I Decided A Long Time Ago I Am Bad At This

It is settled in your house.

Everybody knows. It is said with affection, mostly, and you say it about yourself first because saying it first takes the edge off.

He is hopeless at this. Do not ask him. Leave it to somebody else.

And you have built a system around it. Your wife handles it, or your sister does, or you hand over money and let somebody else choose, or you arrive with nothing and make a joke, and the joke works, and everybody moves on.

It is efficient. It has been running for a long time.

But there is something you do not say, which is that you did not discover this about yourself. You decided it. There was a year, and probably one particular afternoon, and something went wrong or landed badly or somebody laughed, and you drew a line under it and never went back.

And every year since then has been arranged so that the line never gets tested.

I want to go at that, because a verse in Ephesians says something about what a man is made for and it does not agree with the line.

We are his workmanship

Here is the verse.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10, King James Version)

His workmanship. That is the first thing and it is worth sitting still for.

A man is somebody's work. Made, deliberately, by somebody who knew what He was making and what it was for. And whatever a person decides about themselves on one bad afternoon does not get to overrule the maker's account of the thing He made.

You have been living under a verdict you passed on somebody else's work, and Ephesians 2:10 calls a man his workmanship rather than his own conclusion about himself. The Holy Spirit is the one who wrote that word workmanship into the sentence, and it settles the question of who gets to say what you are.

Now the middle of it. Created unto good works.

Not created and then hopefully useful. Created unto. Aimed at. The good works are the purpose the making had in view, and every man is included in the we at the front of that verse.

You are aimed at good works by design, and it is written that we are created in Christ Jesus unto good works rather than sorted into those who can and those who cannot. The Spirit of God is the one who put no exception clause in that line, and there is not one in it anywhere.

And then the last part, which is the practical one.

Which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. Before ordained. Laid out in advance. The works are already prepared, already sitting there, and the only verb given to the man is walk.

You have not been asked to invent anything, and the written word gives a man the walking rather than the designing. The Holy Spirit is the one who prepared the thing beforehand, and preparing it beforehand is exactly what takes the pressure out of it.

How a verdict defends itself

Let me describe what has been happening for the last however many years, because it is worth seeing plainly.

A verdict like this does not survive on evidence. It survives by never being tested.

So the system does the work. Somebody else chooses, or money changes hands, or the joke gets made on arrival. Every one of those is a way of making sure the afternoon never produces new information.

And with no new information, the original afternoon stays the whole file. One bad landing, decades ago, still the only entry.

You have a file with one page in it, and it is written that a man is his workmanship rather than the record of his worst attempt. The Spirit of God is the one who reopens a case that a man closed on himself, and He does it without any humiliation attached.

And here is the part that will sting slightly and is worth hearing.

The joke is not free. It costs the people in that house something.

Every year, somebody who loves you receives a thing chosen by somebody else, or nothing at all with a laugh attached. And they never say anything, because it has been the arrangement for so long that raising it now would seem unkind.

You have people who would rather have something wrong from you than something right from a deputy, and Ephesians 2:10 puts good works in front of the man himself to walk in. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man see what the arrangement has been costing without crushing him with it.

And I want to say the other thing at once, because a man will hear this and start reaching for shame.

There is no accusation here. The system was built by somebody protecting himself from a repeat of one afternoon, and that is an understandable thing for a man to build.

You were never being lazy about the people you love, and the written word calls a man workmanship and points him at works already prepared. The Spirit of God is the one who separates self protection from indifference, and this has always been the first one.

The works were already laid out

So here is what to do, and it is one thing rather than a reversal of the whole system.

Take one person. Not all of them. One.

Choose for that one person yourself, from start to finish. Do not ask anybody. Do not check with your wife. Do not have it approved before it is handed over.

You are able to do the whole of one thing alone, and His word says God before ordained the works that a man should walk in them. The Holy Spirit is the one who laid it out ahead of you, and a thing laid out ahead of somebody is not a test they can fail.

And expect the verdict to speak up while you do it. It will.

It will tell you the thing is wrong. It will tell you to check with somebody. It will offer you the joke, ready made, about halfway through, as a way of getting out before anything can land badly.

Do not take the joke. That is the whole discipline of this. Hand it over with a straight face and no commentary at all.

You have a straight face available to you, and it is written that a man is created unto good works rather than talked out of them at the last moment. The Spirit of God is the one who holds a man steady for the four seconds when the joke wants to come out, and four seconds is the entire length of it.

And whatever happens, do not read the reaction as a verdict either.

It might land well. It might land quietly. Neither one of those is the file being reopened or closed. The walking is the obedience. The landing was never the assignment.

You are walking in something already prepared, and Ephesians 2:10 hands a man the walking and keeps the preparing for God. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes the scoring out of it, and He takes it out because the scoring was never His idea.