For the woman who still knows exactly which shelf the paintbox is on and has not opened it in years.
If you had genuinely finished with it, why do you still know exactly where it is?
Top of the airing cupboard, behind the spare blankets, left hand side. An old biscuit tin with the hinge gone, holding hard little squares of watercolor that have cracked across the middle, three brushes with the bristles splayed, and a jam jar you used to fill at the kitchen tap.
You could find that tin in the dark, in a hurry, while carrying something else. People who have actually moved on cannot do that. They give the paints away to a niece, or they end up in a box that gets thrown out in a move, and nobody notices for a decade.
A person who knows exactly where it is has not finished, however firmly they have told themselves otherwise. Scripture tells a person to stir up the gift that is in them rather than send for a replacement, and the Holy Spirit has kept something alive in you that an old tin has been quietly holding.
What Was Said, and What It Reached
You remember the shape of it better than the words, which is normal and doesn't mean you have made more of it than there was.
It came from somebody who mattered. That's the only reason it worked. The same sentence from a stranger at a bus stop would have bounced. What landed was not a review of a painting. It was a small suggestion that this was time you could be spending on something that mattered.
You didn't argue. There isn't a good answer to that, because any defense of an afternoon spent painting sounds precisely like a woman defending an afternoon spent painting. So you finished the sheet you were on, washed the brushes properly, and put the tin behind the blankets.
You were never told the painting was bad, you were told the time was wasted. The written Word calls it the gift of God which is in you, and the Holy Spirit does not hand out gifts on condition that they justify their own hours.
Notice how carefully you put it away, though. Brushes washed. Jar rinsed. That is not how a person disposes of something. That is how a person stores it.
What Reaching Behind the Blankets Costs
Here's the actual price of reaching behind the blankets, and it's worth reading in full, because you've assumed a far higher one for years.
Working out who said it is no part of the price, though you know perfectly well. Ruling on what they meant is no part of it. You don't have to raise it, be at peace with them first, or wait for a day when somebody understands what one sentence did to a long row of Saturday afternoons.
Forgiveness has its own timing and it belongs to God rather than to you. It is not the price of entry to a jam jar. Nobody has to be squared with before you fill one at the tap.
You are free to take this up today without settling one thing with whoever set it down. Scripture makes your gift a matter between you and God rather than a matter of somebody's view of your afternoons, while the Holy Spirit waits on no conversation that may never happen.
No other person has ever held this closed. It is a cupboard, a stack of blankets, and about ten minutes.
What an Afternoon Has to Earn
There's a second weight on that tin, and it's the one that has kept it up there longest.
You have quietly accepted that an afternoon has to earn its place. A woman with a family, a job, a list, has to justify three hours with a jam jar. The justification has to be something you could say out loud without sounding indulgent.
Look at where that rule came from. Not from Scripture, which is full of feasts, rest, sabbaths, plus a God who made a world far more beautiful than function required. The rule came from a sentence in a kitchen and it has been running your Saturdays ever since.
Nothing in what God gave you was ever required to justify the hours it takes. The written Word says the gift is in you and tells you to stir it up rather than account for it, and the Holy Spirit is at work in an afternoon that produces nothing anybody could sell.
A bad painting of the window is a complete use of a Saturday. That's not permission to be lazy. It's the removal of a tax nobody ever had the right to charge.
It is worth seeing how that tax actually worked. It never stopped you doing anything outright. It simply required every hour to produce a defense, and an hour with a jam jar in it has no defense to offer.
So the hours quietly went to activities that could justify themselves. Nothing was ever decided. A tax does not need a decision, only a rate, and this one has been charging you since a sentence in a kitchen.
Stir Up the Gift That Is in Thee
There's an instruction Paul gives 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 under the ash. Paul doesn't tell Timothy to apply for a new gift, account for the gap, or explain where the fire went.
Then read the tense in the middle of it. The gift which is IN you, written in the present. Not was, not could be again, not if you can recover it. Whatever had gone quiet in Timothy went quiet while remaining in him, which is exactly the situation behind a stack of spare blankets.
What God put in you is present tense, and a tin on a high shelf 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.
A high shelf changes where a thing is. It has never once changed what a thing is, and the verse is about what rather than where.
Where a thing has been kept tells you about the person keeping it, and nothing whatever about the thing.
The gift is what the verse is talking about, and it has been in you the whole time the tin has been on that shelf behind the blankets.
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 somebody already carried, from a hold that does not depend on her grip. What she paints, and whether anybody sees it, is God's.
What He gave me is in me now, in the present, and a tin on a high shelf never changed that. 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. An afternoon owes nobody an account of itself. The Holy Spirit has kept this alive through every year I called it abandoned, and He is ahead of me rather than behind. I refuse the sentence that put a price on three hours with a jam jar. Nothing has to be named or settled with whoever spoke it. I lift my hands, and the cracked squares of color are 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.
2 Timothy 1:6
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.
