Her mother says she was like it at four, which is as far back as anybody can check.
Not cold. That is the distinction she has spent her whole life making and mostly failing to communicate. She feels things at full strength. She simply does not do anything with her face while she is feeling them, and she never has, and there is no version of her that ever did.
She cried at her grandmother's funeral in the car afterwards, on her own, for about forty minutes. Inside the church she looked, by her own account, like somebody attending a meeting.
And this has cost her almost nothing in the rest of her life. Her friends know. Her work suits it.
Where it costs her is one room, once a week.
Because in that room, response is visible. People raise their hands. People are moved and you can see that they are moved. Somebody prays and somebody else says something quietly and there is a whole visible language of being affected, and everybody in that room is fluent in it except her.
She stands there feeling things at full strength with her arms by her sides.
And what she has concluded, over about fifteen years, is not that they are performing. She is careful and she does not think that.
She has concluded something worse. She has concluded that she is constitutionally unable to receive whatever it is they are receiving. That there is a channel in a person that opens and shows, and hers does not open, and the not opening and the not receiving are probably the same thing.
And that is you with your arms by your sides, or you would not still be reading.
Who did the distributing, and what He distributed it into
Let me give you the verse that closes the argument in Corinth, and then let me put a second thing beside it that is not about gifts at all.
All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.1 Corinthians 12:11
Individually. That word is doing something specific. He is not apportioning to a category of person and hoping it fits. He is apportioning to each one, singly, deliberately, as He wills.
Which raises a question nobody asks: apportioning into what?
Into a person. A particular person, with a temperament, which they had at four, and which they did not choose.
You were apportioned to individually, by Somebody who knew exactly what He was apportioning into. It is written that the Spirit apportions to each one individually as He wills (1 Corinthians 12:11). The Holy Spirit did not distribute to a woman while overlooking the woman.
And here is the second thing, and it is the one I most want you to have.
For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb.Psalm 139:13
Inward parts. Knitted.
Whatever it is in you that has been like this since you were four, that psalm attributes to God, and it does it in the same book you have been quietly using to conclude that you are the wrong shape for this.
You are not a person who received the wrong equipment, because the equipment and the person were made by the same One. It is written that He formed my inward parts and knitted me together (Psalm 139:13). The Holy Spirit is not obstructed by a temperament God assembled.
Now the room, and I am not going to say a word against it.
Those people are not performing. You said so and you are right and I believe you. Raising your hands when you are moved is an entirely honest thing to do if that is what your body does when you are moved.
The problem is not the room and it is not them and it is not you.
It is that a visible language became, without anybody deciding it, the way a person can tell whether something is happening. And in a room where everybody speaks it, the one person who does not looks to herself like the one person who is not being spoken to.
You are not able to read your own reception off your own face, and neither is anybody else in that room. It is written that man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7), and outward appearance is precisely the instrument you have been using on yourself. The Holy Spirit is at work behind a face that does nothing.
So stand in the window with your arms by your sides and let this be put down.
You are not going to become demonstrative and nobody here is asking you to. If a page told you to raise your hands and see what happens, it would be handing you a technique, and you would do it, and you would feel exactly as you always feel and conclude that the failure had been confirmed.
What goes is the instrument.
For fifteen years you have been reading your own face to find out what you were receiving, and it is the wrong gauge, and it was never going to work, and the fact that it showed nothing is not information.
You were made by the One who apportions, and the apportioning went into the person He made. It is written that all these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as He wills (1 Corinthians 12:11), and individually means He was not working from a category. The Holy Spirit knitted the inward parts He is now at work in.
Open your hands. Empty. Down by your sides is fine too, if that is what your body does.
Nothing will show. That has never once been the same as nothing happening.
Declare this over yourself
Say them with your hands out, in whatever voice you use, which is probably quiet. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and that standing was given to you rather than earned by any visible response. Scripture is the ground under every line and the Holy Spirit is what makes them live in a person. Whatever He does in that room is His, and the outcome is His.
- Temperament I have had since I was four, you are not a limitation and you were never a fault. It is written that He formed my inward parts and knitted me together in my mother's womb. What He gives is not a performance and it is not for other people: it is mine, here, quietly.
- Fifteen years of reading my own face to find out what I was receiving, in the name of Jesus you end at this window. It is written that man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart, and outward appearance is exactly the gauge I was using on myself. The Holy Spirit is at work behind a face that does nothing.
- God, You apportion to each one individually as You will, and individually means You were not working from a category. It is written that the same Spirit empowers all of it, so the apportioning went into the person You made. Nothing will show, and that has never once been the same as nothing happening.
1 Corinthians 12:11
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.
