She does her washing at midnight because at midnight there is nobody there.
That is the whole reason and she has never pretended otherwise to herself. The machines are the same at midnight. The soap is the same. What is different is that the plastic chairs are empty and the woman who works the counter has gone home and left the lights on, and there is nobody to nod at, nobody to have a short conversation with, nobody who might, in the course of an entirely pleasant exchange about the price of the dryers, ask a question that has a real answer.
She has been washing at midnight for four years.
If you sat with her in one of those chairs at half past twelve, with the dryers going and the fluorescent light doing what fluorescent light does, and you asked her what she thinks would actually happen if somebody knew all of it, she would tell you without hesitating. She has thought about this more than she has thought about anything.
They would go.
Not shout. Not accuse. That is not the fear and it never was. They would be kind about it, and there would be a phase of being slightly busier than before, and then there would be a distance that nobody ever names, and one day she would realize it had been a while. That is her prediction, and she has made it so many times that it has hardened into knowledge.
So she washes at midnight and keeps everybody at the depth where nothing gets found, and the arrangement works, and it costs her every ordinary thing that people get from being known.
That is you in the plastic chair.
You've got a prediction. It is specific and it is well developed and you have never once tested it, because the test would cost you the thing you are protecting. And that prediction, more than anything you actually did, is what has organized the last four years of your life.
She was seen all the way through, and she ran toward Him
There is a woman in John's Gospel who also came at the wrong hour to avoid people. Noon, in her case, when nobody sensible fetches water. And a man at that well told her about her own life, in detail, without her offering it.
Now look at what she does next. This is the sentence, and it is the whole point.
Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?John 4:29
Read it again as a piece of evidence rather than as a nice verse. This woman has just been fully known by somebody she met twenty minutes ago. Every prediction she had would have said run. And she does run, but look at the direction: she runs into the town she has been avoiding, to fetch the people she has been avoiding, to bring them to the man who knows.
She is not fleeing exposure. She is advertising it. He told me all things that ever I did. That is her headline. That is the part she leads with.
You are being invited into the same discovery she made, which is that being seen all the way through is the safest thing that has ever happened to you, and I am not putting a nice light on it: John 4:29 is the woman's own sentence, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than my saying so who can make it liveable for somebody who washes at midnight.
Something happened at that well between being known and running, and it took about a minute, and it is the thing I want for you. She discovered that the knowing did not come with the leaving attached. In her experience, those two had always traveled together. Somebody learns, and then somebody goes. And here was a man who had the whole file open in front of him and had not moved an inch, and was in fact offering her water.
You have never once been left by the One who has had all of it the whole time, which is written into that account rather than into my affection for you, with the Spirit of God able to break a prediction that four years of midnight washing has hardened.
Now, I come from a room that makes a noise when somebody comes back, and I want to tell you why we do it. It is not showmanship. It is because shame's whole strategy is to keep a person at the depth where nothing gets found, and a room that is loud about somebody's return has made that strategy unworkable in about four seconds.
This is yours right now, at midnight, in a plastic chair, with the prediction still sitting there untested, because Scripture has a woman running toward the man who knew everything, and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying that into a room with the dryers going.
The leaving is not coming.
Your prediction has never been tested, and it was built out of one or two experiences that were real and that you generalized into a law. God is not bound by that law. He has had all of it from the beginning, has never once moved, and the woman at the well ran into a town shouting about being known because she had just found that out.
The midnight arrangement can end. Not the discretion, which is wisdom and yours to keep. The prediction. The four year certainty that being seen all the way through ends in being alone.
You are fully known and you have not been left, and those two facts have been true at the same time for four years, because John 4 records exactly that, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it a place you can live rather than a story about somebody else.
Come and see a man who knows all of it. He is not going anywhere.
Declare this over yourself
Say them out loud, in whatever voice tonight has left you. The standing to say them is not something you work up to and it is not on loan from a good stretch: Christ is in you, and the authority in these words belongs to Him and has been given to you in Scripture, made living by the Holy Spirit rather than by how brave you feel. Jesus put the faith required at a mustard seed, which is His way of setting it under the line where anybody would trouble to measure, and then He said the part that carries: speak to the mountain. The mountain here is not the thing itself. It is the prediction. Speak to that. What He does with the rest of it He does in His own way, and the opening of the hand is yours to do tonight.
- Leaving I keep predicting, you are not what happens here, and in the name of Jesus I stop waiting for you. Scripture has a woman run toward the man who told her all things that ever she did, so the knowing and the leaving were never fastened together after all.
- Fear that being seen all the way through ends me alone, you have organized four years of midnights and you are finished doing it. Scripture says He offered her water while He held the whole account, so there is no phase of being slightly busier for you to threaten me with.
- Lord God, You have had every part of this from the first day and You have not moved once, and I am opening my hand to You now with nothing kept at the shallow end. I thank You, because Your Holy Spirit did the drawing and Your word made the knowing safe, and I am received where I am known and not at the end of a distance I keep.
John 4:29
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.
