Began to Move Him, At Times

The bench faces the wrong way. Whoever put it there set it looking at the path instead of at the water, and everybody who sits on it sits sideways, and nobody has ever moved it.

It is on his way home. Between the bus and the flat, about four minutes from the door.

He has stopped there eleven times in the last month. He knows it is eleven because he started counting after the sixth, which is its own kind of admission.

He does not sit down to pray. He does not sit down to think about anything. He sits down, and about ninety seconds go by, and then he gets up and goes home and puts the kettle on and the evening carries on as normal.

He is not distressed. That is what makes it hard to talk about. There is no crisis in this and nobody would call it a problem. There is just a man who has begun stopping at a bench without deciding to, and something turning over in him while he sits there, and he cannot name it.

And he has started doing the thing everybody does, which is trying to work out what it means. Is God saying something. Is it about the job. Is it about his father. Is he simply tired and looking for a reason.

Friend, sit sideways on it with me. Because there is one verse about a man in Judges and it uses a word about the Spirit that I do not think you have ever noticed.

The Spirit began to move him at times

Samson is a young man and nothing has happened yet. No exploits, no riddles, no disaster. Just a boy growing up.

And the chapter closes with this.

And the child grew, and the LORD blessed him. And the Spirit of the LORD began to move him at times in the camp of Dan.Judges 13:24

Two phrases, and both of them are unusual.

Began to move him. A beginning. Not an anointing that arrives complete, not a commissioning with instructions attached. The start of something, reported as a start.

At times. Intermittently. Not constantly. Some days and not others, and the text does not treat that as a defect or as a sign that the boy was doing something wrong on the off days.

Nobody explains it to him in that chapter. Nobody sits Samson down and tells him what it is for. It moves him, at times, in the camp, and the chapter ends.

You are experiencing something the text calls a beginning, and a beginning is allowed to stay a beginning without owing anybody an explanation. That is not a way of avoiding your question; Judges 13:24 says began and says at times and offers no interpretation at all, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a single line about a growing boy and lays it across a man on a bench that faces the wrong way. What is moving on you does not have to declare itself tonight.

Now the second half, because you have been doing something with this that is very human and is costing you.

You have been trying to name it. Job, father, tiredness, God. And naming feels like the responsible thing, because a named thing can be managed and an unnamed thing sits in you.

But look at how much of Scripture happens to people who did not know what was going on. Joseph had a dream and no interpretation for years. Mary kept things and pondered them. The disciples were told plainly what was coming and understood none of it and the text says so.

Not knowing is not a failure state in that book. It is the ordinary condition of somebody in the middle of something.

You are in a condition the book treats as ordinary rather than as a problem to be solved by Thursday. Luke 2:19 says Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes keeping without concluding a thing a man is allowed to do rather than a failure of discernment.

What to do with a thing you cannot name

Let me be practical, because you are a practical man and this is where it gets useful.

There are two wrong things to do with an unnamed stirring, and you are currently doing one of them.

The first is to dismiss it. Decide it is tiredness, stop stopping at the bench, and get on. That is tidy and it costs you whatever it was.

The second is to build on it. Decide what it means, make a plan, tell somebody, act. That is worse, because a structure built on a guess is heavy and you will have to maintain it.

The third option is the one Scripture actually models, and it is to hold it. To take the thing you cannot name and put it in front of God unnamed, and leave it there, and go home and put the kettle on.

You are able to hand something over without labeling it first, and He has never once required a person to know what they were bringing. Psalm 62:8 says pour out your heart before Him, and pouring out is not the same as explaining, and it is the Holy Spirit who receives what a man cannot articulate and does not send it back for clarification.

And here is the last piece, because you have a mouth and it does more than order coffee.

Jesus said in Matthew 17:20 that faith the size of a mustard seed, spoken to a mountain, is enough to move it. The smallest seed there is. Not how clear you are about what is happening to you. That a person opens their mouth and says what God has said. You have that standing because you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and speaking is the appointed way this works. We flip the switch. He sends the current.