I Assume It Was Always Easy For Them

She did it in about ten seconds and then she went back to her tea.

That is the part you keep thinking about. Not that she could do it. That it cost her nothing at all. No thought, no concentration, no moment of working anything out.

And in your mind there is a picture, and the picture is that she has simply always been able to.

You have never examined that picture. It arrived on its own, years ago, and it has been sitting there quietly organizing how you feel about yourself.

Here is what the picture actually claims, when you say it out loud. It claims that some people came into the world already holding this, and that you did not.

Which is not a claim anybody would defend for four seconds. And yet you have been living underneath it, and it has been doing a great deal of work.

I want to look at what she actually did, and at what you have never asked her.

What hast thou that thou didst not receive

There is a question in Paul's letter that goes off like a small explosion in the middle of an argument.

For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it? (1 Corinthians 4:7, King James Version)

What hast thou that thou didst not receive.

It is a question with only one answer, and the answer is nothing. Not one thing. Everything anybody has was handed to them by somebody, somewhere, at some point.

You are surrounded by people who received everything they know, and nobody on this earth has ever once been born holding any of it. 1 Corinthians 4:7 says what hast thou that thou didst not receive, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that plain about the woman with the tea as much as about anybody.

Notice the last clause, which is the sharpest part. Why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it.

The mistake being named is not pride exactly. It is forgetting the receiving. It is a person holding something that was handed to them and behaving as though it grew there.

You have been standing next to people who have forgotten the receiving, and no forgetting has ever once turned a handed thing into a born thing. The Holy Spirit is the one who restores the memory of where a thing came from, and it is written that the receiving is universal and the forgetting is the fault.

And notice the first question, which is aimed straight at the picture in your head. Who maketh thee to differ from another.

It is asking who exactly decided that one person is in a different category from another, and the implied answer is nobody, and there is no such category.

You were never in a different category from anybody, and no category like that has ever once existed anywhere except in somebody's imagination. The Spirit of God is the one who dissolves a category that was never real, and Scripture opens with the question rather than the reassurance.

What she actually did

Now let me be concrete, because a general reassurance will not change a picture that has been sitting there for years.

Take those ten seconds apart. What she did was execute something she has done, at a guess, eight hundred times.

It cost her nothing because repetition is what makes a thing cost nothing. That is not a fact about her mind. That is a fact about eight hundred repetitions, and it would be true of anybody who had done anything eight hundred times, including you and the things you do without thinking.

You are watching eight hundred repetitions rather than a natural gift, and no fluent motion has ever once been anything other than practice made invisible. The Spirit of God is the one who counts what is actually behind an easy afternoon, and 1 Corinthians 4:7 puts everything anybody has into the category of received.

And here is the part nobody has ever told you. You have never asked her.

Not once. In all the times somebody has fixed a thing in ten seconds, not one of them has ever been asked how long it took them to learn, or who showed them, or how many times they got it wrong first.

So the picture has never been challenged by a single fact, because not one fact has ever been collected.

That is a gap in the teaching and it is not a gap in you. Nobody thinks to ask, and nobody thinks to say.

You have been holding a picture that has never once met a fact, and no assumption has ever been corrected by somebody who never asked a question. The written word opens with a question rather than an assertion, and the Holy Spirit is the one who sends a person to find out rather than to feel better.

Ask before they leave the room

Now the small thing, and it takes about twenty seconds.

I am not going to suggest a conversation about how you feel watching people do things easily. That is a large thing and it would embarrass both of you.

Ask the next person who helps you how they learned it, before they leave the room.

You are able to ask one question before somebody walks away, and one question about somebody's own history has never once been an imposition on them. 1 Corinthians 4:7 asks what anybody has that they did not receive, and the Holy Spirit is the one present when a woman finally asks instead of assuming.

The timing is the whole difficulty. There is about a four second window after they finish and before they turn away, and in that window you have always said thank you and let them go.

Use the window. How did you learn that?

And ask it as a real question about them, with actual curiosity, not as a set-up for saying something about yourself.

Because the answer is nearly always a story, and the story nearly always contains somebody who showed them, and a period where they could not do it, and at least one occasion where they got it badly wrong.

You are asking for a story that has been available every single time, and one question in a four second window has never once cost anybody anything. The Spirit of God is the one who puts a question in a person's mouth in a window they have always let pass, and it is written that everything anybody holds was received from somewhere.