They Moved When the Cloud Moved

Ask anybody about him and they will tell you he is the man who gets things done.

He does not sit on decisions. He does not hold meetings about meetings. When something needs doing he starts it, usually that week, and he has a track record long enough that nobody argues with him about it any more.

He is fifty eight and he has planted three things in his church that are still running, and he started every one of them before anybody asked him to.

So here is what nobody has ever said to him, because it would sound ungrateful.

He has never once waited.

He would tell you he prays about things. He does. But if you sat with him honestly you would find that the praying and the starting happen more or less in the same week, every time, and that in thirty five years he has never had a season of holding something and watching it.

And two of the things he started did not work, and both were good ideas, and he has never been able to work out what went wrong with them, because the idea was right and the effort was there.

Here is the sentence he has never said out loud.

He does not know whether he has ever been sent, or whether he has simply always gone.

Read how the camp knew

There is a passage in Numbers describing how a whole nation handled movement, and it is almost entirely about timing.

And when the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle, then after that the children of Israel journeyed: and in the place where the cloud abode, there the children of Israel pitched their tents.Numbers 9:17

When the cloud was taken up, then after that they journeyed.

Read what is being described. Not where. Not why. When. The destination was never in question, and the direction was not something they had to work out. The whole of the obedience in that passage is in the timing, and the chapter goes on at length about it: two days, a month, a year, and they stayed until it moved.

And then read what happens when it lifts. They go. Immediately, in the night if necessary. So this is not a passage about being slow. It is about being governed.

Your obedience includes when as well as what, and Numbers 9:17 puts a whole nation's movement on the lifting of a cloud. That is what the word actually describes, not a caution I am adding, and the Holy Spirit is the One who teaches a fast man to watch.

Early is not the same as obedient

Now the plain thing, and I say it with respect for what you've built.

You've never been late, and you've said that about yourself for years as though it settled the matter. But a man who is never late and never waits has only ever tested one half of the instruction.

And here is what it costs. The two that did not work were good ideas, and I suspect they were good ideas that went out before the cloud lifted, and there is no way to tell the difference from inside a man who has never waited. Early looks exactly like obedient when a man is the one moving.

This is not a rebuke about your energy. Your energy has fed people. It is about half a practice being missing for thirty five years, and nobody telling you because the results were mostly good.

And nothing about your speed has ever made you unusable to Him. Scripture puts the going and the staying under the same cloud, and the Holy Spirit is not asking a working man to become slow.

Hold one for a week

Here is the practical piece, and it is exactly one week and it will be the longest one you've had.

That thing you had lined up to start. You know the one. Hold it for seven days and watch.

Watching is not doing nothing. It is a job. Take it out each morning at the tailgate and say it to Him, and then look at what happens around it during the day: who mentions it, what falls through, what opens. That is the practice you've never run, and it is not passivity, it is reconnaissance.

And if in seven days nothing at all has changed, start it. I am not giving you a rule that says waiting is always more spiritual, because that rule has paralyzed better men than it has helped. I am giving you the half of the instruction you've never used.

You are able to watch without losing your edge, and the waiting was never the opposite of the working. Numbers 9:17 puts the journeying and the pitching both under the cloud, and the Holy Spirit is the One who governs the timing of a man who has always simply gone.