For the one who has been confusing the equipment with the gift.
The flight case is under the bench on the left, black, with the corners scuffed through to the metal and a strip of gaffer tape across the lid that's gone hard.
Inside there's a spare mixer, three microphone cables, a roll of tape, and a torch that hasn't had batteries in it since before any of this.
You put it under there four years ago on a Tuesday afternoon, and you have opened it exactly twice since. Both times you closed it again afterwards without taking a single thing out of it.
Eleven years you ran that desk. You knew which channel hissed, which radio mic to distrust on a wet Sunday, and how to get an unamplified voice to reach the back row without anybody noticing you'd done anything.
Since then you've done almost nothing. Not out of bitterness, as far as you can tell. Simply that whatever you were has been in a case under a bench, and you have been waiting for somebody to need it opened.
The gift was never inside that case, and four years of looking at it hasn't made it any more true. The written word says the gift was received by the man, and the Spirit did not leave it in a box.
What Was Actually in the Case
Inventory the case honestly. You have been treating it as containing something it does not contain.
A mixer, three cables, tape, a torch with no batteries. You are looking at equipment. It's worth perhaps two hundred pounds and it could be replaced in an afternoon by anybody with a card.
What made you good at that desk was never in there at all. It was an ear that could hear a problem three seconds before anybody else noticed it. It was a temperament that stayed level while everybody around you panicked, and eleven years of judgment about when to intervene and when to leave something well alone.
Ask anybody who worked with you and that is what they would describe. Not one of them would mention the mixer, and several of them would struggle to tell you what a mixer does.
None of that fits in a flight case. All of it walked out of the building with you on a Tuesday afternoon and has been in your garage ever since, attached to a man rather than stored in a box.
Equipment fits in a case, and none of what made you good at it does. The written word attaches the gift to the person, and the Spirit has kept it with you.
Good Stewards of the Manifold Grace
Here's the verse, and the word steward is the one that will help you most.
As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.1 Peter 4:10 (KJV)
Stewards. A steward manages something on behalf of an owner, and the defining feature of a steward is that the thing remains in use. A steward who stores the estate's assets in a shed for four years has failed at the only part of the job that matters.
Notice also that the gift is described as grace, and grace is manifold, meaning it takes many forms. Your form of it involves hearing a problem early and staying level while other people don't.
Peter wrote that to scattered believers with no equipment and no premises whatever, and it carries across to a man standing in a garage looking at a flight case.
A steward's defining task is keeping the thing in use. The written word makes you a steward rather than a storekeeper, and the Spirit has left the grace in your hands.
Where Else That Ear Works
Be practical, because this stays abstract until somebody names three places.
Your daughter's school has a hall with a portable system that nobody there understands, and two teachers who quietly dread the evening it has to be used. That is one phone call from you and about two hours of an afternoon.
The community center on the corner runs a monthly thing for older people and the microphone howls every single time. Everybody has stopped mentioning it because nobody can fix it.
And there is a young man at your work who is visibly good at this and has nobody at all to learn it from. That is the one of the three that would use the judgment rather than only the ear.
That third one is the one that would cost you something. The other two are afternoons. Teaching somebody takes a year and involves being patient with a person who will get it wrong in front of you, which is the part eleven years actually qualified you for.
An ear like yours works anywhere a room has to hear one voice. The written word sends the gift one to another, and the Spirit has put three of them within a mile of your garage.
I Am Not Telling You It Was Not a Loss
Be honest, because eleven years ended and that is not a small thing to hand over.
It was a loss and it deserves to be named as one. Eleven years of Sundays, of knowing your room, of being the man who could be relied on, and then a Tuesday afternoon and a case under a bench. Grieve it properly if you haven't.
Nor am I telling you that a school hall is the same as what you had. It isn't. It's smaller, and there's no team, and nobody will know your name.
What I want off you is the storage. Not the grief. Not the eleven years.
You Opened It Twice
Here's the turn, and it's in the two times you opened the lid.
Twice in four years you went into the garage and opened that case. You didn't need anything out of it. You have no use at present for a spare mixer, and the torch hasn't worked since before all this started.
You opened it to look. That's a man checking whether something is still there, and a man only checks on something he expects to need.
Both times you closed it again, which you've read as defeat. Read it the other way. Twice in four years something in you went out to a garage to confirm that you're still the man who knows what all of that is for, and both times the answer was yes.
You went out twice to check that you were still that man, and both times you were. The written word keeps the gift with the person, and the Spirit sent you to the garage to find it.
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.
This agrees with God rather than instructing Him. You are in Christ and He in you, the Spirit carries the words, and the answer and its timing remain entirely His.
Say it once and let the room be quiet after.
The gift was never inside that case, and four years of looking at it has not made it any more true. The Word says that as every man hath received the gift he is to minister it one to another, as a good steward of the manifold grace of God, and a steward's whole task is keeping the thing in use. The Spirit has left that grace with me rather than in a box. I am not a storekeeper. Twice in four years I went out to a garage to check whether I was still the man who knows what all of that is for, and both times the answer was yes. I carry one cable into the house.
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.
1 Peter 4:10
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