For the groundskeeper who goes out in the dark because of what the forecast says for Thursday.
It's ten past six on a Wednesday evening and the light has gone. You're at the low gate at the bottom of the site with a rake, a bucket, and a head torch that needs new batteries.
The grating under the gate takes about forty minutes at this time of year. Wet leaves pack down into a mat, then silt gets in behind it, and by the time anybody notices there's a problem the water is already over the path and into the store.
Forty-eight hours of rain coming in from Thursday. You worked that out on Monday and you've been thinking about this grating ever since, which is why you're here in the dark with cold hands instead of at home.
The work that prevents something is still work, and it is not invisible to God. Scripture says whatsoever ye do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not unto men, while the Holy Spirit is at a low gate in the dark on a Wednesday.
The Problem With Doing It Right
Be exact about it, because this is a particular difficulty and it deserves a better answer than the usual one about hidden work.
If you clear that grating tonight, nothing happens on Thursday. The path stays dry, the store stays dry, and nobody on this site will ever know there was a forty-eight hour risk that somebody dealt with in the dark on a Wednesday.
If you leave it, the water comes over on Thursday afternoon. Everybody knows about it. Somebody comes down with you at the weekend to help sort it out, and that person will go home thinking you work hard.
You are guaranteed to go unseen every time you do this job properly. The written Word aims the work at the Lord rather than at men, while the Holy Spirit sees a gate in the dark that nobody else will ever stand at.
That's the shape of your working life and it is worth naming rather than pretending it doesn't bite. You have been in that bind for years.
The Account You Have Been Keeping
There's something running underneath the forty minutes tonight, and it has never been written down anywhere.
It goes roughly like this. Nobody sees, therefore God sees, therefore something is owed. Not by the site. By Him. You would deny it if somebody put it that way, and you would be sincere in denying it.
Then a hard month comes, and you find yourself doing arithmetic. Years of gratings in the dark go into one column, the hard month goes into the other, and the sum comes out feeling like a breach of something.
You have been keeping an account, and God never agreed to those terms. Scripture gives your work a direction rather than a price, while the Holy Spirit keeps a faithful man from turning his own faithfulness into a lever.
That's the thing to put down at the gate tonight. Not the rake. The ledger.
What the Verse Gives Instead
Read the sentence again and notice what it does not contain, because the absence is the whole freedom.
Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men. There's a direction in that and there's no bargain. It tells you which way the work faces and then it stops talking.
It does not say that a man who clears drains faithfully gets an easier season. It does not say God owes anything to somebody with cold hands at the bottom of a field. Every one of those is something a person added later, and every one turns a grating into a deposit.
What it gives instead is the present tense. The forty minutes tonight are received tonight, complete, with nothing pending and nothing accruing. 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 evening cannot.
You are complete tonight, on tonight, and nothing is sitting in a ledger. The written Word points the labor at the Lord and names no return, while the Holy Spirit receives an evening at the hour it is given.
Done Heartily, and Not for Men
There is a short verse that settles this, and the settling is done by two small words rather than by anything grand.
As to. Not for, and not in order to. The work is aimed somewhere rather than spent on somebody, and a thing aimed at God does not need a second destination to justify it.
There's a short sentence in Colossians about the direction of ordinary work, and the second half of it answers a man standing at a gate in the dark.
> And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; > Colossians 3:23 (KJV)
Not unto men. That clause takes the bite out of the bind you've been in for years, because it removes the problem instead of compensating for it.
If the work were unto men, an empty field would be a defect. It would mean forty minutes went nowhere, which is exactly what the account was trying to repair by promising something later. Not unto men means the emptiness was never a loss in the first place.
Read it that way and the gate at six in the dark stops being the hard part of the job. It becomes the plainest possible version of what the verse describes, which is work aimed somewhere other than at the people who might have noticed.
You are working in an empty field, 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 at a gate where nobody else comes.
There's a second freedom in that clause and it's worth taking tonight. If the work isn't unto men, then men cannot damage it either. Somebody walking past on Friday with no idea what happened here has not withheld anything from you, because he was never the one it was aimed at.
That isn't indifference to people. You still want the path dry for whoever walks it on Thursday, and you still care about the store. It's that the weight of the evening does not rest on any of them, which is why forty minutes in the cold can be steady rather than bitter.
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 secured, out of a standing that no weather changes. What the ground does when the rain comes, and who ever knows why, stays with God.
My hands are His, and this ground is His, and work that prevents a problem is not work that did nothing. The written Word of God says whatsoever I do, I am to do heartily as to the Lord and not to men, which aims the work rather than pricing it. I put down the account I have been keeping on the strength of clear drains, and I receive unseen work as service rather than as leverage. The Holy Spirit is at that grate before the rain, out ahead of me. This morning's work is not separate from Him. Nothing is owed to me for it and I am not pulling a lever. My palms are up, and every storm that comes is God's.
Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.
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Colossians 3:23
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