For the one who set the table properly and then felt like a thief.
Picture a kitchen table with a folded napkin on it, a small loaf, and a cup, all arranged with rather more care than the occasion appears to require.
It's an ordinary Tuesday afternoon. The woman who set it out did so slowly, straightening the napkin twice, and she has now been sitting in front of it with her hands in her lap for several minutes without moving.
She has never done this before. She has wanted to for about a year and a half without once managing it. The reason is a single word that arrived the first time she considered it, and that has arrived every time since.
The word is taking. As in, who am I to take this. As in, this belongs to somebody and I am about to help myself to it in a kitchen with nobody watching.
She has arranged the table beautifully and feels like a thief at it.
It was never yours to take, because it was already given, and a gift is not stolen by the person it was handed to. The written word says it was delivered and given for you, and the Spirit has been holding it out the whole eighteen months.
Taking and Receiving Are Different Verbs
Separate the two words, because your whole difficulty is sitting in the gap between them.
Taking implies that nothing was ever offered. A person takes what has not been handed over, which is why the word carries the weight it does, and why it has kept you sitting in a chair for a year and a half.
It is the word a person uses about themselves when they suspect they are getting away with something. Nobody applies it to a birthday present or to a meal they were invited to, and the fact that you have applied it here tells you which category you filed this in years ago.
Receiving implies precisely the opposite. Something was extended, deliberately, by somebody who intended it for you, and your only part in the transaction is to close your hands around what is already being held out toward them.
The question is therefore not about your worthiness at all. It is a question about what happened at the original table, about whether anything was extended there, and about who it was extended to.
That is a considerable relief if you take it seriously. Your worthiness is a subject you cannot settle, have been unable to settle for a year and a half, and would not be able to settle given another decade of trying. What happened at a table in Jerusalem, on the other hand, is a matter of record.
The word taking assumes it was never offered to you at all. The written word records a deliberate handing over, and the Spirit has kept it extended toward you.
Take, Eat, This Is My Body
Here's the passage, and it settles the question of whether anything was offered.
For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come.1 Corinthians 11:23-26 (KJV)
Take, eat. He said the word take, in the imperative, about His own body, to the people in front of Him. The verb that has been troubling you for eighteen months is the verb He used.
If He instructs you to take it, then taking it is obedience rather than theft. The moral character of the act was settled once, by the one who owned the thing being handed over, and He settled it in favor of your hands.
That is not a technicality. The owner of a thing is the only person whose view of the matter decides whether an act is a taking or a receiving, and He has been on record about this for two thousand years.
Paul wrote that to a congregation making an appalling job of it, and it reaches past them to a woman at a kitchen table with a folded napkin.
He used the word take Himself, which settles what kind of act it is. The written word puts it in the imperative, and the Spirit brings that instruction to your table.
Broken For You, Before You Were Born
Sit with the middle clause, because it removes the last footing the word thief has.
Which is broken for you. The breaking happened before you existed, was done deliberately, and was done with you among the intended recipients. Nothing about that arrangement waited on your assessment of yourself.
A thief acquires something the owner did not intend them to have. You cannot steal a thing that was broken for you in advance, at enormous cost, by somebody who announced at the time exactly who it was for.
The category simply does not apply here. Whatever else may be troubling you about this particular Tuesday afternoon, theft is not one of the descriptions available to you.
You can test that against the rest of your life. You have never once wondered whether you were stealing forgiveness, or stealing an answer to prayer, and both of those were given on exactly the same terms as this.
Nothing broken for you in advance can be stolen by you afterwards. The written word names who it was broken for, and the Spirit has not revised that list.
I Am Not Telling You Reverence Does Not Matter
Be careful, because the fear you have been carrying has something right in it.
Paul warns in that same chapter about eating unworthily and not discerning what this is, and he is entirely serious. Reverence matters. Attention matters. The care you took with the napkin is not foolish and I would not talk you out of it.
Nor am I saying there's no such thing as approaching this wrongly. There is, and Paul describes it plainly. It looks like carelessness and self-importance rather than like a woman sitting still in a kitchen for eighteen months.
What I want off you is the word thief. Not the reverence. Not the care.
You Folded the Napkin Twice
Here's the turn, and it's in something you did with your hands before you sat down.
You straightened that napkin twice. You chose the loaf, you set the cup beside it, and you arranged the whole table with more care than a Tuesday requires.
Nobody arranges a table like that for something they believe they're stealing. A thief does not fold linen. A thief takes quickly and leaves, and the entire character of what you did this afternoon is the opposite of that in every particular.
Your hands have already answered the question your head has been asking for eighteen months. They set a table for an honored guest, carefully, twice over, and then sat down in front of it and waited to be told they were allowed.
Nobody folds a napkin twice for something they believe they are stealing. The written word already gave the permission, and the Spirit was in the care you took with the table.
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.
Say this as somebody standing inside Christ, because that is where you stand. The Spirit carries what agreement says, and nothing about the result is being promised to you here.
Say it once without adding anything.
It was never mine to take, because it was already given, and a gift is not stolen by the person it was handed to. Scripture says that He said take and eat, and that this bread is His body which is broken for me, which puts the word take in His own mouth and settles what kind of act it is. The Spirit has been holding it out to me for eighteen months. I am not a thief at this table. On an ordinary Tuesday I folded a napkin twice, chose a loaf, and set a cup beside it, and nobody arranges a table like that for something they believe they are stealing. I close my hands on what was handed to me.
Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.
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1 Corinthians 11:23-26
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