says the deliverance runs through them.

You were never the sufficiency in this, and two hundred words has never once had to be enough on its own to be the thing being worked with. The Holy Spirit is the one who does the work through whatever a man actually has, and Judges 7:7 puts the saving on God and the number on the men.

And here is the third thing, which is the part that reaches nineteen days of a shut book.

The reduction happened the night before the battle. Not at the beginning, when there was time to recruit more. At the end, when the number was final and there was nothing to be done about it. And the next thing that happens in the chapter is not a rebuild. It is the action itself.

You have been treating a count as the end of something, and a final number has never once been the same as a finished story. Judges 7:7 does its counting the night before rather than at the start, and the Spirit of God is the one with a man looking at a list on a page.

The rate you extended was not real

Here is the practical half, and it is about the arithmetic you did after the count.

Two hundred words in eight months is twenty five a month. You extended that forward and got a number of years that made you close the book, and the extension is where the error is, because language does not accumulate in a straight line.

Here is why. A word learned at twenty words costs real effort, because there is nothing to attach it to. A word learned at two hundred arrives already half known, because it shares pieces with what is in there, and it fits into patterns that have started to feel familiar rather than sitting on its own.

The first two hundred are the expensive ones. That is not encouragement, it is how it works, and everybody who has done this describes the same curve.

You have already paid for the hardest part of this, and the first two hundred has never once cost the same as the second two hundred. The Spirit of God is the one with a man who did honest arithmetic on a false curve, and Judges 7:7 cuts a number down deliberately and then wins with what is left.

Now here is the second thing about the count, and it is what the list could not see.

The list counted words you could produce without help. That is one number out of about four that matter, and it is the smallest of them. It did not count the words you recognize when somebody says them, which is always two or three times larger. It did not count the sounds your mouth has learned to make. It did not count the shapes your ear has started to expect.

The list measured the narrowest thing available and you took it as the whole account of eight months.

You have several stores that were never counted that night, and one narrow measure has never once been a full report on anybody. Judges 7:7 hands the outcome to God and leaves the three hundred as simply what was in hand, and the Holy Spirit is the one who knows what eight months actually built in a man.

And here is the cost of the nineteen days, said plainly and without scolding.

Nineteen days at ten would have been a hundred and ninety words. Almost the whole of the eight months again, in nineteen days, because of where you now are on the curve.

You were standing at the cheapest stretch this has ever had, and nineteen days of a shut book has never once been the arithmetic you were afraid of. The Spirit of God is the one who gets a man to open it again after a count went badly, and the written word reduces an army on purpose and then delivers through what remains.

Ten today, and do not count again

So here is the assignment, and it comes with a prohibition that matters more than the assignment.

Learn ten words today, then close the book and do not add more.

And do not count. Not tonight, not at the end of the month, not at a year. The counting is not a neutral act for you, and you found that out the hard way nineteen days ago.

You have permission to stop auditing yourself, and a man who does not count has never once had fewer words than one who does. Judges 7:7 has the numbering done by God and never once by Gideon, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a man opening a book he shut in anger.

And here is what to put in place of counting, because something has to go there.

Count the days, or count nothing. The days are honest and they do not extend into a forecast, and nobody has ever been humiliated by the number eight.

If the urge to total it up arrives, and it will, say out loud that the counting belongs to God in that passage and not to the man. That is true, it takes four seconds, and it is enough to get past it. Then shut the book at ten, because ten is the assignment and tonight owes you nothing more than that.

You have a way past the urge that costs four seconds, and a total refused has never once been a total lost. The Spirit of God is the one who settles a man after ninety seconds on the nineteenth night, and Judges 7:7 does the reducing and the delivering both.