For the woman with one unfinished chorus folded under the winter scarves and no intention of unfolding it.
It's a single sheet, folded twice, the second fold done in a hurry so the edges don't meet. Blue ink for the words and pencil for the chords, because the pencil was what came to hand and you meant to write them in properly later.
The drawer it lives in holds winter scarves, a torch with no batteries, and a card from somebody's wedding. You open that drawer perhaps four times a year, in October and in March. Both times you see the corner of the sheet. Both times you leave it exactly where it is.
Six lines and a chorus that doesn't resolve. You know this without looking, because you wrote it on a Thursday evening and you stopped in the middle of the seventh line, and you can still hear where it was going.
A page you can still hear in your head is not a page you have finished with, whatever the drawer suggests. Scripture says the gift of God stays in a person and needs stirring rather than replacing, and the Holy Spirit has kept this alive in you across every year you called it over.
What the Conversation Actually Took
You remember the shape of it more than the words, which is normal and doesn't mean you've exaggerated it.
Somebody asked what you were working on. You said you'd been writing a bit. They asked, kindly enough, whether you were going to do anything with it, and there wasn't a good answer because you hadn't been writing it to do anything with it. Then the conversation moved on and you sat there with a question that hadn't existed ten seconds earlier.
That is what got taken. Not your ability, which nobody assessed, and not the music, which nobody heard. What got taken was permission to make something for no reason, and once a piece of work has to justify itself, a half-finished chorus in blue ink has nothing to say in its own defense.
You didn't lose your gift, you lost the right to use it without a purpose attached. The written Word calls the gift God's own rather than a project needing a business case, and the Holy Spirit is at work in what a person makes at a desk with nobody watching.
Notice that you never argued with the question either. You simply stopped writing in the middle of a line, folded the page, and put it somewhere warm.
What You Do Not Have to Do First
Here's the price of unfolding that sheet, and it's worth reading the whole list, because you've been assuming a much steeper one.
Who asked is not something you have to establish. What they meant is not something you have to rule on. You don't have to talk to them, be at peace about them, or wait for the day they understand what one reasonable question did to nine years of Thursday evenings.
Forgiveness belongs somewhere in this, and God knows the hour of it better than you do. It is not standing between you and a chord written in pencil. Nobody needs settling with before you look at your own handwriting.
You are free to take this up today without settling anything at all with the person who set it down. Scripture makes your gift a matter between you and God rather than a matter of what somebody asked in a kitchen, while the Holy Spirit waits on no conversation that may never happen.
That is the door, and nobody else has ever held the handle. It is a drawer with scarves in it.
The Chorus Does Not Have to Go Anywhere
There is a second weight on that sheet and it is not the conversation. It is what you think the music would now have to become.
Nine years have gone by, so a return cannot simply be a return. In your head it would have to be serious. It would have to be finished, recorded, put in front of somebody, and the whole of it would need a reason that stands up if anybody asks the question again.
Look at what that does. It makes picking up a pencil into a commitment to a career, which is an enormous weight to put on six lines and a chorus. No wonder the drawer stays shut.
You are free to finish this for no reason at all, and no reason is a complete reason. The written Word puts what God gives into your hands rather than into a plan, and the Holy Spirit is present at a desk on a Thursday whether or not anything ever comes of it.
The chorus could resolve this week and go straight back under the scarves. That would be a whole, finished act of obedience. Nothing more is owed by anybody.
The Gift Which Is in Thee
There's an instruction Paul writes to Timothy that assumes one thing most of us stopped assuming years ago.
> Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands. > 2 Timothy 1:6 (KJV)
Stir up carries the sense of fanning a fire back up into flame. You can only fan what's still there. Paul doesn't tell Timothy to request a replacement, explain the gap, or account for wherever the fire went.
Then read the tense in the middle. The gift which is IN you, stated in the present. Not was, not could be again, not if you can get it back. Whatever had gone quiet in Timothy had gone quiet while remaining in him, which is exactly the situation in a drawer full of scarves.
You have it now, in the present tense, and a folded page never changed the tense. The written Word calls it the gift which is in you, and the Holy Spirit is the fire that comes back up when the ash is moved aside.
Present tense is the whole argument. Not was in you, and not could be again.
A drawer is a location, and the verse is not making a claim about locations.
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.
Said by a woman already welcomed, from a standing no effort of hers built. What becomes of the page, and when, is God's.
What He gave me is in me now, not behind me, and no drawer changed the tense of it. The written Word of God tells me to stir up the gift of God which is in me, which assumes a fire still under the ash. Nine years of scarves never once reached what He put there. The Holy Spirit has kept it alive through every season I called it over, and He is ahead of me rather than behind. I refuse the question that made a thing I loved owe somebody a reason. Nothing needs naming or settling with whoever asked it. I lift my hands, and the unfinished chorus belongs to God.
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.
2 Timothy 1:6
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