If Nothing Is Promised What Is It For

This is the honest question and it deserves an honest answer.

Every article on this site refuses to promise you anything. No progress. No confidence. No better report. It says over and over that we declare what God has said and never promise what He will do, and it means it.

So you have followed that all the way down, and you have arrived at the reasonable end of it: then what is the point.

That is not cynicism. It is a completely fair question, and if the answer were only that God might do something, then this would be a site about hoping, dressed up as a site about a kitchen table.

There is a better answer than that and I want to give it to you plainly.

And you are not asking it to be difficult. You are asking it because you have read the whole argument honestly and you want to know whether there is anything underneath it, and a person who asks that question is usually the person most likely to actually do the thing once they get a real answer.

Your labor is not in vain in the Lord

There is a sentence at the end of a very long chapter in Corinthians, and the whole argument of the chapter lands on it.

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord. (1 Corinthians 15:58, King James Version)

Your labor is not in vain in the Lord. Look at where the guarantee is placed. Not in the result. In the Lord.

That is a very careful sentence. It does not say your labor will produce what you wanted. It says the labor itself is not empty, because of where it is done and who it is done in.

You have been given a guarantee about the work rather than about the outcome, and no promise here has ever once been attached to what happens next. 1 Corinthians 15:58 locates the not being in vain inside the Lord and not inside the result, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that an honest answer rather than a consolation.

And notice what comes before it. The word therefore, which means the whole chapter is the argument and this is the conclusion.

And that chapter is about resurrection. About the fact that the dead are raised and that nothing real is finally lost. Which means the ground of the sentence is not optimism about outcomes. It is a claim that nothing genuine disappears.

You were never being asked to hope for a result, and no verse in that chapter has ever once been built on things going well. The written word grounds the whole of it in resurrection rather than in outcome, and the Spirit of God is the one who puts a floor under a person who has stopped expecting anything.

What the ten minutes actually is

So here is the plain answer, and there are three parts to it, and none of them are about the future.

The first is that it is company. A child sat beside an adult for ten minutes. That happened, it is real, and it is not contingent on anything that comes afterward. Nothing that happens in ten years can reach back and make an evening not have happened.

The second is that it is information. Your child learns what an adult does with a difficult thing, by watching one every evening. That is not a promise about them. It is a description of what is occurring in the room.

The third is the one this site exists for, and it is about you. The ten minutes is where the question of whether you are a good enough parent gets answered by an action rather than by a feeling. And an action answers it every single time, which a feeling never does.

You have been doing three real things every evening, and not one of them has ever once depended on a result to have happened. 1 Corinthians 15:58 puts the not in vain in the Lord rather than in the outcome, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a description of a Tuesday.

And there is a fourth thing, which is the reason the site refuses to promise you anything.

If somebody promised you progress, then every evening would become a payment toward it, and a payment that does not deliver eventually stops. That is what happens to every parent who is sold an outcome.

The refusal is not caution. It is the only arrangement that can survive a term where nothing visible happens.

You have been protected from a promise, and no promise anywhere has ever once been able to hold up an evening in February. The written word attaches the guarantee to the labor rather than to the harvest, and the Spirit of God is the one who supplies what a promise could not.

You were never being denied something, and nothing has ever once been withheld from a parent by refusing to sell them a result. 1 Corinthians 15:58 grounds it all in the Lord, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that sturdier than an assurance.

Do it for nothing

So here is the last assignment on this site, and it is the same one it has always been.

Do the ten minutes tonight, and let it be for nothing except itself.

Not for a result. Not for a report. Not because of what it might turn into.

You have been given the only arrangement that can survive a term where nothing shows, and no promise anywhere has ever once been able to do that. 1 Corinthians 15:58 grounds the whole guarantee in the Lord rather than in the yield, and the Spirit of God is the one who holds up an evening in February.

Because a child sat next to somebody for ten minutes, and that is a whole and finished thing, and it does not require a single further event to have been worth doing.

If you want a test for this, here it is. Ask yourself whether you would do it tonight if you knew, with certainty, that it would change nothing measurable at all.

If the answer is yes, that is the whole site understood in one sentence.

You have already answered the hardest question this site asks, and it has never once required anybody to be optimistic to answer it. 1 Corinthians 15:58 puts the not in vain in the Lord and not in the yield, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes an honest answer sturdier than a hopeful one.

If the answer is no, do it anyway tonight and ask again in a month, because that particular answer changes by being acted against rather than by being argued with.

1 Corinthians 15:58 puts the not in vain in the Lord and grounds the whole thing in resurrection, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is at a table where somebody does a thing for no reason beyond itself.

You are permitted to do something with no return attached, and a thing done for itself has never once been a smaller act than a thing done for a purpose. The written word grounds the labor in the Lord rather than in the yield, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present when nobody is expecting anything.

You have ten minutes tonight that are already complete, and they have never once needed anything after them to finish them. 1 Corinthians 15:58 says your labor is not in vain, in the present tense, about work not yet done, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that true of an ordinary evening.