The Net Mended With The Same Knot

He knows four knots properly and one of them badly.

That is enough. It has always been enough. In thirty years on that water he has never once been in a situation that four knots could not handle, and he can tie all of them in the dark and two of them behind his back, which he will demonstrate at the slightest encouragement.

Here is the other thing, and the knots are only the picture.

Young people bring him things.

Not officially. There is no arrangement and nobody made him anything. It is simply that for about fifteen years, whenever somebody in their twenties on that stretch of coast has hit something hard, they have ended up on this porch, usually at an odd hour, usually with a drink they are not drinking.

He is good at it. He listens for a long time and says very little and then says one thing.

And a few weeks ago, after one of them had gone, he sat there and worked out that he has been saying the same handful of things for fifteen years.

Four of them, near enough. Maybe five.

They are true. They have helped a great many people. He believes every one of them.

But he sat on that porch with the light going and thought: I have been tying the same knot into everybody, and I have not learned a new one since I was about thirty five.

Nobody has complained. Nobody would. That is what bothers him.

If you have been tying the same knot for years, come and sit on this porch. Nobody is going to hand you a scheme.

Renewed is not the same as manufactured

There is a promise in Isaiah that everybody can quote and almost nobody reads the setup of.

They who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint.Isaiah 40:31

The verse just before it says that even young men grow tired and exhausted, and young men in that passage are the fittest thing available. Isaiah is not being poetic. He is establishing that running out is what happens to the strongest version of a person, on schedule, without any failure being involved.

And then the promise. Not that some people do not run out. That some people are renewed.

Renew is a supply word. It is not about digging deeper into yourself. It is about receiving again from somewhere that is not you.

That matters on a porch at the end of a long day, because a man who has been handing out four true things for fifteen years does not need more resolve. He needs feeding.

You are not running out, and what you need is not more effort. Isaiah 40:31 puts the renewing on God's side rather than on the person waiting, and it is the Holy Spirit whom Ephesians 3:16 names as the strength in the inner being, which means the flatness on that porch is not a report on your character.

Four true things is not a poor haul

Now let me say the plain thing, because a man in your position is quite capable of turning this into an accusation and there is no accusation here.

Four things that are true, that you believe, and that have carried a great many young people through hard years, is not a small inheritance to be handing out. Most people do not have four. Nobody is calling those fifteen years shallow and nobody is calling them repetitive in the way you meant it.

And there is no plan being issued here. No scheme with a name, nothing to keep up. This site does not hand anybody one.

You have not hit a ceiling, and there is no age in this at which the feeding stops. Colossians 2:7 speaks of being rooted and built up in Him, both of them ongoing rather than finished, and it is the Spirit who does the building, so thirty five was not the last year you learn anything.

Here is the entire offer and it is smaller than you fear. Not more talking. Slower reading.

When you were young you read like a man who needed something. Which means slowly, out loud, going back over a line twice because it caught. Somewhere since then you started reading the way a man checks a knot he already knows holds.

You are still growing, and you are being fed right now, as you read. Isaiah 55:11 says His word does not return empty but accomplishes what He purposes, and it is His Spirit who carries it in, which is why one slow passage this week can put a fifth thing on that porch without you going looking for it.

And under all of it: God is the one keeping you while you keep what He gave you. The four knots are not your achievement. They were handed to you, and there is more where they came from.