My Brother Got Something Obvious

They went in the same car. That is the detail that has been hard to get past.

Same car, same evening, same row, four seats from the aisle. His brother went up when they asked, and he went up as well, because they went together and that is what you do, and a man prayed for both of them within about ninety seconds of each other.

Something happened to his brother that everybody in that hall could see. It is nine years ago and people still mention it.

Nothing visible happened to him at all. He stood there, then he sat down, then he drove them both home and his brother did not stop talking the whole way and he was glad for him and he has never once said otherwise.

He does not think God cheated him. He would find that language embarrassing. What he has instead is a small quiet arrangement in which his brother is the one it happened to and he is the one who drove, and he has been living inside that arrangement for nine years without ever inspecting it.

If somebody sat beside you and came away with something you did not, come and sit on the step. Nothing that happened to your brother is going to be questioned here.

One evening is not the accounting

Let us look at the arrangement, because nine years is long enough for a thing to stop looking like an opinion.

It rests on a single evening. One night, one hall, ninety seconds, and out of that a man has built a permanent description of two brothers. That is an enormous load for one evening to carry, and no evening in anybody's life is designed to carry it.

And it quietly assumes that what happens in front of witnesses is the whole record. It never is. There is no reason at all to believe that a man's dealings with God are summarized by the most visible ninety seconds of them.

You are not the one who drove. Nothing about that hall has ever been the account of what God has done in you. I am not saying that to level anybody up. The written word says the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal (1 Corinthians 12:7), where every man is deliberately without exception and the giving is stated as a fact rather than as a possibility, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that hold in a man on a porch nine years later.

The word is given, and it is given to each

Here is what steadied me, and it is not a doubt about your brother.

Read who the verse names as recipients, because it is easy to read past it to get to the interesting part.

But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal.1 Corinthians 12:7

To every man. Not to the ones who responded first. Not to the ones something visible happened to. The verse is written into a congregation where people had begun sorting themselves by what could be seen, and it answers by putting the giving on everybody before it says one word about what the giving looks like.

The order matters. Everybody first. Variety second.

You are inside the every, and Scripture settles that before it ever discusses form. That is written into the order of the chapter itself, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries that into a man who drove home nine years ago.

Nothing here takes anything off your brother

Something has to be said very plainly, because a page like this could easily become a quiet case against a man who did nothing wrong.

What happened to him was real. He was not showing off, the hall was not mistaken, and nine years of people mentioning it is not nine years of exaggeration. He got something, and it was God, and it is his.

The relief is not that his was less than everybody thought.

You have something of your own, and it has never been in competition with his. Scripture says now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:4), where two different outcomes are traced back to one hand without either being downgraded, and it is the Holy Spirit, and not one evening, who distributes.

And if these nine years have cost more than anybody around here knows, if sleep has gone, if the evenings have started to frighten, talk to somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, a crisis line, and the emergency services if there is danger to anybody tonight. That is not going around God. It is one of the ways He keeps people.