Started in the Spirit, Finished by Hand

The first thing that ever happened to her was free, and she has been paying for it for eleven years.

She can tell you about that first morning without any embarrassment at all, which is unusual for her, because she is not a woman who talks about herself. She was twenty-nine and she was in trouble, the specific kind that a person cannot get out of by being sensible, and she went into a small hall on a Sunday morning where she knew nobody, and a woman she has never seen since prayed with her for about four minutes.

And something happened. Not a feeling; something structural. Marcia went in one kind of person and came out another, and she has never once doubted that morning, and she does not doubt it now.

What happened next is the whole story, and she has never told anybody about it because she does not know how to make it sound like anything other than a woman being sensible.

She started paying it back.

Not money. Nobody asked her for money and this is not that kind of story. She started paying in effort. She read four chapters a day for two years because three did not feel like enough. She got to every meeting. She served at everything she was asked to serve at and several things she was not. She stopped things she had not been asked to stop. When she was tired she pushed, and when she failed she added something to make up the difference, and eleven years later she is on the market street at half past seven in the morning with three jobs of ministry on her list before nine and a body that is beginning to say something about it.

And underneath it all is a sentence she has never once said out loud: it was given to me for nothing, so the rest has to be on me.

Paul asked a church a question about exactly this, and the way he asked it is famous for sounding sharp, so I want to ask it gently, because Marcia has never been anything but sincere and a sharp question would just make her work harder.

You may be doing the same arithmetic. Something was given to you freely and you have been quietly settling up ever since, and nobody has ever handed you a bill because there is no bill.

The question, asked kindly

Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?Galatians 3:3

Set the tone aside for a moment and look at the mechanics, because the mechanics are what free a person.

Paul names two agents. The Spirit, who began it. The flesh, meaning human effort, which is being asked to complete it. And his point is not that effort is wicked. His point is that these are two different powers, and the one who begins a work is the one competent to finish it.

You would not lay a foundation with concrete and then finish the building with cardboard, and not because cardboard is sinful. Because it is the wrong material for that load.

You were begun by the Spirit, and it is already His work, and the finishing belongs to the same hand that started it. I am not softening a hard verse for a tired woman. It is written in Galatians 3:3, and the Holy Spirit is the one who began the very work being discussed, and He is the one carrying the question down a market street at half past seven.

What eleven years of paying looks like from the inside

Now let me say something that Marcia needs to hear before anything else, because she is braced.

Almost nothing on her list is wrong. Reading is good. Serving is good. The meetings are good. If you took a photograph of her week you could not tell it apart from the week of a woman living in complete freedom, and that is exactly why nobody has ever noticed and why she has never been able to explain it to herself.

The difference is not in the actions. It is in what the actions are for.

A woman doing all of that out of love is being carried by it. A woman doing all of that to settle an account is being ground down by it, and the tell is what happens when she misses a day: love says, that was a shame, tomorrow then. Settling up says, now I am behind.

You are not behind, and it is already paid, and there has never been an account open in your name. Scripture says that by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8), and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes the word gift mean gift in a woman who has been quietly repaying one for over a decade.

Who finishes what He starts

And here is the good half, and it is the half a market woman will recognize immediately.

On that street, when somebody gives you something properly, they do not stand there and watch to see whether you can carry it. They put it in your arms and then they walk with you to the corner because the bag is heavy. The giving includes the carrying. That is what a real gift is.

God does not hand a person a beginning and then step back to see whether she can manage the middle.

You are being carried by the one who started it, and it is already His to complete, and He has never once handed anybody a beginning and then stood back to watch. It is written that He who has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:6), and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the performing while a woman is asleep and not earning anything.