It was a biscuit tin with a picture of a Scottish glen on the lid, and it lived on top of the wardrobe under a folded blanket, and his wife had been putting things into it since before their eldest was born.
She never called it savings. She called it the tin.
He is the one who got it down. That is the part he keeps coming back to. Not her. Him, standing on the chair from the landing, reaching over the blanket, on a Tuesday evening in October, four years ago.
The verse had been read out on the Sunday. He does not want to talk about the room or the man or what was said around it, because none of that is the point and he is not interested in blaming anybody.
What he wants to say, if anybody would let him say it without immediately explaining it to him, is this.
He believed God. Fully, with his whole chest. He was not swept along, he sat with it for two days, he prayed about it, and then he got the tin down, and he did it with joy, and when he handed it over he felt like a man doing the best thing he had ever done.
And then the four years happened.
He is not going to list them. They were not catastrophic. They were relentlessly, grindingly harder than the four years before, one thing after another after another, and by about the second year he had started doing something he has never told his wife about.
He had started reading them.
Like a letter. Like a reply. Every hard month arriving as God's considered answer about the man on the chair with his hand on the blanket.
And you know that exactly, because there is a stretch of your life you have been reading as a verdict.
Your circumstances are not God's answer about you
Let us settle the thing that governs this page. It is not a technique, and nothing on it is being asked of you.
You are looking at an invitation, and the One being tested in it is God. Follow the verb in that sentence and it lands on Him. He is the one under examination. He is the one who offered to be found out. There is no appeal at the bottom of this page, no request three paragraphs down, nothing to join and nothing to sign, and there never will be on this site. It is written, and thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts (Malachi 3:10), and it is the Holy Spirit, not this page, who takes the sentence back off the people who borrowed it.
Now the sentence, in its own room.
Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.Malachi 3:10
That was said to a whole nation, in one decade, about one building, where the store room had gone empty and the families who served there had gone home hungry. What is named in it is that the fields would not fail again. It is a sentence about people eating.
It was never a switch. Nothing you have ever handed to anybody has operated it, in either direction.
And now the thing that has to be said before anything else, and said plainly.
You were not a fool, and believing God is never the part of a story to be ashamed of. Whatever went on in that room, the thing that happened in you was faith, and faith is not the same as being taken in. It is written that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1), and the chapter that follows is a long list of people who acted on what God said and did not all see the outcome, and the book calls them commended rather than naive. It is the Holy Spirit, not this page, who makes that read like it is addressed to a man standing on a chair on a landing.
Now the four years.
Here is what Scripture actually says about reading your circumstances as a message from God, and it does not soften it.
A man born blind is put in front of Jesus and the disciples ask the obvious question, whose fault, his or his parents. And Jesus says neither (John 9:3). Not a lighter fault. Not a fault to be discussed later. Neither.
A tower falls in Siloam and kills eighteen people, and Jesus raises it Himself, unprompted, and asks whether the crowd thinks those eighteen were worse offenders than everybody else in Jerusalem, and answers His own question: no (Luke 13:4).
And a man called Asaph writes down, in a song that made it into the Bible, that he looked at how comfortable life was for people who did not care about God at all and nearly lost his footing entirely (Psalm 73:2). Nobody edited that out. It is in there because the reading you have been doing is an ancient one and God is not shocked by it.
Your circumstances are not a letter from God about you, and He has never once written to anybody that way. It is written that He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45), which is not a promise of fairness. It is a plain statement that weather is not a message. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and gets it under the four years you have been decoding.
And here is what has not happened, which is the actual subject of this page.
God has not withdrawn from you, and the last four years are not the sound of Him stepping back. It is written that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, is able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38). Look at the phrase things present. That is the four years, named, in the list, on the wrong side of the sentence. And His Spirit is what makes that a floor under a man rather than a verse he already knew.
Now the guardrail, and it is why this site exists at all.
Nobody here is going to tell you that this is the season it turns around. Nobody here is going to suggest that because you gave, something is on its way to you now instead. That would be the same machine with a kinder face on it, and you have had enough of machines.
God's faithfulness to you was never payment for anything you handed over, and that is the best news on this page, because it means it cannot fall into arrears. It is written that if we are faithless He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself (2 Timothy 2:13). His faithfulness is not a response. It is what He is made of. The Spirit is the one who makes that stop being a doctrine and start being the reason a man can get down off the chair.
So get down off the chair.
You gave something. It was yours, it was real, and you handed it over believing God. Nobody on this page is going to audit it, revalue it, explain what it was really for, or tell you what it bought. It did not buy anything, and that is not because it was too small. It is because God was never selling.
And the four years are not His answer about you. They are four years. Hard ones. He has been in every one of them and has not withdrawn one inch, and nothing in them is a message about what you did on a Tuesday in October.
Nothing is required of you for that to be true. It has been true the whole time you have been reading.
You are not looking at a verdict when you look at the top of that wardrobe, and God has not moved further off since the night the tin came down. It is written that He will never leave you nor forsake you (Hebrews 13:5). The Holy Spirit is the One who makes never a word about a Person rather than a slogan about a situation.
Come and see. He has nothing behind His back.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud on the landing you are standing on. You have the right to speak them because you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and that standing was given to you and not bought, which is exactly the thing this verse has been used to obscure. Scripture is the ground under every line and the Holy Spirit is what makes them live in a person. Speak first to the years you have been decoding, then to the thing you have quietly concluded about yourself since October, and then turn and speak to Him. Whatever He does in the years after you say them is His, and it is not a scoreboard.
- Four hard years, you are not a letter from God about me. He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, weather has never once been a message, and you can stop being read.
- Verdict that a man who believed God got taken in, you are not standing on this landing. It is written that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, and the Spirit is the One who makes that a commendation rather than an embarrassment.
- Jesus, You said neither this man nor his parents sinned when they asked You whose fault a life was, and You have never once answered anybody that way. I set this down in Your name and I bring no accounting with me, because Your faithfulness was never payment, and I have not been writing into a hole.
Malachi 3:10
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
