You sat in the driveway for ten minutes tonight with the engine off and a book on the passenger seat.
Nobody knows you do that. The porch light is on and somebody inside has probably heard the car, and there is a small window where nothing is expected of you yet, and you use it.
And you have started feeling furtive about it. Because the moment that door opens, four things need you, and every one of them is legitimate, and there is nothing wrong with any of them. So the ten minutes in the car has started to look like avoidance rather than a pause, and looking at it that way has taken most of the good out of it.
Before anything else, one thing, because a man can arrive at a page about reading from anywhere. If what is happening in your house or in your own head has got heavier than a hard season, if you have been thinking about not being here at all, put this down and call or text 988 in the United States, or your own local crisis line wherever you are, today. This page cannot see you and is not qualified to. That call is.
Two things are also not coming here.
Nobody is handing you a list, and nobody is saying one word about your phone. You know about the phone. Everybody knows.
What I want to look at is the driveway, because you have been treating it as a place you should not be.
It is a legitimate place. Scripture has people pouring out what they are carrying in whatever spot they happen to be standing in, and never once in a designated room.
Pour out your heart before him
There is an instruction in Psalm 62 that is addressed to a group of people and it is very plain about where and when.
Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him: God is a refuge for us. Selah. (Psalm 62:8, King James Version)
Read the three parts of it, because they fit together.
Trust in him at all times. Then, pour out your heart before him. Then, God is a refuge for us.
Notice what is absent. There is no location. No room, no altar, no appointed hour. Pour out your heart before him, and the pouring is the act and the place is wherever the person is when they do it.
And then the third clause names what He is: a refuge. Which is not a feeling, it is a place, and the psalm has already declined to specify a geographical one, which means the refuge is a person rather than a room.
You have a refuge that is a person and not a room, and ten minutes in a driveway has never once been the wrong place to be with God. Psalm 62:8 gives the pouring out with no location attached and then names Him as the refuge, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying that over a car with the engine off.
There is one more word at the end and it is worth having.
Selah. Whatever else it means, it marks a pause. A deliberate one, written into the text, at the end of an instruction about pouring out and refuge. The psalm stops for a second on purpose.
You are allowed a pause that is written into the text, and a stop before you go in has never once been a thing to feel furtive about. It is written God is a refuge for us. Selah, the pause is in the psalm itself and nobody apologizes for it, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly here.
A pause and an avoidance are different things
Here is the mechanism, and it is worth being precise because the difference is real.
Avoidance postpones something and makes it worse. That is the test.
A man who sits in the car for two hours while his family eats without him is avoiding, and the situation degrades while he does it. That is a real thing and it deserves the word.
Ten minutes with the engine off is not that. Nothing degrades. Nobody eats without you. The four things that need you at the door will need you in exactly the same way in ten minutes, and you will meet them with slightly more in the tank than you would have had at nought minutes.
That is not avoidance. It is a decompression, and it costs the house nothing, and the house is measurably better off for it.
You are pausing rather than avoiding, and ten minutes in a driveway has never once cost the people inside anything. Psalm 62:8 hands the pouring out no location at all and calls Him the refuge, and the Holy Spirit is present with a man sitting in his own car under a porch light.
And there is a second layer, and it is the one that made you furtive.
Nobody in the house knows about the ten minutes, and secrecy makes an innocent thing feel guilty. Not because it is wrong, but because hidden and wrong live very close together in a person's head, and after a few weeks the hiding starts supplying the guilt.
The fix for that is not to stop. It is to stop hiding it.
You have permission to say out loud that you sit in the car for ten minutes, and a thing done in the open has never once needed to feel furtive. The written word tells a whole people to pour out their hearts wherever they are and writes a pause into the psalm, and His Spirit is the one who takes the hiding out of an innocent thing.
Fifteen minutes at a useful time
So here is the assignment, and it has two parts and the second one is harder.
Read for fifteen minutes today at a time you would normally be doing something useful.
Not in the car. In the house, in the middle of things, in a slot that had a job in it. Fifteen minutes, in the open, where people can see you doing it.
Then stop.
Here is why in the house and not in the driveway.
All of your reading currently happens in a hidden ten minutes, which is what has made it feel like something taken. Doing it visibly, inside, once, in the middle of the evening, is what moves it from something smuggled to something ordinary.
And say the sentence, at some point, to whoever is in the house. That you sit in the car for ten minutes before you come in. That is the harder half and it does more than the fifteen minutes will.
You are able to read in the open in your own house, and fifteen minutes where people can see has never once been a thing to apologize for. Psalm 62:8 says pour out your heart before him with no room specified anywhere, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a man reading in a full house with the door open.
Keep the ten minutes in the car. Nobody is asking you to give those up, and after you have said it out loud they will stop tasting the way they taste now.
You have a refuge who is a person and a pause that is written into the psalm, and a driveway has never once been outside the place where God meets a man. It is written trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him, the instruction goes to everybody and names no location at all, and the Spirit of God is saying it in a driveway tonight.
So here is what I believe is going out over a man in a driveway with the engine off.
You are pausing and not hiding, and ten minutes before the door has never once been taken from the people on the other side of it. Nobody here is handing you a list, nobody here is mentioning your phone, and nobody here is calling reading a technique for a hard season. Psalm 62:8 tells a whole people to pour out their hearts before Him and specifies no room, no altar and no hour, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my saying so who takes the furtiveness out of an innocent ten minutes.
And this, which is the word I came with:
You are free of a guilt that came from hiding rather than from wrong, and a pause has never once been the same act as an avoidance. It is written God is a refuge for us. Selah, the refuge is a person rather than a place and the pause is written into the psalm itself, and the Spirit of God is saying it in a driveway tonight.
Fifteen minutes. In the open. And say it out loud.
Declare this over yourself
Say them out loud in the car with the engine off, or standing in the hall with the book in your hand. Not because saying them makes anything move: the moving belongs to God, and He was being a refuge to people in whatever spot they were standing in long before anybody had a driveway. You say them because you belong to Christ and Christ is in you, and Scripture gives His people a mouth to agree with what He has already settled. What the evenings turn into, and when, is His to work out in His own way and on His own clock, and I put no timetable on Him.
- Ten minutes with the engine off, you are a pause and you were never a hiding place. Psalm 62:8 says pour out your heart before him, so by the Holy Spirit I read fifteen minutes today in the name of Jesus inside the house where people can see me.
- Guilt that came out of secrecy, go. The written word tells a whole people to pour out their hearts with no room and no hour specified and writes a pause into the psalm itself, and by the Holy Spirit I am done calling a decompression a bad habit.
- Father, You are named as the refuge and You never once named a room to be found in. Your word says God is a refuge for us, so by Your Spirit I read fifteen minutes in the open tonight and I say the sentence out loud.
Psalm 62:8
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