Borrowing What Was Deeded To Me

Tom Rickett has owned the home place for nine years and he still walks around the north gate.

The lane goes straight through it. It has gone straight through it since before Tom was born. But that gate opens onto the piece that used to be his uncle Rowe's, and Rowe hung it, and Rowe was particular about it, and for most of Tom's life you did not go through that gate without asking. So Tom goes around. Four hundred extra yards, twice a day, for nine years.

It is not the only one. He uses the little tractor and leaves the good one under the shed, because the good one was his father's. He has never once cut a tree on the back forty. He parks beside the shop instead of in front of it. When somebody asks him whose ground this is he says, without thinking about it, that he looks after it.

Tom's father deeded him that place before he died. Filed at the courthouse, signed, witnessed, done. There is not one clause in it about asking anybody anything.

But a deed is a piece of paper, and a habit is a road worn into a field, and the road is what a man's boots follow at first light when he is not thinking.

This past Saturday his boy Grady walked out with him before the sun was properly up, mist lifting off the grass, and when Tom started his turn toward the long way around, Grady stopped and said, "Dad, why do we always go around?"

Tom said, "That's Rowe's gate."

And Grady said, "It hasn't been for nine years."

And they stood there in the wet grass and laughed until Tom had to take his cap off and wipe his eyes, because his own son had just told him whose ground he was standing on. Then Grady swung the gate wide and they walked straight through it, out into the light coming up over the east end.

You do this too.

There is something in the terms of this covenant with your name on it, and you have been going the long way around it since before you can remember. You ask permission for it. You use the little tractor. You describe yourself as somebody who looks after a thing that was signed over to you.

And it is not false modesty. Modesty would be a decision. This is a road worn into a field, and your boots follow it at first light without consulting you.

Come on down to the gate. It swings.

What the paper actually says

Start with the line David wrote, because it is a surveyor's sentence and most people read it as a mood.

The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.Psalm 16:6

Lines, in that verse, are boundary lines. A surveyor's chain. He is talking about where his ground begins and ends, and he says two things about it: somebody else set those lines, and what fell inside them is good.

So take that as a description of where your boots already are. You are standing inside lines that somebody else laid out, and Psalm 16:6 is the sentence that says so, and the Holy Spirit is not asking you to feel worthy of the survey before He walks the fence with you.

Tom was not lying when he said he looked after the place. He does look after it. What he had was an accurate description of his work and an inaccurate description of his standing, and a man can live his whole life inside that gap without anybody noticing.

What is named as yours

Now, this is the part where somebody usually starts promising you things nobody promised. So we will stay exactly where the writing is and name only what is named.

The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.Romans 8:16-17

Read the order there. Child first, heir second, and the second follows from the first as plainly as a fence follows a survey line. If children, then heirs. Not if useful. Not if consistent. Not if you finally quit going around the gate.

And notice who does the witnessing in that verse. It is not your confidence. It is the Spirit Himself, and He is the One doing it right now, so hear this as an heir hears it: you are a child of this house, and therefore heir, and Romans 8:17 is where that is written down in plain daylight.

There is another one, and it is worded like a will.

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you.John 14:27

I leave with you. That is a testamentary sentence. He is naming a specific thing and naming who gets it, and He distinguishes it from every other kind of giving there is. His peace is not a mood that visits the deserving. It is a named item in the terms with a recipient on it.

So take hold of the item and not the feeling around it. You have His own peace named to you in John 14:27, in His own words, and the Spirit is the One who makes a written bequest into something a man actually walks around in.

Which half is settled, and which half is yours

Say it plainly, because a man who is fuzzy here will keep taking the long way. The deeding is settled. He made you a child, He made you an heir, He named the peace and He named the recipient, and none of that waits on your nerve or your good week.

The walking is yours. That is real, that is asked, and nobody is going to do it for you.

As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him.Colossians 2:6

Received, then walk. The receiving is finished; the walking is this morning. And the walking does not make the ground yours any more than Grady swinging that gate made the courthouse file say something different. The walking is simply what a man does on ground that is his, and a deed nobody ever walks on is a real deed and a wasted field.