For the helper who has decided she is staff in every room she walks into.
Suppose a woman carries a tray of tea down a corridor every Tuesday at ten to seven and sets one cup on the window sill outside a door.
The rest go in. She puts them on the low table, straightens two chairs, says something easy to whoever has arrived early, and comes back out. Then she picks the last cup off the sill and drinks it standing in the corridor, and at half eight she collects the empties.
She has done this for two years. The circle behind that door is for people carrying something heavy, and she is carrying something heavy, and the two facts have never been allowed into the same room.
You have put yourself permanently on the giving side of a door, and God never assigned you that seat. Scripture tells you to come boldly to the throne of grace to find help in time of need, while the Holy Spirit is at work in a circle you have never sat down in.
What Being the Helper Buys
Give the corridor its due, because standing in it purchases something real.
Out here you are useful, which is a stable place to be, and nobody has to wonder what you might be carrying. The whole transaction runs one way and there is no risk in it. You arrive with a tray and leave with empties, and nothing about you is ever on the table.
Two years of that is a long time to hold a position. It has kept you steady through a year that has not been steady, and the tray has done more for you than the people drinking the tea will ever know.
There is a cost to the arrangement that shows up in a place you would not look for it. You have stopped being able to answer the question how are you, even away from that building, even from people who have nothing to do with it.
A role practiced twice a week for two years does not stay in the room where it was learned. It follows you into kitchens and car parks and telephone calls, and by now the answer comes out before the question has finished.
It's worth honoring that rather than scolding it. A woman who has been let down while visibly needing something will find a way to stop needing things visibly, and carrying a tray is one of the better ways available. You built something that works, out of good materials, for reasons anybody would recognize.
Here's the other column, and it is the only one that matters tonight. The heavy thing you're carrying has not got lighter. You've simply found a room where nobody will ask about it, which is a different outcome entirely from putting it down.
Usefulness has been working as a hiding place, and it has been an excellent one. The written Word tells you to come and obtain mercy and find help, while the Holy Spirit is not fooled by a tray.
Nobody in That Room Is at Fault Here
There is a telling of this where somebody should have noticed, and it does not hold up.
It would suggest that the room has kept you out, and that somebody in there should have noticed you standing in a corridor for two years. That's not true. Not one of them has kept you out of anything, because every one of them believes you're on the rota and glad to be.
Building a case there would be building it against people who have done nothing, most of whom would make room in about four seconds if they had any idea.
You can be released from a position you took yourself without anybody being at fault for it. Scripture rests your standing on an invitation God issued rather than on somebody noticing you, while the Holy Spirit lifts weight off a person instead of handing them more.
Nothing here asks for an announcement, or for you to tell anybody anything you would rather not. It asks you to consider sitting down.
The Rule You Never Agreed To
Here's the sentence you've been living by, and it deserves to be looked at in daylight.
It goes roughly like this. People who help are not people who need help. Once you've carried the tray, you have declared which side you're on, and going in with a heavy thing after two years of tea would be a kind of confession you can't face.
Nobody wrote that rule. It isn't anywhere in Scripture, where the people doing the carrying are constantly the people being carried. It isn't in the room either, where at least two people take a turn making the tea and nobody thinks it disqualifies them.
The rule that keeps you in the corridor was written by you and signed by nobody. The written Word invites you to come boldly and find help in the time of need, while the Holy Spirit makes no distinction between the woman with the tray and the woman with the chair.
Come Boldly, and Find Help in Time of Need
There's a sentence in Hebrews aimed exactly at a woman who has decided she is not the one who receives.
> Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. > Hebrews 4:16 (KJV)
Read the order. Come boldly first. Then obtain mercy, then find help, in the time of the need itself rather than after it has been dealt with privately.
Notice also who is being addressed. The words are let us, rather than let the needy, or let those who are not currently serving. The whole company is invited into the same room on the same footing, including everybody who has ever carried a tray. They come boldly, which is a strange word for people who are used to entering sideways.
There's no second entrance in that verse. No side door for helpers, no quieter arrangement for people who would rather not be seen needing anything. One throne, one invitation, everybody walking up to it the same way.
The invitation was issued to you on exactly the same terms as to everybody in that circle. The written Word says come boldly and find help in time of need, while the Holy Spirit makes that approach possible in a corridor as well as at a throne.
Let us come is the phrase, and it is first person plural. Whoever wrote it put himself inside the invitation rather than issuing it from outside.
The person who wrote it needed the same door you have been standing outside of for two years.
Two years of standing on one side of that door has never once changed the terms of the invitation.
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.
Spoken by a woman already gathered in, standing on ground that was cleared for her. Whether she sits down, and when, is God's.
What He opened is not closed by a rule I wrote about which side of a door I belong on. The written Word of God tells me to come boldly to the throne of grace to obtain mercy and find help in the time of need, and it says let us rather than let them. Carrying a tray has never disqualified anybody from being carried. The Holy Spirit is in that room on a Tuesday, already there, going before me. Needing something in this room does not make me an intruder in it. I take nothing bitter back along that corridor with me. Both feet are on the floor, and the empty chair is God's.
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.
Hebrews 4:16
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.
