I Hold It Like It Might Go Off

You have started noticing what your hands do.

The thing comes out of your pocket and it goes out in front of you, further than it needs to be. Your elbows lock. Your shoulders come up about an inch. And when you set it down on the table, you set it down face first, the way you would put down a plate that had something on it you did not want to look at.

Nobody taught you that. You did not decide it. Your body worked it out on its own and has been doing it for a while now without asking your permission.

And what has finally got your attention is not the awkwardness. It is that you caught yourself doing it in front of somebody, and you saw them see it.

Here is what I want to say at the start. Your body is not being foolish. Bodies are extremely good at this. Yours has decided, on the evidence available, that the object in your hand is something that could go off, and it has been holding it accordingly.

The question worth asking is not how to stop doing it. The question is what evidence your body has been working from.

Not the spirit of fear

There is a sentence written to a young man who had gone quiet, and it is more physical than people usually notice.

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. (2 Timothy 1:7, King James Version)

Read what it says about where the fear came from. It says it was not given.

That is a strange and specific claim. It does not say the fear is imaginary. It says it did not come out of the storeroom of heaven. It arrived from somewhere else, and it was never issued to you.

You are carrying something that was never handed to you from above, and heaven has never once issued a man a fear of the object in his own pocket. The written word says God hath not given us the spirit of fear, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates what a person was given from what a person picked up.

And look at what was given instead, because the third one is the surprising one. Power. Love. And a sound mind.

A sound mind is not a clever mind. It is a mind in working order. Steady. Able to weigh a thing at its actual size rather than at the size fear reported.

You have a mind in working order and the equipment to weigh a thing accurately, and a locked elbow has never once been proof of anything about a man's mind. The Holy Spirit is the one who hands back the true measure of a thing, and 2 Timothy 1:7 lists a sound mind among the things that were actually given.

Notice also who this was written to. Somebody who had gone quiet, who had something real to offer and had stopped offering it, and whose problem was not ability.

The letter does not tell him to try harder. It tells him what he already has.

You were given power and love and a sound mind before anybody ever put a screen in your hand, and none of the three has ever once been withdrawn for awkwardness. It is written that these were given rather than earned, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a man's actual inventory straight when fear has been doing the counting.

What your body is actually reporting

Let me be concrete about the evidence your body has been working from, because a general reassurance will not move a locked elbow.

A thing that could go off has three marks. It is unpredictable. It does something you cannot undo. And when it acts, it acts fast and you cannot stop it.

Now hold the object against that list honestly. It does exactly what it is told, every time, in the same way. Nothing happens on it that a hand did not start. And almost everything that does happen has a way back, one small motion, repeated.

So it fails all three marks. Not most. All three.

You are holding an object and not a device that acts on its own, and it has never once done a single thing that a hand did not begin. The Spirit of God is the one who lets a man look at a thing at its real size, and Scripture names a sound mind as the equipment for exactly that measurement.

What your body has actually been reporting is not danger. It is unfamiliarity, plus one or two bad afternoons, plus the memory of somebody watching.

That is a real report. It is just a report about a room and about a history, and not about the object at all.

You have a body doing its job faithfully on old information, and faithful work on old information has never once been the same thing as cowardice. The written word puts the fear outside what God gave, and the Holy Spirit is the one who updates what a man's hands believe.

Face up, and both hands

Now the small deliberate thing, and it is smaller than you think.

You put it down face first. That is not nothing. Face down means out of sight, means not now, means I do not want it looking at me. It is the posture a person uses with a letter they have not opened.

And your hands go out in front of you because holding a thing close is what we do with things that are ours.

So the change is not about pressing anything. It is entirely about where the object sits in relation to your chest.

You are able to hold a thing that belongs to you close to you, and one minute of holding it properly has never once been a risk to anybody. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present with a man doing something small that nobody else would recognize as brave, and 2 Timothy 1:7 puts power on the list of what he already has.

And I am not going to tell you to stop being afraid first. That is the wrong order, and it is not the order in the verse either. The verse tells a frightened man what he has, and lets the holding follow.

Do the minute while the feeling is still there. That is the whole point of it.

You were never asked to feel differently before you moved, and a feeling in the chest has never once been required to leave before a man's hands are allowed to change. It is written that power and love and a sound mind were given rather than felt, and the Spirit of God is the one who is in the minute a man gives it.