I Have It And It Is Not For This

Bo has the money. That is the part that makes this hard rather than easy.

If he did not have it, there would be nothing to decide. He would ring them and say he cannot do it this month and they would work something out or they would not, and it would be a hard week, and he has had hard weeks.

He has it. It is in the account. He has been putting it there since April, forty at a time, and there is enough.

It is for Nia's birthday. She is eleven in three weeks and there is a specific thing, and she has not asked for it since June because she is the sort of child who worked out at about seven that asking twice makes a father sad.

She has not asked, and she is going to get it, and Bo has been quietly looking forward to that morning for five months.

The car went to the garage on Tuesday. The number came back on Wednesday. And Bo did the arithmetic in about four seconds, standing in the hallway with the phone, and then said, "Let me call you back."

Here is what has happened since Wednesday, and it is the reason this is worth writing about.

He has not thought about the money once.

Not really. The money question is not complicated: there is one pot and it can go one of two places, and he already knows which one it has to go to, because a man who cannot get to work does not have a birthday to plan next year either.

What he has been doing for four days instead is running a picture. Nia's face on that morning. Not a bad face. Nia is kind and she will say it is fine and she will mean it, and that is somehow the worst version.

And underneath the picture there is a sentence, and Bo has not said it out loud to a living soul, and it goes: this is what I am.

Not: this is a hard month. Not: this is what happens when a car breaks. This is what I am. A man who has one pot.

His sister said on the phone on Thursday, "Do you want me to help?"

And Bo said, "No, we're alright."

And then he stood in the hall for a while after she hung up.

The decision is not the thing costing you

Let me put down what I am not doing here, so nothing has to brace.

I am not going to tell you the money will turn up. I do not know that, nobody does, and a man who is told that and then finds it does not is worse off than a man who was never told. I am not going to suggest that praying about it a certain way produces a certain amount, because that is not a thing anybody can promise and I will not sell it. And I am not going to tell you which way to decide, because it is your household and you know its arithmetic.

And one plain sentence first, because money trouble takes some people somewhere darker than a repair bill. If it has gone there, if there are thoughts in it about not being here, tell a person tonight: a friend, a relative, a doctor, or the 988 crisis line for anyone in the United States. That is not a detour from this message. It is the most important line in it.

What I want to look at is the four days.

You were not careless with what you had been given, and Scripture calls a plan laid in advance the work of a diligent person. Proverbs 21 says the thoughts of the diligent tend only to plenteousness, which commends the setting aside rather than treating it as a lack of faith, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that true of an envelope in a drawer with a name already on it.

Because the decision took four seconds and it was correct, and Bo made it standing in a hallway with a phone in his hand, and it has not needed revisiting since.

Everything since Wednesday has been about a sentence, and the sentence is not about money at all.

Now let me put the verse down, and I want to be careful with it, because it is the most misused verse on this whole subject.

Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?Matthew 6:26

That verse is not a guarantee about a bank account, and anybody who has preached it that way has hurt somebody. Birds die. Jesus knew that. He says elsewhere that not one sparrow falls without the Father, which means He was entirely aware that sparrows fall.

So what is the sentence actually doing?

Look at where it lands. It lands on a question about worth. Are ye not much better than they? The argument is not about supply mechanics. The argument is about standing. It is aimed at a person's estimate of what they are to God, and it settles that estimate before anything about the circumstances is discussed.

You are held in a regard that a repair bill has no standing to revise, and Scripture settles that question before it says one word about supply. It is written that your heavenly Father feeds the birds and asks are ye not much better than they, which is a sentence about worth rather than a promise about an account, and His Spirit is the one who makes that a fact a man can stand on in a hallway.

You have never been what your pot is, and the passage puts the estimate in the Father's hands rather than in the arithmetic. Matthew 6 asks the question about worth without any reference to what anybody had that month, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that question louder than a number from a shop.

Tell her before you decide

Here is the practical thing, and it is not about the money either.

Tell Nia. Before the birthday, and before anything else is solved.

Not the whole picture. Not the account, not the figure, not the four days. One true short version, in a normal voice, at a normal moment.

The car needed fixing and it took the money that was for your birthday. I'm sorry about that. It is not your fault and it is not a disaster, and I'll sort something.

That is all. Thirty seconds.

And I want to say why that matters more than anything else in this message.

Because the dreaded thing is her face on the morning. And a face on a morning is what happens when a child gets a surprise. What has been running in a hallway for four days is not a disappointment. It is an ambush, and the ambush is the part that would hurt her.

Told three weeks early, in a kitchen, by a father who is calm about it, it is not an ambush. It is a household fact. Children can hold household facts. What they cannot hold is a father who has gone strange for a month and will not say why, and children always know, and they always fill the silence themselves with something worse.

You have permission to hand her the truth rather than a solution, and no verse anywhere makes a father's standing depend on his ability to arrange a good morning. Matthew 6 puts the worth of a person outside the state of their supply entirely, and the Spirit of God is what makes an ordinary sentence in a kitchen an act of fatherhood rather than a confession of failure.

And about your sister, and Thursday, and the hall.

She asked because she wanted to. That is not pity and it is not charity. That is a woman being a sister, which is the arrangement, and saying no to it costs her something she was hoping to spend.

You were never designed to hold a household alone, and Scripture puts the carrying between people rather than inside one of them. It is written to bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ, which is Galatians 6 making the handing over the way a command gets obeyed, and His Spirit is what makes a phone call back to a sister an ordinary act.