A Message Came And I Do Not Know If It Is Real

It arrived this morning and you have read it four times.

It might be real. That is the honest position and it is why you are still holding it. It has the right sort of words in it. It mentions something you actually have. And it is asking you to do something fairly soon, and there is a consequence attached if you do not.

So you have been carrying it around all day. You did not want to ask anybody, because if it turns out to be obvious you will feel foolish, and if it turns out to be real and you ignored it there will be a mess.

Here is what I am not going to do. I am not going to give you a list of things to check.

You have probably seen one of those. Look at the address it came from, look for spelling mistakes, hover over the link. And the trouble with all of it is that it asks you to become an expert at spotting fakes, and the fakes get better every year, and the honest position is that plenty of them now look completely correct.

Worse than that, a list turns every message into an examination. People who follow the advice properly end up unable to open anything without a small dread, and that is not safety. That is a smaller life.

There is one rule instead, and it is not about spotting anything.

He that hasteth with his feet sinneth

There is a short line in Proverbs about speed, and it is doing exactly the work you need done.

Also, that the soul be without knowledge, it is not good; and he that hasteth with his feet sinneth. (Proverbs 19:2, King James Version)

He that hasteth with his feet sinneth.

The first half names something you already know: acting without understanding is not good. But it is the second half that goes to the center of this, because it names the mechanism rather than the mistake.

Hasteth with his feet. Moving fast. Getting there before the mind has arrived.

That is not a warning about being careless. It is about speed itself being the danger, independent of how careful a person is. A wise person moving fast makes the same error as a foolish one, because the wisdom does not get a chance to be applied.

And that is exactly what every one of these messages is engineered to do. Not to fool you into a wrong opinion. To get your feet moving before your mind arrives. The urgency is not decoration on the trick. The urgency is the trick.

You are protected by refusing the speed rather than by being clever, and it has never once depended on you outsmarting anybody. Proverbs 19:2 names hastening with the feet as the failure rather than lack of intelligence, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a place a person can stand rather than a thing to be anxious about.

One rule, and it does not require you to judge

So here is the rule, and it is the only one in this article.

You never act on a message in the same hour it arrives.

That is the whole thing. Not: work out whether it is genuine. Not: check anything. Just do not act today, in the hour it came.

Look at what that does. If it is a fake, waiting destroys it. Every one of these things depends on a short window, and a message that can wait until tomorrow morning has already lost. You do not have to detect it. You outlast it.

And if it is real, waiting costs you almost nothing. Genuine organizations do not lose your account because you called back tomorrow. Anything that truly cannot survive an hour of your thinking is either not genuine, or is a thing you can sort out tomorrow with an apology.

That is why it is one rule and not a list. It works whether or not you can tell the difference, which means you never have to become an expert, and you do not have to be suspicious of anything. You just do not move fast.

You are able to wait, and waiting has never once required you to know whether the thing was genuine. Proverbs 19:2 puts the danger in the hurrying rather than in the judgment, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a person put a thing down until tomorrow.

Decide it now, before the next one

So here is the assignment, and it happens tonight rather than when the next message comes.

Decide now that you will never act on a message the same hour it arrives.

Decide it in advance, while nothing is happening and nobody is pushing you. That is the entire point. A rule you make in the calm is a rule you have; a rule you try to remember in the moment is a rule you are negotiating with while somebody applies pressure.

Say it out loud if it helps. Tell one person you have decided it, and then you have said it to somebody and it is a thing you do rather than a thing you meant to do.

And for the one you are holding right now: put it down until tomorrow. If it is genuine, it will be just as genuine at nine in the morning, and you can ring the organization on a number you found yourself rather than one the message gave you.

Proverbs 19:2 warns about the feet moving ahead of the mind, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in the decision to wait.

You are able to decide this while nothing is happening, and it has never once needed to be worked out under pressure. Proverbs 19:2 says he that hasteth with his feet sinneth, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with somebody putting a phone face down for the night.