Twenty past four and both ovens are cold.
The big one went in May and he nursed it through with a man who comes out from forty minutes away and knows it better than the manufacturer does. The small one went eleven days ago, on a Tuesday, in the middle of a bake, and when it went it made a sound he has not been able to stop hearing.
The rent review letter came in the same two weeks. He read it standing where he is standing now.
Six years he has said it over this shop. Every morning, out loud, with the key in the door: this shop is blessed. His grandmother said something like it over a bakery in another country and he does not remember her, only the fact of it, which was handed to him by his mother as a thing the family does.
This shop is blessed.
He said it this morning and his hands were shaking while he said it, which he noticed, and then he could not stop noticing.
The shutter is half down because he has not decided whether to open. If he opens he sells what is in the case, which is not much, and people ask him where the good bread is and he tells them and then he watches their faces do the thing faces do.
He is thirty nine. There are two people who work for him and one of them has been here since the start.
If you have been saying a thing over a hard situation every morning while the situation gets worse, you know that shutter. And you know the specific thing that happened this morning, which is not despair. It is the moment you hear your own voice saying the sentence and something in you asks, quietly, whether you are actually praying or just making a noise you are used to making.
The word, and then the gap
Let me stand in the doorway and say the plain thing, because your hands were shaking and you noticed and nobody else did.
The trouble is not the ovens. Ovens are money and money is a problem you can at least name. The trouble is that a sentence you have said every morning for six years now sounds, in your own ears, like a thing you say. And when that happens a man stops being able to tell the difference between faith and habit, and there is no way to test it from inside, and that is what is actually shaking.
So let me put the word straight before anything else, because the sentence you have been saying is carrying a meaning it should not have to carry.
Blessed does not mean the ovens hold. It means the favor of God is resting on a person, His face is turned toward them. It is about where He is looking. Your grandmother's sentence was true in another country in years that were not all good ones, and it was never a service contract on a piece of equipment.
Now let me show you a sentence Paul wrote that has a gap in it, and the gap is where you are standing this morning.
We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.2 Corinthians 4:8-9
Read the shape of it. Four times he names the pressure and four times he names what it has not managed to do.
He does not deny the first half. Troubled on every side is not a small phrase and he means it. Perplexed means he does not know what to do, and he says so, in writing, as an apostle.
And then, each time, the second half. Not crushed. Not in despair. Not forsaken. Not destroyed.
You are pressed on every side this morning and you are not crushed, and the gap between those two is a real place with a floor in it. Second Corinthians 4:8 puts the pressure and the not crushed in one clause each, and it is the Holy Spirit who is the one Paul names two verses later as the reason the treasure holds in a clay jar, which is why the floor under you is not your own composure.
Perplexed is allowed
Now I want to stay on one of those four words, because it is yours this morning and nobody preaches it.
Perplexed. It means at a loss. It means the man does not know what to do next. Paul writes it about himself and puts it in a letter that people will read for two thousand years, and he does not apologize for it or explain it away.
Which means not knowing what to do about your ovens is not a spiritual failure. It is one of the four things on Paul's list, and he had it, and the second half of his clause is not "but I worked it out". It is "but not in despair".
So the two are separable. A man can be genuinely at a loss and not be in despair, and that gap is exactly what has been holding you up for eleven days without you being able to name it.
You have been at a loss and not in despair for eleven days, and that gap has been doing the work while you thought nothing was. Scripture puts perplexed and not in despair side by side rather than in sequence, and it is the Holy Spirit who is the one keeping the second half of that clause true in a man who cannot see how the first half resolves.
And the shaking. Your hands shook while you said the sentence this morning, and you have been reading that as evidence that the sentence is hollow.
It is not evidence about the sentence. It is evidence about your nervous system, which has had eleven days of a sound it cannot stop hearing and a letter it has read too many times. Bodies do that. Nowhere in Scripture does a shaking hand disqualify a word. Moses had a speech problem and God did not give the job to somebody with better delivery.
You are not required to be steady in order to be believed, and your body has never once been the guarantor of your faith. The written word puts the treasure in an earthen vessel on purpose so that the excellency of the power is God's and not ours, and it is His Spirit who is that power in a man whose hands are shaking at twenty past four.
What I am not going to say about the shop
Now, plainly, because you are a man who has been given advice by a lot of people in eleven days and can hear a soft sentence coming from the far end of the street.
I am not going to tell you the shop survives. I do not know. I do not know about the rent review or about whether the small oven can be fixed or replaced or whether the numbers work out. Anybody who tells you they know is guessing at you in a confident voice, and you have had enough of that.
And I am not going to tell you the trouble is being used to build something. Ovens fail. A landlord raised a rent because landlords do. God is not the author of your quarter and I will not turn your grandmother's shop into a lesson plan.
Both halves. This quarter is not the withdrawal of His favor and it is not His favor in disguise.
You are favored and both ovens are cold, and both of those are true in this doorway at twenty past four. Scripture puts the pressure and the preservation in the same sentence without resolving either into the other, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a man able to hold two true things when he would rather have one clean story.
Open or do not open. That is a business decision and it is yours and it is not a spiritual test. And if the money gets to the place where you cannot see a way through, talk to somebody who can act, this week, in daylight, out loud. That is what a man does and it has nothing to do with faith.
So here is what I want to hand you before you decide about the shutter.
Say the sentence again. Not because saying it fixes an oven, and not because your grandmother said it, and not because a man who says it every morning is stronger than a man who does not. Say it because it is true, and because you now know what it means, which you did not this morning.
You are blessed in this doorway, this morning, with two cold ovens and a letter you have read too many times, and blessed means the favor of God is resting on you here. Second Corinthians 4:8 puts a man on every side under pressure and not crushed, and it is the Holy Spirit who Paul says is the earnest given to us, a deposit paid in advance, which is why the gap in that verse has something in it rather than being a brave silence.
So take the word. Not the version that was a warranty on equipment. His. Say it over the quarter you have actually had, the sound the small oven made, the rent review, the two people who work for you and the one who has been here since the start, and mean by it what Paul meant in a hard letter: I am pressed and I am not crushed, and His face is turned toward this shop and toward me.
You have been held up for eleven days by something other than your own nerve, and the shaking this morning proves it rather than disproving it. Scripture puts the treasure in a clay jar so the power is visibly not the jar's, and His Spirit is that power, which is why a man whose hands shake can say a true sentence and have it stand.
Declare this over yourself
Say this out loud in the shop. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the standing to say what a word means over your own life came with Him and not with a working oven. Scripture is under every line here and the Holy Spirit carries it, not the steadiness of your hands at twenty past four. What He does about the rent review, or the shop, is His to decide, in His own way and in His own time, and I will not guess it for you. Your part is to say it and mean it, and to talk to somebody who can act about the money this week.
- Shutter that is half down this morning, you are a shop front and you are not the measure of what is holding me. Second Corinthians 4 says troubled on every side yet not distressed, and the gap between those two is where I am standing.
- Question that asks whether I am praying or making a familiar noise, get out, in the name of Jesus. Paul wrote perplexed about himself and put it in Scripture without apologizing, and being at a loss has never once been the same thing as being in despair.
- Lord, Your favor is on me in this shop with both ovens cold, and my hands shaking are not the guarantor of anything You said. The treasure is in a clay jar so the power is plainly Yours, and I am saying so at my own counter this morning.
2 Corinthians 4:8-9
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.
