Watered Every Moment

He looks at it eleven times a day and he has counted, which is how he knows it is eleven.

The figures. The little screen. The number that goes up when somebody buys something and sits perfectly still when nobody does, and it is the sitting still that gets him, because a number that has not moved since half past nine feels like an accusation.

Nineteen months old, the business. He believes God gave it to him, and he does not say that lightly; there was a door that opened in a way he could not have engineered and he has never once doubted whose hand was on it.

But it has been a bad month. Six weeks, really. And somewhere in those six weeks a belief has settled in him that he would not say out loud because he knows how it sounds.

God started this, and now it is mine to hold up.

So he checks. At traffic lights. In a queue. Twice in the night, once at ten past two and once at ten to five, lying on his side with the screen making his face blue. And nothing he sees at ten past two has ever changed by ten to five, and he knows that, and he checks anyway, because a man who believes he is the only thing standing between a vineyard and the animals does not sleep well.

There is a vineyard in Isaiah and God says out loud who looks after it

In that day sing ye unto her, A vineyard of red wine. I the LORD do keep it; I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day (Isaiah 27:2 and 3).

Read the verbs and read who is doing them.

I keep it. I water it every moment. I keep it night and day. Three times in one verse God names Himself as the one on duty, and the phrase every moment is not poetry; it is a way of saying there is no interval in it, no gap, no hour when the vineyard is unattended.

That vineyard has an owner who does not step away from it.

You have been given something that is being watered every moment by Someone who never steps out of the row. That is what the word says in the first person, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a written promise real to a man lying on his side at ten past two with a screen in his hand.

Planted and abandoned is not a thing God does

Now let me get at the belief that settled in the six weeks, because it is doing the damage and it is not true.

You believe He opened the door and then withdrew, and that everything after the opening is on you. Nobody taught you that. It assembled itself out of tiredness and a bad month, the way most of our worst beliefs do.

But look at what Scripture says about His pattern. He who has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:6). Begun and performed, by the same person, from one end to the other. God does not have a habit of starting things and handing them over at the difficult part.

You are not holding up something He walked away from. The word says He who began it also carries it through, and it is the Holy Spirit who is called the earnest, the deposit that guarantees the rest, which is a legal image and not a comforting one.

What checking eleven times a day is actually doing

I want to say something practical, because you are a practical man and sentiment will not move you.

The checking is not management. Management is a decision made with information. Checking a figure that cannot have changed is not information gathering; it is a body trying to discharge fear, and it does not discharge it, which is why you do it again forty minutes later.

And it has a cost you can measure. It costs you your attention, and your evenings, and the particular quality of presence that made people want to buy from you in the first place.

You are able to put it down for a night because somebody is in the row while you sleep. Scripture says He gives His beloved sleep (Psalm 127:2), and it says it specifically to people who rise early and sit up late, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that possible in a body that has been braced for six weeks.

What is guaranteed and what is not

Here is where I will not lie to you, because a man in a bad month can smell a comfortable lie at forty paces.

Isaiah 27 does not say the vineyard has a good year every year. It does not promise the harvest. There is nothing in this article that tells you the next six weeks come good, and if anybody tells you that they are selling something.

What is promised is the keeper. I do keep it. I water it every moment. Night and day.

You have a Keeper on the thing, and that is a different guarantee from a good quarter and a better one. The word makes God the subject of every verb in that verse, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes His presence in the row a felt thing rather than a doctrine, so a man can work hard all day and then genuinely stop.