They Call It A Knack

They have always said it about you. She has a knack.

Your mother said it first, probably, and then everybody else picked it up, and it has been said at family tables for thirty years in a tone that is entirely affectionate.

And a knack is a lovely word. It is also a word that does a very particular job, and the job is to make a thing sound like luck.

That is what I want to look at with you this morning, because a shortfall does not care what a thing is called, and the thing you have a knack for is currently the only asset in this conversation that nobody has valued.

You are holding a skill and not a quirk, and the word knack has never once been an accurate description of twenty years of practice.

Let me be exact about the difference, because it is not wordplay.

A knack is something a person happens to have. It arrives, it is charming, and nobody pays for it because there was no cost in getting it.

A skill is something a person built. It took years, it involved failures nobody saw, and there is a reason other people cannot do it as fast as you can.

What you have is the second one. It has been called the first one for three decades.

Cunning in playing, and a mighty valiant man

There is a single sentence in 1 Samuel where a servant describes David to Saul, and the order of the description is the whole point.

Then answered one of the servants, and said, Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, that is cunning in playing, and a mighty valiant man, and a man of war, and prudent in matters, and a comely person, and the LORD is with him. (1 Samuel 16:18, King James Version)

Cunning in playing.

That is the first thing out of the man's mouth. Before valiant, before prudent, before comely. The skill comes first, and it is named as a skill, using a word that means practiced rather than lucky.

You are described in scripture the way a skilled person is described, and a capability named first has never once been a small part of who somebody is. 1 Samuel 16:18 opens the description with cunning in playing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who put the craft at the front of that sentence.

And notice the last clause, because it does something important. The LORD is with him.

It sits at the end of a list that began with a practical skill. It does not replace the skill and it does not apologize for it being there.

You have a competence and the presence of God in the same sentence without one crowding out the other, and a practiced hand has never once been the unspiritual part of a person. The Holy Spirit is the one who puts both in that verse, and it is written in 1 Samuel 16:18 in exactly that order.

What the word has been doing

Now, the practical damage, because there is some and it is worth naming.

When a thing is a knack, nobody thanks you properly for it. They enjoy it, the way people enjoy weather. And because nobody thanks you properly, the ordinary experience of being told plainly that the work is worth something has never once happened.

Thirty years without that. And the absence of it is not neutral. It becomes evidence.

You are working from a file with nothing in it and calling that file the truth, and the silence of other people has never once been a measurement of anybody's work. The written word takes one servant's plain sentence and changes a man's whole life with it, and the Spirit of God is the one who gets a true description spoken out loud at last.

And there is a second thing the word does, and this one is sharper.

A knack cannot be sold, because nobody sells weather. So while the thing is called a knack, it is quietly kept off the list of what could bring money in, and it is kept off without anybody deciding to keep it off.

You have had an asset sitting outside the accounts for three decades, and a thing nobody counted has never once stopped being real. The Holy Spirit is the one who moves a thing back onto the list, and 1 Samuel 16:18 names a skill out loud in front of a king who did not know it existed.

Say the word skill with your own mouth

So here is the assignment, and it is a small one that is going to feel large.

Say out loud the one thing you are genuinely good at, and name one person who needs it. 1 Samuel 16:18 has a man's skill spoken plainly in front of somebody who could use it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gives a woman permission to say her own sentence.

And there is a rule about the wording. Do not use the word knack. Use the word good.

I am good at this. Not I have always been able to, not people say I have a way with, not it is just something I do. I am good at this.

You are able to put a plain sentence in your own mouth this week, and words a person uses about herself have never once been a neutral choice. The Spirit of God is the one who gives that kind of plainness, and the written word calls a young man cunning in playing rather than saying he had a way with a harp.

And then the second half, which is the part people skip. One person who needs it.

Not a market. Not everybody. One name, one face, somebody who is actually within reach of you this week.

You have a name coming to mind already, and the first person who arrives in three seconds has never once been an accident worth dismissing. The Holy Spirit is the one who brings a face to the surface, and it is written that one servant thought of one young man at the exact moment a king needed him.