There Are Forty Things On There I Never Use

You looked at it properly the other day, and you counted.

Forty, roughly. Some of them you have never opened. Some of them you did not know were there. Two of them you are fairly sure appeared on their own.

And the feeling that came with the counting was not curiosity. It was something much heavier, and it settled in your chest and stayed for the afternoon.

Because in your mind that screen is a list. Forty things, and you use four, and the other thirty-six sit there as evidence.

I want to ask one question about that, and I want to ask it slowly.

Who put them there?

Not, why have you not learned them. Who put them there.

Because you did not. You did not choose one of them. You did not sit down and decide that this small piece of glass should carry forty separate things.

Somebody else made an arrangement, for reasons of their own, in an office you have never seen, and then handed it to you already full.

And you have been reading their arrangement as your report card.

Sufficient unto the day

There is a sentence about the size of a day, and it is one of the most practical things Jesus ever said.

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. (Matthew 6:34, King James Version)

Sufficient unto the day. That is a statement about capacity. A day has a certain amount in it and it is full.

And the instruction is not to go and find more things to put in it.

You are given sufficiency for the day, and no day has ever once been improved by having somebody else's forty things added to it. Matthew 6:34 says sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a permission rather than a warning.

Notice the phrase take no thought. It does not mean be careless. It means do not carry it in advance, do not have it in your head today, do not let tomorrow's business occupy the room that today needs.

The instruction is about what a person is allowed to put down.

You have been given something to put down rather than something to pick up, and no instruction in that chapter has ever once added a single item to anybody's day. The Holy Spirit is the one who hands a person permission to set something aside, and it is written that the morrow will take thought for the things of itself without any help.

And notice the whole passage around it. Birds that do not store. Flowers that do not work at appearing beautiful. The entire argument is against accumulating in advance.

Against, not for. That is unusual and it is worth taking seriously.

You were never asked to accumulate against a day that has not come, and no passage in that chapter has ever once praised the storing up of anything. The Spirit of God is the one who argues against the piling up, and Scripture spends the whole surrounding passage making exactly that case.

Whose arrangement it is

Now let me be concrete, because a general reassurance will not lighten a chest.

Go through the forty and sort them by origin. Not by usefulness. By who put them there.

Some arrived when the thing did. Some arrived later, on their own, because somebody decided they should. A few were put there by a family member who thought they would be helpful. And a small handful you actually chose.

That last group is probably three or four items, and those are the only ones that are yours in any sense.

You are looking at somebody else's arrangement with four of your own things in it, and no decision made in an office has ever once been a judgment on the person it was handed to. The Spirit of God is the one who names the origin of a thing, and Matthew 6:34 puts a boundary around what a day is required to hold.

And here is the second half, which nobody has ever told you.

Everybody has this. Every single person carrying one of those. The young man who fixes yours has about sixty on his and uses perhaps eight, and has never once counted them, and would not know what half of them do.

He does not experience them as a list, because it has never occurred to him that they were addressed to him personally.

That is the whole difference. Not what is on the screen. Whether a person reads it as an inventory or as a room they walk through. That is a gap in the teaching and it is not a gap in you.

You have been reading a room as an inventory, and no arrangement handed to somebody has ever once been addressed to them personally. The written word argues against carrying tomorrow's business today, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a woman what everybody else's screen actually looks like.

Three, out loud

Now the small thing, and it is a sentence said three times.

I am not going to suggest you remove anything. Removing things is a project, and it would turn a heaviness into an afternoon of work, and that is not what this needs.

Point at three things on that screen and say out loud, I did not put that there.

You are able to say one true sentence three times, and naming the origin of a thing has never once made it heavier for anybody. Matthew 6:34 puts a limit on what a day is asked to carry, and the Holy Spirit is the one present when a woman speaks about her own screen accurately.

Point at them properly, with a finger. That matters more than it sounds. Pointing makes it a real object in a real place rather than a general feeling.

Then say the sentence out loud. I did not put that there.

Three of them. Then stop.

Because the heaviness lives entirely in the belief that the forty are a list about you. Three accurate sentences, said out loud, put a crack in that belief, and the rest comes apart on its own over the following weeks.

You are putting a crack in one belief rather than emptying a screen, and three sentences said out loud have never once required anybody to change a single thing. The Spirit of God is the one who breaks a false reading with an accurate word, and it is written that the day is sufficient without anything being added to it.