For the baker who is halfway through the racks before the rest of the street has woken up.
What time were you in this morning?
Ten to four. The same as yesterday and the same as it will be on Saturday. By the time anybody else on that street has an alarm going you have the first two batches out, the racks moving, and flour on both forearms up to the elbow.
You count them as they cool. Not because anybody checks. Because a count is how you know the morning is going properly, and because you have never in eleven years handed over a tray without knowing exactly what was on it.
Nobody sees any of this. The woman who comes in at six sees the end of it. The customers see bread in a basket. The whole of what actually happens between four and six happens with nobody in the room.
Work nobody watches is not work that goes unreceived. Scripture says whatsoever ye do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not to men, while the Holy Spirit is in a bakery at twenty past four.
The Deal You Did Not Know You Made
Be exact about it, because there's a transaction running underneath eleven years and it has never been written down.
Somewhere in there you started keeping an account. Not deliberately. It goes something like this: I get up at ten to four, I do it properly, nobody sees, and therefore something is owed. Not by the shop. By God.
You would not put it like that out loud and you would probably deny it. Watch what happens in a bad month, though. When something goes wrong at home, some part of you does arithmetic, and the arithmetic has ten to four in it, and it comes out feeling like a breach.
You have been running an account, and God never agreed to the terms. The written Word directs your work to the Lord rather than trading it with Him, while the Holy Spirit keeps you from turning faithfulness into a lever.
That's the thing to put down this morning. Not the work. The account.
What the Verse Does Not Say
Read it again slowly, because what is missing from it is the whole freedom.
Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men. There is a direction in that sentence. There is no bargain in it. It tells you where the work faces, and it stops.
It does not say that faithful work produces a better month. It does not say God owes an early riser anything, or that a man who does it properly when nobody is looking gets something in return. Every one of those is an addition that somebody made later, and every one of them turns bread into a deposit.
You have been given a direction for your work and never a price for it. Scripture points the labor toward the Lord and says nothing about return, while the Holy Spirit receives a morning without an invoice attached.
Notice what that costs and what it gives. It costs the sense that you are building up credit. It gives you a morning that is complete when it happens, which the credit version never was.
What Is Actually True at Twenty Past Four
Here's what the verse puts in place of the account, and it is better than the account was.
The work is received as it happens. Not later. Not when it adds up. The tray going into the oven at four fifteen is the transaction, complete, with nothing pending.
That means the eleven years are not a balance sitting somewhere. Every one of those mornings was finished on the morning it happened, which is why you cannot spend them now and also why nothing has been lost.
It also means a bad month is a bad month rather than a breach of contract. That is a colder sentence than the account offered and a far kinder one to live under, because an account can be broken and a received morning cannot.
You have been complete every morning on the morning, and nothing is sitting in a ledger. The written Word makes the work an offering rather than a deposit, while the Holy Spirit receives it at the hour it is done.
Heartily, and to the Lord
The verse worth having at twenty past four is short enough to keep in a pocket, and its grammar is the part that does the work.
Read it slowly once. The instruction is about direction rather than intensity: not work harder, but work toward. A man can already be working as hard as a person can work and still have the direction wrong, which is exactly what has been wearing you out.
There's a short line in Colossians that names the direction of ordinary work, and the second half of it is the one for a man alone in a bakery.
> And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; > Colossians 3:23 (KJV)
Not unto men. That clause solves the thing that has been bothering you for eleven years, which is that nobody is in the room between four and six.
If the work were unto men, an empty room would be a problem. It would mean the effort went nowhere, which is exactly what the account was trying to fix by promising a payment later. Not unto men removes the problem rather than compensating for it.
Read it that way and the empty bakery stops being the difficulty and becomes the point. There is nobody there to receive it because it was never aimed at anybody there.
You are working in an empty room, which is no problem at all for work aimed at the Lord. The written Word says not unto men, while the Holy Spirit is the One present in a room with nobody in it.
There's a second freedom in that clause, and it's worth taking. If the work isn't unto men, then it also isn't damaged by men. A customer who complains about a crust has not touched the direction of the morning. A manager who never says anything has not withheld anything, because he was never the one it was aimed at.
That's not indifference to people. You still want the bread to be good for the woman who buys it, and you still say good morning at six. It's that the weight of the morning does not sit on any of them, which is why the morning can be steady on a day when they are not.
Not unto men is a phrase with nobody in the room.
Declare this over yourself
You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so what follows is not a claim made out of your own authority. It is agreement, said back to God in His own words, while the Holy Spirit carries it. How He orders the rest of it is His to decide, and He answers in His own way and in His own time.
Speak these as a man already accounted for, out of a standing that was settled before the ovens were ever lit. What the counting produces, and who ever notices, stays with God.
My hands are His, and this work is His, and the hours before sunrise are not an antechamber. The written Word of God says whatsoever I do, I am to do heartily as to the Lord and not to men, which sets the direction of the work rather than its price. I put down the arrangement in which faithful counting was a claim on God. The Holy Spirit is at that bench at twenty past four, out ahead of me. This morning's loaves are not separate from Him. Nothing is owed to me for them and I am not pulling a lever. My palms are up, and every loaf counted is God's.
Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.
This message is free. Nothing here is locked, nothing is for sale, and nothing is being asked of you.
Colossians 3:23
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
