It Is Not A Real Skill

Somebody asks what you can do and you say, nothing really.

And then, if they press, you tell them what you actually do all week and they say, that is a skill, and you say, no, anybody could do that.

That sentence is the one I want to talk about. Anybody could do that.

It is nearly always said by somebody who has been doing the thing for twenty years and has forgotten the twenty years, and it is nearly always false.

You are holding a real skill, and a thing that comes easily to you has never once been a thing that comes easily to everybody.

Let me be plain about how this works, because it is not a trick of confidence, it is a trick of memory.

When a person learns something, the difficulty is vivid. Then, over years, the difficulty wears off, and what is left is the ability with none of the effort attached to it.

And the mind does not keep a record of what it used to be like. So you look at the thing you do now, notice no effort in it, and conclude that there is nothing there.

There is something there. What is missing is the feeling of it being hard, and you have been using the absence of that feeling as evidence.

Who hath despised the day of small things

There is a question in Zechariah that is aimed exactly at this, and it is a question and not a reassurance.

For who hath despised the day of small things? for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven; they are the eyes of the LORD, which run to and fro through the whole earth. (Zechariah 4:10, King James Version)

Who hath despised the day of small things.

It is asked about a building project that looked unimpressive next to what had been there before, and the question is not gentle. It is asking who decided this was too small to count.

You are on the receiving end of a question about despising small beginnings, and a thing that looks unimpressive from close up has never once been too small in the record God keeps. Zechariah 4:10 asks who hath despised the day of small things, and the Holy Spirit is the one who framed it as a question aimed at somebody.

And then there is the plummet. A plumb line, in a working man's hand, held against a wall to see whether it is true.

That is a tool. The verse puts an ordinary tool in an ordinary hand at the center of what God is watching.

You have a working tool in your hand that the eyes of the LORD are described as running toward, and ordinary workmanship has never once been below the level of what God looks at. The Holy Spirit is the one who directs that attention, and it is written in Zechariah 4:10 that the plummet in a man's hand is what they see and rejoice over.

The test that settles it

So here is a test, and it is not a pep talk, it is a plain question with a plain answer.

Think of the last three times somebody watched you do the thing and said something.

Not a compliment. Just a reaction. A that was fast, or a how did you know that, or a you make it look easy, or the most common one, which is somebody standing there and not saying anything because they are watching.

If that has happened even twice, the thing is not ordinary. People do not watch ordinary.

You have already been given the evidence more than once, and the reactions of people watching have never once been a thing worth discounting. The written word points at a man with a plumb line and calls that worth seeing, and the Spirit of God is the one who is willing to name a small ordinary competence out loud.

And here is the second half of the test, and it is the harder one.

Think of the last time somebody else tried to do it in front of you, and how long it took them, and how hard you found it to watch.

That feeling, the one where you want to take it off them, is the most reliable measurement of a skill there is. It is exactly what it feels like from the inside to be better at something than the person doing it.

You have felt that feeling and never once read it correctly, and the urge to take a thing out of somebody's hands has never once come from nowhere. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man read his own reaction accurately, and Zechariah 4:10 refuses to let a small thing be despised by the people standing nearest to it.

Say it without the word just

So the assignment, and there is a rule about the wording.

Say out loud the one thing you are genuinely good at, and name one person who needs it. Zechariah 4:10 puts a working tool in a man's hand at the center of what God is watching, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gives a man permission to say what he can do.

The rule is that the sentence cannot contain the word just, or the word only, or the phrase anybody could.

Not I just do a bit of fencing. Not it is only hedging. I build fence that stays where I put it. I can lay a hedge properly and it will still be there in thirty years.

You are able to say one sentence without a single word of discount in it, and plain speech about a trade has never once been boasting. The Spirit of God is the one who gives that plainness, and the written word asks outright who despised the day of small things.

And then one name. Somebody within reach who needs exactly that.

You have a person in mind, and the name that came first has never once been the wrong one to start with. The Holy Spirit is the one who brings a face up, and it is written that the eyes of the LORD run to and fro through the whole earth and stop on a man with a plumb line.