It is in the back, on the blank pages, in three different pens.
The first entries are from a long time ago and the ink has gone brown. There are names on it of people who are dead now, and one of a girl who would be nearly forty, and a couple of things written so long ago and so briefly that she can no longer remember what they were about.
Nothing is crossed off.
That is not exactly true and she would want me to be accurate. Two things are crossed off. Both from the same year, both about eleven years ago.
Two, out of what must be sixty by now.
And a list is a dangerous object, because a list keeps score whether you meant it to or not. You cannot look at a page of writing with nothing struck through it and not feel something, and what she feels, every single time she opens the back of that Bible, is a kind of sinking.
She does not stop writing on it. That is what I find remarkable about her, and it is the thing I want you to notice about yourself. She has kept adding names for twenty-two years to a page that has almost never given her anything back.
But she has started opening it less. And when she does open it, she reads it quickly, the way you go through a drawer of unpaid bills.
So let me ask you.
When did you last cross something off?
God told a man to write it down and He knew how long it would be
There was a prophet who complained to God at length and honestly, and then said he was going to stand at his watchpost and wait for an answer, which is one of the bravest things anybody in the Bible does.
And the answer he got was not the one he asked for. He asked about the timing of justice. What he got was an instruction and a promise about the instruction.
Then the Lord replied: Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it. For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.Habakkuk 2:2 and 3
Read what He tells him to do first, because it is the very thing you have been doing for twenty-two years. You have written it down, which was the instruction, and the Spirit has never handed anybody a page in order to keep a total on it.
Now read what God says about the delay, because He does something there that almost nobody does.
He acknowledges it.
Though it linger. He does not deny that it will feel long. He does not tell Habakkuk that if he had more faith it would come faster. He looks straight at the length of the wait, says it out loud Himself, and then says the length is about an appointed time and not about the man standing at the post.
And notice the first thing He tells him to do.
Write it down.
Which is exactly what you have been doing for twenty-two years in the back of a Bible in three pens.
Hear where you stand, plainly, because I think you have been reading a page wrongly for a long time.
You are not looking at a record of failure. Scripture puts write it down and wait in God's own mouth, and the Holy Spirit has never handed anybody a list in order to keep score against them.
A list is not a scoreboard. It became one because it looks like one, and because our eyes are trained by every other list we have ever kept, and there is not one thing on that page that God is marking.
And I will tell you the plain thing about crossings out, since we are being plain.
You cannot cross a thing off unless you happen to be looking. Half of what is written there may have been answered in ways that never came back to you. The girl who would be nearly forty. The two names of people who moved away in the eighties. You are looking at a page of things you never got to see the end of, and calling it a page of things that never happened.
Those are not the same page.
And you are not holding a page of failures. Habakkuk 2 has God acknowledging the length of it Himself, out loud, before the man at the watchpost ever had to raise it, and the Holy Spirit poured out on all people has not once handed anybody a list in order to keep score against them.
And here is where it turns, and it is small and it will change how the page feels.
Stop reading the list as a scoreboard, because it was never keeping score, and start reading it as what God actually called it, which is a record.
Write it down. That was the instruction. Not see how many you get.
And here is what I want you to do with the sinking feeling, because I am not going to pretend it will not come the next time you open the back cover. When it comes, say out loud: this is a record, not a score.
Habakkuk says the revelation awaits an appointed time and that though it linger, wait for it, and God said the lingering part Himself so nobody would have to explain it later. The Holy Spirit who was poured out on everybody has never once used a page of unanswered names to say a word about the person holding the pen.
Twenty-two years of adding names to a page that gives you nothing back is not a failure. There is another word for that and the word is faithfulness.
Declare this over yourself
Say these where you can hear yourself. Know what holds them up. This authority is not yours by nature, it is Christ's, and in Christ it has been given to you, so you speak as one representing the King. And you speak under His will, never over it. However He answers, and in whatever way He comes, the outcome is His.
- List, you are a record and you are not a score. Habakkuk 2 says write it down and wait for it, and writing it down was the instruction and counting the crossings out was never in it.
- Sinking I get every time I open the back cover, you have made a faithful page feel like a bill and you are done. In the name of Jesus I put you out of my kitchen, and the Holy Spirit never once used unanswered names to say anything about the one holding the pen.
- Lord, Habakkuk 2 has You saying though it linger Yourself, out loud, before anybody had to explain it for You, and Your Spirit never once used a page of names to keep score. I am sitting here for ten minutes asking for nothing, and twenty-two years of writing names down has a name and the name is faithfulness.
Habakkuk 2:3
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