What the Apron Was For

For the believer who has worn an inheritance for years without knowing what it was made to do.

Imagine a man clearing out his father's workshop in the week after the funeral, working slowly because there's no hurry and because stopping is worse.

There's an apron on a nail behind the door. Heavy canvas, two pockets, a strap that's been knotted rather than repaired. He's seen it hanging there his whole life and he has never once taken it off the nail.

He puts it on, mostly because it's cold in there. And the pockets aren't empty. There's a pencil worn down to two inches, a folded tape measure, and a small tin of the particular screws his father used for one job and no other.

That's when it lands on him. He's been treating this apron as a thing that belonged to his father, a piece of the man, something to be kept. It isn't. It's a tool for work, and it's still loaded with the work it was doing.

He has an inheritance like that in his faith too, and he's been hanging it on a nail for twenty years.

You were handed an inheritance made for work, and it still has the work in its pockets. The written Word describes the faith in a run of positives with nothing to push against, and the Holy Spirit is putting that inheritance to use in you rather than preserving it.

What Happens to an Inheritance on a Nail

Nobody decides to turn a tool into a relic. It happens by care.

You're given something by people who mattered. You want to keep it properly, so you protect it, and protecting it means using it a little less, and using it less means it accumulates meaning faster than it accumulates wear. Twenty years later it's precious and it hasn't been off the nail.

That's what happens to a tradition. The careful language your family handed you was made for a job. It was built to describe God to somebody who didn't know Him, and to hold a group of people steady in a hard season, and both of those are work.

And now you defend it rather than use it. You'd be upset if anybody spoke against it, and you'd struggle to say what it was made to do. That isn't disloyalty. It's what happens when love turns a working tool into an heirloom without anybody noticing.

A Description Built for Use

Here's the opening line of a passage written to believers being pulled several ways at once:

There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling.Ephesians 4:4 (KJV)

Read it for defensiveness. There isn't any. Nothing in that sentence is being protected, argued for, or held against somebody, and no clause requires another group to exist before it means anything.

It's a working description: one body, one Spirit, one hope. You could say it to a stranger in a cold workshop and it would do a job, which is exactly what it was made for.

You hold a description made to be used rather than defended. The written Word puts it in working positives with nothing to guard, and the Holy Spirit is the one putting it to work in you now.

The Pockets Tell You What It Was For

Here's what I'd carry out of that workshop if I could take a single thing away with me.

You can tell what any tool was made for by what's worn on it. A pencil ground down to two inches says somebody marked a great deal of timber. A tin of one particular screw says there was a job that mattered enough to keep the right thing in the pocket for it.

The apron didn't need explaining. It needed putting on, and the moment it was on, the work it was built for was obvious from the inside.

So here's the question for the inheritance you've been guarding. What's in its pockets? What was worn down by use, and what was kept because somebody needed the right thing to hand? Whatever those are, that's what your tradition was made to do, and it's almost certainly not arguing.

What your inheritance was made for is written in what's worn on it. The written Word gives the faith as a working description, and the Holy Spirit is the one wearing it down through you rather than keeping it pristine.

Nothing Here Is a Criticism of Your Father

Let me be plain, because there's a version of this message that would wound you and I won't write it.

He wasn't wrong to hold what he held, and the people in your tradition weren't wrong to be careful. Most of them were guarding something at a time when guarding it cost them, and the firmness you remember was love under pressure rather than coldness.

I'm not asking you to think less of anybody, and I'm not asking you to go back and set anyone straight. You can keep every stitch of the inheritance and still take it off the nail.

You can honor everything you were given and still put it on and work in it. Scripture supplies the working form without disparaging anyone who learned to guard it, and the Holy Spirit does the using rather than the discarding.

Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.