She has been in that church nineteen years and she has never once been on a rota that mattered to her.
She does the food. She is good at the food. But when the prayer nights happen and people are called forward and things occur that she cannot explain, she stands at the back with the urns and she watches, and she has a settled understanding about it that she has never said out loud.
It is this: God does that through certain people. There are people who carry something. She is not one of them and she has known it since she was about thirty.
She would say it kindly, without bitterness. She admires the ones who carry it. And underneath the admiration is a small permanent verdict that she is support staff in the kingdom, and that the open sky is a thing that happens over other people while she wipes down a counter.
The verdict is so old now that it has stopped feeling like a belief. It feels like a fact about the furniture.
If you have quietly filed yourself under support staff, come and sit down. Nobody who carries anything is going to be pulled down here to make you feel better.
The tiers are not in the text
Let us look at where the ranking came from, because it did not come from Scripture and it is worth seeing that plainly.
It came from observation. Certain people are visible. What they do happens at the front, in the light, with the room watching, and what you do happens in a kitchen. Visibility got mistaken for weight, which is the oldest error in any congregation and one that Paul spends an entire chapter dismantling.
You are not support staff to somebody else's open heaven. Nothing about where you stand in a building has ever determined how God is turned toward you. I am not saying that to be encouraging. The written word says the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee (1 Corinthians 12:21), and the whole passage exists because congregations do exactly what yours has done, and the Holy Spirit brings it to bear in a woman at the back with the urns.
Who the Spirit is given to
Here is what changed this for me, and it is not a way to find your hidden gift.
But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal.1 Corinthians 12:7
Read the recipients. Every man. Not the platform. Not the ones who carry something. The verse is written into a chapter about many different gifts precisely to stop anybody dividing the room into the ones God works through and the ones He does not.
And notice what the sentence does not do. It does not promise you a particular manifestation, or tell you which, or when. It settles the question of who is included and stops there, which is exactly where I am stopping.
You are inside that every. The Word puts you there by name, and it never once created a class of Christian that God works around. That is written down and stated on purpose, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it land in a woman who has been standing at the back for nineteen years.
Do not go looking for a new qualification
Something has to go where the verdict was, or by next Sunday you will be hunting for your gift, which is the same tier system with you scrambling for a better rung on it.
So let us be plain about what is actually in that space.
You have the same Spirit the ones at the front have, and He was never rationed. Scripture says there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:4), where the diversity is in the gifts and the sameness is in the Giver, and it is the Holy Spirit who has been standing at the back with you and the urns for nineteen years without once considering it a lesser post.
And if these years have cost more than anybody in that building knows, if sleep has gone, if the evenings have started to frighten, please talk to somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, a crisis line, and the emergency services if there is danger to anybody tonight. That is not a detour around God. It is one of the ways He keeps people.
Here is the turn, then, and it is not the discovery of your gift, because that was never the door.
God is open toward you this afternoon, in the kitchen, because that is who He is. You did not earn this and you cannot lose it, and there is no key in your hand that He has been waiting on. The written word says that ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular (1 Corinthians 12:27), and in particular means individually and by name rather than in general, and the Holy Spirit is the One who proves it true about you specifically rather than about the congregation as a crowd.
I cannot tell you what God does next, or through whom. Nobody honest can. What I can tell you is that nineteen years at the back were nineteen years inside the every, and that the tier system you have been living under was built in a room and never in the book.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in your own voice. What gives these words their weight is that you are in Christ, and it was never issued on the strength of what you have been seen to carry. The ground under it is Scripture and the life in it is the Holy Spirit rather than merely willing, and what God does next, and through whom, is His, and the outcome is His, and nothing on this page claims to know it.
- Tier system I put myself at the bottom of, you are an invention and you are not how God distributes Himself. First Corinthians 12 says the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man, and the Holy Spirit was never once rationed by a rota. In the name of Jesus I take you out of this building.
- Verdict that I am support staff in the kingdom, God's word about me does not read like you, and you are not standing at the back with me next Sunday. The written word says the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee, and His Spirit has been at these urns for nineteen years without calling it a lesser post. I am standing inside the every from today.
- Father, I am the body of Christ and a member in particular, and First Corinthians 12 means individually and by name rather than in a crowd. I thank You that Your Spirit is the same Spirit at the back as at the front, and that the diversity is in the gifts and never in the Giver. The paper is face down on the table, and I am not filing myself under other people any more.
1 Corinthians 12:7
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