I Think I Am Just A Person Who Quits

Four times. And somewhere along the way it stopped being four times and became a fact about you.

That is the thing that happened and it happened quietly. The first stop was a disappointment. The second was annoying. By the third there was a shape to it, and by the fourth it was not really about the language any more, it was evidence, and the evidence had been filed.

You are somebody who starts things and does not finish them. That is the conclusion, and you hold it the way a person holds a settled matter rather than an opinion.

And it is why you have not started a fifth time. Not because you do not want to. Because starting again would just be gathering more evidence, and you already have four pieces and do not need a fifth.

I want to say the true thing before anything useful.

You built a character out of a sample, and you did it carefully, which is why it has been so hard to argue with.

So I am not going to tell you that you are not somebody who quits. You have four stops and I am not going to pretend they did not happen, and if I told you they meant nothing you would rightly stop reading.

What I want to do instead is look at where the finishing actually sits.

He which hath begun a good work

There is a sentence in Philippians about who is responsible for the completion of something.

Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. (Philippians 1:6, King James Version)

He which hath begun a good work in you.

Now read the subject of that sentence, because everything turns on it. Who began the work. Not the person it is happening in. Somebody else began it, and the same somebody is named as the one who carries it through.

The person in that verse is the location of the work rather than the operator of it.

You have never once been the one responsible for finishing what is happening in you, and a work begun by God has never once been handed over to the person it is in. Philippians 1:6 names the beginner and the finisher as the same one, and the Holy Spirit is the one sitting with a woman who has filed four pieces of evidence about herself.

Now stay on the word perform, because it is stronger than the modern reading.

Perform there means carry through to completion. It is an undertaking, and the verse states it as a matter for confidence rather than hope. Nothing in that sentence makes the completing conditional on the consistency of the person involved.

You were never the variable in this, and a completion promised by somebody else has never once depended on the record of the one it is promised to. The Holy Spirit is the one who carries a thing through in a woman with four stops behind her, and Philippians 1:6 puts the confidence in the one who began it.

And here is the third thing, which is about the time frame.

Until the day of Jesus Christ. That is a long horizon. It is not until the end of the year or until she gets it right, and a stretch of that length has room in it for stopping and starting a great many times without anything being in danger.

You have a timescale in this that has never once been threatened by four stops, and a horizon that long has never once been endangered by a gap of seven months. Philippians 1:6 sets the end point far out of reach of any individual failure, and the Spirit of God is the one with a woman who thinks she has run out of attempts.

Four is a sample, not a character

Here is the practical half, and it is about the evidence itself.

Let us look at the four, because they have never actually been examined one at a time. They have been sitting together as a group, and a group is much more convincing than four separate things.

One of them stopped because of a move. One stopped in the year your father was ill. One stopped because the thing being used was genuinely bad and putting it down was the right call. And one stopped for no reason anybody can name, which is the one the whole case really rests on.

Three of those are circumstances. One is unexplained.

You have been convicted on one piece of evidence dressed up as four, and a group of unlike things has never once been the same as a pattern. The Spirit of God is the one with a woman who filed a verdict on herself years ago, and Philippians 1:6 makes the finishing the responsibility of the one who began.

Now here is the thing about the fourth one, the one with no reason attached.

It probably had a reason. Most stops do, and the reason is usually small and unmemorable, which is exactly why it did not get recorded. A bad couple of weeks. A week where something else took all of it. Nothing that would look like a cause from four years away.

An unexplained stop is not evidence of character. It is evidence of a missing note.

You have been reading a gap in the record as a finding about yourself, and a thing nobody wrote down has never once been proof of anything. Philippians 1:6 states the confidence in the finisher rather than in the one being finished, and the Holy Spirit is the one who was present in a week that nobody remembers.

And here is the thing your conclusion has actually done, said plainly.

It has made the fifth attempt expensive. That is the only real damage. Starting is cheap for most people and it costs you a great deal, because for you it is not an attempt at a language, it is a test of a question you would rather not have answered.

Nobody starts a thing that is going to grade them.

You have been asked to take a test where you meant to open a book, and one evening of ten words has never once been an examination of anybody's character. The Spirit of God is the one who gets a careful woman to open a book without anything riding on it, and the written word puts the whole confidence in the one who began the work.

Open it once, with nothing riding on it

So here is the assignment, and the most important part is what it is not.

Open it once today without going back to the beginning of anything.

Once. Today. And it is not the fifth attempt. It is not a start, it is not a commitment, and it is not a test of anybody’s character.

It is one evening with a book open. Nothing depends on tomorrow.

You have one evening available that is not an attempt at anything, and opening a book once has never once been the same as beginning a project. Philippians 1:6 puts the carrying through on the one who started it, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a woman opening something with nothing riding on it.

And do not start at the beginning. That matters more for you than for almost anybody.

Going back to lesson one is how a fifth attempt announces itself as an attempt. Open it in the middle, wherever it falls, and take ten words from there. A book opened in the middle is not a campaign.

And if you do not open it again for three weeks, that is fine and it does not add a fifth item to anything. Then stop, because one evening is the assignment and no evidence is being gathered tonight.

You have permission to open it once and never again this month, and a single evening has never once been able to prove anything about a person. The Spirit of God is the one who settles a woman after ten words with nothing attached, and Philippians 1:6 runs its horizon far past any month she is having.