For the man going shelf by shelf with a pencil after the doors are locked.
The doors locked at seven and it's twenty past nine. The overhead lights leave long rectangles down the carpet and everything past the third aisle is in the half dark, and you have one shelf left in this run.
Pencil, clipboard, three columns. Present, misplaced, not located. You work left to right along the spine line, and you're fast, because eleven years of doing this has built something in your hands that does not need you to think about it.
Three discrepancies tonight. One volume two aisles over where somebody reshelved it near enough but not exactly. One checked in after the list printed. One that is simply not where it should be and has not been for four days.
That third one has been sitting in your chest since Tuesday, which is the part of this that is worth looking at.
A count is information, and you have been reading it as a verdict on yourself. Scripture says whatsoever ye do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not unto men, while the Holy Spirit is between the stacks at twenty past nine.
When the Count Became a Court
Be exact about it, because it did not start this way and the change happened quietly.
For the first few years a missing volume was a problem to be solved. You'd look, you'd check the usual places, you'd write not located, and you'd go home. It was a fact about a book.
Somewhere along the line it started being a fact about you. Now the third column reads like an accusation. You stay an extra forty minutes looking for something you have already looked for, and the walk to the car carries a small weight that it never used to have.
Nobody did this to you. Nobody in that building has ever said a word about your counts, which are the most accurate anybody there has produced.
Your accuracy has quietly become a court, and you are the only one sitting in it. The written Word aims the work at the Lord rather than at a private tribunal, while the Holy Spirit does not require a perfect sheet before He is pleased with a man.
What Accuracy Is Actually For
Here's the thing that has been lost, and it is worth getting back before you do the last shelf.
Accuracy serves the next person through the door. That's the whole purpose of it. Somebody comes in on Thursday looking for something specific, and the reason they find it is that a man went along a spine line with a pencil on a Tuesday night in the half dark.
An honest not located serves that person too. It tells the truth about what is known, which lets somebody else search properly rather than wasting an afternoon on a record that lied.
So the third column is not your failure. It is the part of the count that keeps the other two columns worth anything.
Not located is an honest entry rather than a confession. Scripture points the work toward the Lord rather than toward a flawless sheet, while the Holy Spirit values a truthful record over a comfortable one.
What Is Not on Offer in This Message
There's a version of this teaching that goes wrong, and it is worth refusing before somebody offers it.
That version says that if you do this faithfully as to the Lord, He'll notice and something will follow. A word from somebody. A different role. Recognition for eleven years of a job nobody watches.
The verse contains nothing of the kind. Your counts put God under no obligation. Nothing is accruing, no balance exists, and the clipboard is not a lever.
The clipboard has been doing a second job you never assigned it, and this is where that job ends. A count that is only a count can be wrong by three and stay a count that was wrong by three.
A count that has been quietly serving as a verdict on the man holding it cannot be wrong by three without something larger being at stake. That was never in the stock take. It was added later, by you, in an empty building.
What the verse gives instead is direction and nothing else. Whatsoever ye do, as to the Lord, not unto men. The evening is received as it happens, complete at twenty past nine, with nothing pending.
The evening is finished when it is finished, and nothing is in a ledger. The written Word gives the work a direction and names no return, while the Holy Spirit receives an hour at the hour it is given.
Heartily, as Unto the Lord
There's a short line in Colossians about where ordinary work faces, and it settles a man standing in a half dark aisle with a clipboard.
> And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; > Colossians 3:23 (KJV)
Not unto men includes you. That's the part worth stopping on tonight, because the man you have been working for, the one keeping the tally and issuing the verdicts, is standing in aisle three holding a pencil.
If the work is aimed at the Lord, then it is not aimed at satisfying your own standard either. Your standard has been the harshest audience in that building for about six years, and it is not the one the verse names.
So the last shelf gets counted, the third column gets written honestly, and the sheet goes in the tray. It faces the Lord, who has never once asked for two hundred and forty.
The audience you have been working for is not the audience the verse names. The written Word says not unto men, while the Holy Spirit receives an honest count rather than a perfect one.
It is worth naming the audience you have actually been working for, because it is not the library and it has never been your supervisor. It has been an imagined assessor who reads every count as a statement about the man who took it.
That assessor does not exist. The verse names a real one instead, and the difference is that a real one receives an honest count with three errors in it, which an imagined one never could.
An honest count is the only kind a real assessor ever asked you for.
A count with three errors in it, handed over honestly, is received; and that has been true of every stock take you have ever done.
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 count can adjust. What the numbers show, and who ever reads them, stays with God.
My hands are His, and these shelves are His, and an hour after closing is not time that does not count. 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 and leaves the verdict out of it. I put down the court I had convened over myself with a clipboard. The Holy Spirit is in this aisle after closing, out ahead of me. Tonight's count is not separate from Him. Nothing is owed to me on account of it, and I am operating no mechanism. My palms are up, and every shelf in this building 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.
