The woman was holding a casserole dish in both hands on the doorstep and she said no before the sentence was finished.
That is what she keeps going back to. Not the refusal. The speed. There was no decision anywhere in it. The word came out at the same moment the dish came into view, in the friendliest possible voice, with a whole reason attached that she produced in under a second and which was completely true: they had eaten, it was very kind, there was no need at all.
And the woman went away with a casserole, and drove home, and put it in her own fridge.
That was March, in the week her husband was in hospital.
She did not think about it again for three months, and then in June she was at a table with three other people and one of them, who had run a large organization for years, said something in passing about how the hardest thing she had ever learned to do was accept help, and everybody at that table made a noise of recognition, and she made it too.
And on the way home she thought: when did I last say yes?
She went back through it properly, which took most of a week, and the honest answer is that she cannot find one. Not a small one. She has been offered lifts, meals, childcare, a cottage for a weekend, help with the garden, two holidays and an actual sum of money, and she has deflected every single one, kindly, at speed, with a good reason each time.
There is no principle behind it. She has never sat down and decided that she does not accept things. If you asked her whether it is more blessed to give than to receive she would tell you that it is, and then she would tell you the other half of that verse, which almost nobody quotes, which is that receiving is what the giver's blessing is made of.
She teaches that. And she has not taken a casserole in eleven years.
What He said to the man who refused
Let me be clear at the start about what this is and I will hold to it.
There is nothing here for you to do. There is no suggestion coming that you should go and accept something, no practice, no test. If a line of this becomes homework then it has failed and you may drop it. You are being given something and asked for nothing.
Now, there is a moment in the upper room that gets read as being about humility and is really about refusal.
Jesus is washing feet. He gets to Peter, and Peter will not have it. And the objection is not rudeness; it is reverence. Peter is horrified. Thou shalt never wash my feet is a sentence spoken out of respect and out of a completely correct sense of who is in the room.
And this comes back.
Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.John 13:8
Read the weight of that. He does not say: come on, let me. He does not treat it as a small matter of etiquette that can go either way.
He says that a refusal to be served puts a man outside the thing entirely.
Which tells you that receiving is not the soft half of the Christian life. It is load bearing. It is the part that connects a person to Christ, and He said so to a man whose reason for refusing was better than any reason you or I have ever had.
So hear this, standing at a door with somebody's casserole going back into their car: the reflex is not manners and it is not humility. That is not my judgement of you; it is what His word makes of a refusal offered for the best reason available, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my sentence who takes a sharp answer in an upper room and makes it usable by a woman who has spent a week counting.
Now let me be careful here, because there is a way to hear this that would be another weight and I am not going to hand you one.
I am not telling you that you have done something wrong. There is no principle behind your refusing, you said so, and a reflex is not a sin. What you have is a habit that formed over years of being the one who brings the dish, and it moves faster than deciding, and it has been doing that at doorsteps for eleven years without ever going through the part of you that would have said yes.
You are not proud. Scripture puts the sharpest version of this in the mouth of a man refusing out of reverence, and the Holy Spirit is not the one who has been reading your speed at that door as arrogance.
And here is the other half, and it is the one for the woman with the casserole.
Peter's refusal did not only affect Peter. There was a person in front of him holding a bowl and a towel who had come to do something, and the refusal was aimed at Him.
The woman on your doorstep in March had made something in her own kitchen and driven it to your house in the week your husband was in hospital, and she went home with it. Nothing about your no was unkind, and she would tell you honestly that she did not mind. But there was something she had come to do, and she did not get to do it, and that is a real thing that happened to her as well as to you.
You are meant to be on the receiving side and it is not the lesser side. His word makes being washed the condition of having part with Him, and the Holy Spirit is not asking you to become somebody who takes things easily by Thursday, only to know that the door swings both ways and always did.
The door swings both ways.
That is the whole thing, and it is not a rebuke and there is nothing for you to go and prove. A refusal offered for the best reason in the world got the sharpest answer in the upper room, and the answer was not about manners at all: if I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.
Receiving is load bearing. It is what connects a person to Christ, and it is what the giver's blessing is actually made of, and you teach that and it is true and it applies to a doorstep in March.
You are not proud, and the reflex is not a sin, and it moves faster than you do. It formed over eleven years of being the one who brings the dish, and it has never once passed through the part of you that would have said yes.
Nothing is asked of you here. No test, no next casserole, nobody to ring back. That was the promise and it holds to the last line. You are being told that the receiving side is not the lesser side and never was.
You are on the receiving side of something, and refusing it has never been the humbler option. It is written that Peter said to him, you shall never wash my feet, and Jesus answered, if I do not wash you, you have no share with me (John 13:8). The Holy Spirit is the One who makes that exchange land on somebody who has not said yes in years.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in whatever voice you have got. 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 the people, and never against them. And whatever He does in the year ahead, He does in His own way and His own time.
- Reflex that turns down every offer before I have heard the end of it, you are not manners. John 13 gives the sharpest answer in the upper room to a man refusing out of reverence, and the answer was if I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.
- Idea that the receiving side is the lesser side, in the name of Jesus you are put out of this house. Being washed is named as the condition of having part with Him, so receiving is load bearing and it is what a giver's blessing is made of.
- God, You are the One who knelt down with a bowl and would not be waved off. Your Spirit is not asking me to become somebody who takes things easily by Thursday, and I am holding my hands open tonight and the door swings both ways.
John 13:8
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.
