Strength That Was Only Ever Useful

Your strength has always belonged to other people.

That is not a complaint about them and it is not self-pity. It is a description. You are the one who gets called. You are the one with the truck, the one who helps people move, the one who stays late, the one whose back is assumed to be available.

And you have never minded. That is the strange part and it is why nobody has ever thought to ask about it. You are genuinely glad to be useful and you would do it all again.

But go looking for a time in the last decade when your strength was for you, and there is not one. There is no instance. Every single expenditure has gone out.

Let me put the plain thing first. You have not been careless with any of this. You have spent yourself for years and got up the next morning and gone to work. Somebody who did not care would have stopped answering the phone.

So this page will not tell you to set boundaries. That is an instruction about other people and this is not about them.

I want to show you a verse about a yoke, and what makes one easy.

Useful is not the same as used

Consider the distinction, because it is the one that has kept you from noticing.

Being used is when somebody takes something from you against your will. That has not happened. It was given, every time, freely and gladly, and that is why none of this has ever registered as a problem.

But a thing can be entirely voluntary and still be the only thing. And the only thing is a different situation from a generous one. A man who gives all of it away by choice still ends up with none of it, and the freeness of the giving does not change the arithmetic.

You have been generous rather than used, and no free giving has ever once changed the arithmetic of what is left. Matthew 11:29 says take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for my yoke is easy, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a verse about yokes arrive on a man who has never noticed he is wearing several.

And notice why nobody has asked. You do not complain. You show up. A man who never says a word about it is assumed to be fine, and the assumption is reinforced every time you turn up, which you always do.

You have been assumed fine because you kept turning up, and no silence of yours has ever once been the same thing as capacity. The written word offers a yoke and calls it easy, which is a claim about the fit of the thing rather than about the strength of the one wearing it, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes fit the question rather than endurance.

My yoke is easy

Jesus offers a yoke, which is an odd thing to offer people who are tired.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. (Matthew 11:29, King James Version)

He does not offer no yoke. He offers His.

Which means the question was never whether a man carries something. The question is whose, and how it fits. A yoke that fits is the difference between a working animal that lasts and one that does not, and everybody who has ever worked with animals knows it.

You are being offered a different yoke rather than no yoke, and no man has ever once been promised nothing to carry. Matthew 11 makes the offer about the fit rather than about the absence of weight, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes fit the question a man can actually ask.

And read what He says about Himself in the middle of it. I am meek and lowly in heart. That is the reason given for the yoke being easy. It fits because of the character of the one who made it, and He is not a driver.

You have a yoke made by somebody who is not a driver, and no weight of His has ever once been fitted by somebody in a hurry. The Spirit of God is the one who makes that difference felt by a man who has carried several badly fitted ones, and the written word says for I am meek and lowly in heart.

Do one strong thing that serves nobody

Now the part I came to say, and the phrase that serves nobody is the entire content of it.

Do one strong thing today that is not for anybody. Not for your family, not for a neighbor, not for the church. Nobody benefits from it except you, and ideally nobody knows about it.

Split the wood you do not need. Walk up the hill because it is there. Carry the thing across the yard and carry it back. It should be genuinely useless, and the uselessness is the medicine.

You are able to spend some of it on nothing, and no expenditure of yours has ever once had to produce something for somebody. The written word offers a yoke that fits rather than a life with nothing in it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a useless act possible for a man who has never performed one.

And here is why useless is the point. A useful act, however good, keeps the arrangement intact: strength goes out, somebody benefits, and you remain the supply line. One act that benefits nobody breaks the arrangement for a minute, and a minute is enough to establish that the arrangement is not a law.

You have an arrangement rather than a law, and no law has ever once been broken for a minute by a man carrying a log across a yard. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a minute do what an argument could not, and Matthew 11:29 is the written word underneath it, where the yoke offered is His and the reason it is easy is the character of the one who made it.