I Only Have One Person Left To Ask

There is a list and there is one name left on it.

You did not write the list down. It assembled itself over about six years, and every time somebody answered you in a particular way, a name came off it quietly.

Not because anybody was cruel. Nobody has ever been cruel to you about this.

A small sigh. A pause before answering. The word again. Somebody saying, did I not show you that. Each of those crossed one name off, and the crossing off happened in about a second, and you never told anybody it had happened.

And now there is one.

And you have started rationing him. You do not ask him small things anymore, because the small things might use up whatever there is, and you want to keep it for something serious.

So there is one name and you are not using it, which means that in practice there are none.

That is where you are, and I do not think you have said it out loud to anybody, and I want to say it plainly first before anything else.

Under whose wings thou art come to trust

There is a blessing spoken over a woman who arrived with nothing and had no claim on anybody.

The LORD recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust. (Ruth 2:12, King James Version)

Under whose wings thou art come to trust. That is the picture. Shelter that is already there, that somebody comes under.

She did not build it and she did not earn a place in it. She came under something that was already spread.

You are come to trust under wings that were never earned, and no shelter God gives has ever once been a thing a person had to qualify for. Ruth 2:12 says under whose wings thou art come to trust, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that solid for a man who has been rationing what he has left.

Notice who it is said to. A foreign widow with no standing, no family claim, and nothing to offer in return.

The blessing is spoken over precisely the person who would have had every reason to believe she was down to nothing.

You have never once been outside the category that blessing was spoken over, and no person with nothing to offer has ever been the wrong one for those wings. The Holy Spirit is the one who speaks over the one with no claim, and it is written that the wings belong to God rather than to anybody she had to ask.

And notice the word full. A full reward.

Not a portion. Not what is left. The word chosen is the one that means nothing is being rationed at that end of the arrangement.

You were never dealing with something in short supply, and no shelter of that kind has ever once had to be spent carefully. The Spirit of God is the one whose supply does not run down, and Scripture uses the word full where a person in her position would have expected something smaller.

What each name actually did

Now let me be concrete, because a general reassurance will not put a name back on a list.

Go through them. Not the feeling. The actual event.

For most of those names, what happened was one sigh, or one pause, or one sentence on one afternoon, from a person who was tired, or in the middle of something, or who had answered four things already that day.

One occasion. And then a permanent crossing off, decided in about a second, with no appeal and no review.

You are running a list where one afternoon removes a person forever, and no rule that severe has ever once been applied to anybody by God. The Spirit of God is the one who reviews a judgment that was made in a second, and Ruth 2:12 speaks a full blessing over somebody with no claim at all.

And here is the second half, which nobody has ever told you.

Not one of those people knows they were crossed off.

They do not know there was a list. They do not know they are on the wrong side of it. Some of them have wondered why the asking stopped, and one or two have concluded that they did something, and could not work out what. So the list has been costing on both sides, silently, for six years.

That is a gap in the teaching and it is not a fault in the man. Nobody ever tells anybody what a crossing off does.

You have been carrying a list that has been costing two people at once, and no name crossed off has ever once known why the asking stopped. The written word puts the shelter above anybody's claim on anybody, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man both sides of his own ledger.

Say the names, and say what they did

Now the small thing, and it is spoken rather than done.

I am not going to suggest you go back to any of them. That is a larger thing and it may come, and it is not what is needed to start.

Say out loud the names that came off that list, and say what each one actually did.

You are able to say a list out loud and check it, and naming an event plainly has never once made it larger than it was. Ruth 2:12 speaks a full blessing over a woman with nothing to trade, and the Holy Spirit is the one present when a man reads his own list back for the first time.

Say the name first. Then the event, in plain words, as it actually happened.

Something like this. My brother. He sighed once one March when I asked him about something in his kitchen.

And then stop and hear it.

Because a list like that only works while it stays in feelings. Said out loud, in plain words, with dates and events attached, most of it will not survive being heard.

You are putting a list into plain words for the first time, and no crossing off has ever once survived being said out loud with the actual event attached. The Spirit of God is the one who lets a man hear his own reasoning, and it is written that the wings were spread before anybody came under them.