For the one whose careful work has been sitting in a folder with nowhere to go.
Whose need has your accuracy been sitting beside for six weeks now?
There's a document on your desk with a name written at the top of it in your own hand, and below the name there are four references, each one checked, each one with a page number.
It concerns a benefits appeal. The man it is about is fifty eight, lives two doors down from you, and mentioned in passing six weeks ago that he had been turned down and could not understand the letter they sent him.
You went and found out. That's what you do, and you did it thoroughly, because you spent nine years being the person a congregation asked when something needed verifying properly.
The document has been on the desk for six weeks. It's finished. You've checked it twice since finishing it, which is not a thing a person does to a document they intend to deliver.
Your accuracy has been sitting beside one name for six weeks, and love was always the thing that decides where it goes. The written word names love as the mechanism, and the Spirit has kept one name in front of you since.
Why It Has Not Moved
Work out what's actually stopping it, because it isn't what you've been telling yourself.
You have been saying that it isn't quite ready yet. That's not true and you know it isn't. You have checked it twice and found nothing, and a man who finds nothing twice is holding a finished document.
The real obstacle is that nobody asked you for it. He mentioned a problem in passing, in the street, without requesting anything, and there's no arrangement under which your work is owed to him.
For nine years everything you produced was requested first. Somebody asked, you verified, you delivered, and the request was the thing that made the delivery appropriate. Without a request you have a finished document and no procedure you recognize for handing it over.
That's not timidity. It's a habit of respect, learned in a role where volunteering an opinion nobody had sought would have been presumptuous. The habit was correct for nine years and it is wrong for this envelope.
You have a finished document and no mechanism you recognize for handing it over. The written word supplies love as that mechanism, and the Spirit has kept his name at the top of your page.
Only Use Not Liberty
Here's the verse, and the middle clause is often read as a restriction when it's actually a warning about waste.
For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.Galatians 5:13 (KJV)
Called unto liberty. Then a warning against spending that liberty on yourself. Then the positive instruction, which is to serve one another by love.
The warning sits between two good clauses, and what it warns against is turning freedom inward on itself. A liberty that produces nothing for anybody has become an occasion to the flesh by default, whatever else may be true about the person holding it.
That is a hard sentence and it is worth sitting with rather than hurrying past. Nothing in it requires wickedness. A careful, decent, conscientious man can arrive there simply by waiting, which is exactly what you have been doing for six weeks.
Paul wrote that to believers who had been arguing about requirements and entitlements for a long time, and it carries across to a desk with one document on it.
A liberty that produces nothing for anybody has turned inward by default. The written word warns against exactly that, and the Spirit has put a name in front of you.
Accuracy Is a Gift and It Has a Recipient
Take your own capability seriously, because you've been treating it as a function rather than a gift.
Not many people can do what is on that page. Reading a refusal letter, finding the relevant provisions, checking them properly against a case, and setting the whole thing out so that an ordinary man can act on it is a real and uncommon skill.
Most people, handed that letter, would read it twice and feel worse. That is what your neighbor did for several weeks before he mentioned it in the street, and it is what he has presumably carried on doing for the six weeks since.
You acquired it over years and it was sharpened by nine years of use. It's a gift, in the plain sense of the word, and a gift that sits in a folder is a gift that has been received and not passed on.
The man two doors down cannot do this and will not be able to learn it in the time available to him. What is sitting on your desk is, for him, the difference between understanding his own position and not understanding it at all.
A gift that sits in a folder has been received and never passed on. The written word directs it outward by love, and the Spirit has already chosen where it goes.
I Am Not Telling You to Be Careless
Be clear, because precision is your instinct and I've no intention of talking you out of it.
Your carefulness is the reason that document is worth anything at all. A rough approximation would be worse than nothing to a man making a formal appeal, and the two checks you performed were right.
Nor am I telling you to hand it over and then manage his case for him. Give him the document, explain it once, and leave the decisions entirely with him.
What I want off you is the requirement for a request. Not the rigour. Not the care you've taken.
You Wrote His Name at the Top
Here's the turn, and it's in the first thing you did rather than the last.
Before you found a single reference, you wrote a man's name at the top of a page in your own handwriting. That was the first action, and everything else on the document followed from it.
You didn't write a subject heading. You didn't title it as a note on appeal procedure. You put a person's name at the top, which is what you do when you're working for somebody rather than about something.
That page has been addressed since the first minute. It has a recipient written on it in ink, in your hand, and it has been sitting two doors away from him for six weeks.
The page has had a recipient written on it in your own hand since the first minute. The written word directs the gift by love, and the Spirit had you address it before you began.
Declare this over yourself
You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so what follows is not a claim made out of your own authority. It is agreement, said back to God in His own words, while the Holy Spirit carries it. How He orders the rest of it is His to decide, and He answers in His own way and in His own time.
What follows was settled before you read it. You stand in Christ and He in you, the Spirit carries agreement, and God keeps every decision about the sequel to Himself.
Speak it once and leave it there.
My carefully verified accuracy has been sitting beside one name for six weeks, and love was always the thing that decides where it goes. It is written that I am called to liberty, that I am not to use that liberty for an occasion to the flesh, and that by love I am to serve one another. The Spirit has kept one man's name in front of me for six weeks. I am not waiting to be asked. I wrote his name at the top of that page before I found a single reference, which means it has been addressed to him since the first minute. I walk it two doors down.
Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.
This message is free. Nothing here is locked, nothing is for sale, and nothing is being asked of you.
Galatians 5:13
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.
