It is one sentence and she could write it on the back of a receipt.
That is what makes it so odd to carry. It is not a complicated position and it does not need a paper behind it. It is a plain observation, of the kind she has been making her whole working life, about something in the place she serves that is not right and that she is the only one placed to say.
And attached to that sentence, by a chain that is entirely real and that she has checked from both ends, is her position. And attached to her position is a house with four people in it and a mortgage on it and a car that gets her to the hospital twice a week.
She is not dramatic about this. She has read too many books where somebody discovers courage in the last chapter and she does not believe in that version of anything.
What she does is sit at her kitchen table late and try to find something in herself that is equal to it, and find nothing.
That is what she wants said out loud, because nobody says it. There is a great deal of encouragement available about speaking truth and almost none of it addresses the specific experience of looking inside yourself for the resource and finding a completely empty shelf.
She has looked for it eleven or twelve times. It is not there. There is no courage in that kitchen. There is a tired woman of fifty two with a good marriage and a bad knee who would very much like this cup to pass.
And she has concluded, over about eight months, that the emptiness of the shelf is the answer. That if she had it she would feel it, and she does not feel it, and therefore she is not the person for this after all, and the fact that she is the only one placed to say it is simply an unfortunate coincidence.
Two words about when the supply arrives
There is an instruction Jesus gives about speaking under pressure, and the whole thing turns on two words at the end that almost nobody notices.
But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak.Matthew 10:19
In that same hour.
Not in advance. Not the night before. Not stored up over eight months at a kitchen table and then carried into the room.
Read the first half again with that in mind. Take no thought how or what ye shall speak. He is not merely permitting the absence of preparation; He is telling them not to go looking for it, which strongly implies that if they did go looking they would not find anything, because it is not issued yet.
So hear this, at a kitchen table at eleven at night: the shelf is empty because you are not in the hour. That is not my consolation; it is what His word says about when the supply is handed over, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my sentence who takes two small words out of a verse and lifts eight months off a woman who has been auditing her own courage.
Now let me be very plain about the thing this message will not do.
I am not telling you to say it. Not this month, not at the meeting, not at all. There is no line coming where your silence turns into disobedience, and I do not know your household or your position or that room, and anybody who tells a woman with four people at home what to risk, from a page, without knowing her, is not being brave on her behalf, they are being cheap with her family.
Whatever you decide, this message is finished and complete.
What I will take off you is the conclusion you have drawn from the empty shelf.
You have been using the absence of felt courage as evidence about your calling. And it is not evidence about anything, because the resource in question is explicitly described as same hour issue. A person standing outside the hour with nothing in their hands is exactly what the verse predicts, and it says so without alarm and without any suggestion that the person is unfit.
You are not disqualified by having nothing tonight. Scripture puts the giving in the hour and never in the preparation, and the Holy Spirit is not withholding something He said He would hand over at a different time.
And here is the last thing, and it is about the four people in that house.
Counting them is not faithlessness. A woman who weighs what a decision costs her household is doing something that Scripture takes entirely seriously, and the weight of a mortgage and a car and two hospital trips a week is a real weight and God does not require anybody to pretend it is light.
Nothing in this message asks you to be careless with them. What it asks you to put down is the verdict about your own fitness, which was drawn from an empty shelf that was never supposed to have anything on it yet.
The shelf is empty because it is Tuesday.
That is the whole of it. You have been standing in your own kitchen looking for a thing that is issued in a different hour, finding nothing, and concluding something about yourself from an absence that the verse itself predicts.
And there is no instruction here. You may hold that sentence for another year or for the rest of your working life, and there is no version of tonight where that makes you a coward, and a woman who counts four people before she risks a position is doing something honorable and not something faithless.
What is settled tonight is only this: the emptiness is not evidence, and the verdict you drew from it goes in the bin.
You are not going to be left to find the words on your own, whichever way this goes. It is written, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour (Matthew 10:19), and the next verse says it is the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. The Holy Spirit is the One who supplies it in the hour rather than in the rehearsal.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, with your hand where it is. Not one line here is my idea about you. Every one of them stands on His word, and it is the Holy Spirit and never the wording who makes a spoken sentence land in a person. The authority in them was given to you by Christ, who is in you, and it does not run out when you do. Speak to the thing, not about it. And whatever He does with that sentence and that room, He does in His own way and His own time.
- Sentence with my whole household attached to it, you are heavy and I am not pretending you are light. Matthew 10 says it shall be given you in that same hour, so the shelf in my kitchen is empty because it is not the hour and never because I am unfit.
- Verdict I drew from eight months of finding nothing in myself, in the name of Jesus you are put off this porch tonight. A person standing outside the hour with empty hands is exactly what that verse describes, and it describes it without one word of alarm.
- God, You are the One who hands it over in the hour and takes no thought for what I have stored. Your Spirit is not withholding a thing He said He would give at a different time, and I am counting my household honestly and refusing the verdict about myself.
Matthew 10:19
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.
