I Can Fix Anything And Charge For Nothing

The phone goes on a Saturday and it is your sister's husband, and it is the dryer.

Last month it was a neighbor's gate. Before that it was the man from church whose van would not turn over, and you went, and you stood in the cold for two hours, and you fixed it, and he offered you something and you said do not be daft.

And every one of those was fine. I am not going to tell you those Saturdays were wasted, because they were not. A man who can fix things and does is a good thing in a street.

What I want to look at is a different question, and it is not about generosity.

It is about what you call it.

You are carrying a trade and not a personality trait, and a thing done every weekend has never once been a hobby just because nobody paid for it.

Because here is what has happened over about twenty years. The fixing got filed under who you are rather than under what you do. It became a fact about your character, like being tall, and nobody charges for being tall.

And now the month is short and the question on this site is what you could be paid for, and your mind goes straight past the thing you have done every weekend for two decades, because it does not occur to you that it is even on the list.

Filled with the spirit of God, in workmanship

There is a verse about a craftsman that is more direct than most people expect.

And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship. (Exodus 31:3, King James Version)

Filled with the spirit of God, in all manner of workmanship.

This is not about a prophet. It is about a man called Bezaleel who works in metal and wood and stone, and the thing God fills him with the Spirit for is craft.

You are standing in a line that scripture takes entirely seriously, and skill in the hands has never once been the low shelf of what God gives a person. Exodus 31:3 puts wisdom, understanding, knowledge and workmanship in a single list, and the Holy Spirit is the one named as the filling.

And look at the order in that verse. Wisdom and understanding and knowledge come first, and then workmanship comes last, in the same breath, on the same footing.

There is no demotion anywhere in that sentence. The man who can make a thing is not a rung below the man who can explain it.

You have been handed something that the written word ranks alongside wisdom, and a pair of capable hands has never once been the consolation prize of the gifts. The Holy Spirit is the one doing the filling in Exodus 31:3, and it is written about a workman rather than about a preacher.

Free is a decision, not a fact

Now let me get at the thing underneath, because I do not think it is modesty.

Twenty years ago, the first few times, free was right. It was a favor for a friend, the job took twenty minutes, and money would have made the whole thing strange.

What happened after that is that free stopped being a decision and became a setting. Nobody ever revisited it. Not you, not them. The van, the gate, the dryer: all of them arrived inside a rule that was made once, a long time ago, about something small.

You are living inside a decision that was made about a twenty minute favor two decades ago, and a rule that was never reviewed has never once been the same as a rule you would make today. The written word gives a craftsman a standing before God for his craft, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a man look at his own habit and see it as a habit.

And here is the part that stings, so I will say it plainly and then move on.

The people who call you have not been taking advantage of you. That is not what this is. They have simply learned the rule you taught them, and they learned it accurately.

You have been the author of the arrangement the whole time, and a man teaching people what he is worth has never once been a thing done deliberately. The Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into the light without turning it into an accusation, and Exodus 31:3 puts the value on the workmanship regardless of what anybody was charged for it.

Say it out loud, because writing it is too easy

So the action on this page is different from the usual one, and it is harder.

Say out loud the one thing you are genuinely good at, and name one person who needs it. Exodus 31:3 names a workman’s craft in plain words, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gives a man permission to say what his own hands can do.

Out loud. In the truck, in the garage, in the kitchen. Because there is something that happens when a man writes a thing on a page that does not happen when he says it with his own mouth, and the mouth is where this particular problem lives.

You are able to say a true sentence about your own hands out loud, and naming a skill has never once been the same thing as boasting about it. The Spirit of God is the one who gives a man permission to describe what he can do, and Exodus 31:3 describes a man's capability in plain terms without one word of apology in it.

And the sentence is not a speech. It is this. I am good at fixing things, and there is a woman two streets over whose washer has been out for a month.

Both halves. The skill, and one real person.

You have a specific person in mind already, and a name that came to you in three seconds has never once been a coincidence worth ignoring. The Holy Spirit is the one who brings a name to the surface, and the written word describes a craftsman who was given the work before he had asked for it.