The Repair Or A Month Of Something Else

Karim has been at the kitchen table since about nine and it is nearly midnight and he has not written anything down.

The arithmetic is not complicated. It has two lines in it.

If the car gets fixed, then for about a month there is no margin at all, which in practice means the two things his household does that are not strictly necessary do not happen. One of them is a class his wife goes to on Wednesdays. The other is that his mother gets driven to see her sister twice a month and there is gas in that.

If the car does not get fixed, he does not know how he gets to work in three weeks when the temporary arrangement with his colleague ends, and after that the whole thing is worse in every direction.

So it is not really a choice. He knows what has to happen. He knew at nine o'clock.

What he has been doing for three hours is something else, and it is the thing this message is about.

He has been holding a trial.

Because a man sitting alone at a table at midnight with two options in front of him does not simply choose. He examines the fact that the two options exist at all. He asks how a household ends up here. He looks at each of the last four years and finds the places where a different decision would have left more margin.

And by half past eleven the question is no longer which of these two. The question is what kind of man has a month with no margin in it, and that question has no answer and no end and cannot be settled by anything on the table.

His wife came down at about eleven for water and said, "Are you alright?"

And Karim said, "Working something out."

And she said, "Is it the car?"

And he said, "It's fine, go back to bed."

And she stood there for a second longer than that answer needed, and then she went.

Three hours on a decision that took four minutes

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

I am not going to tell you the money will arrive. I do not know that and neither does anybody else, and a man who is told it and then finds otherwise has been treated badly by whoever told him. I am not going to suggest that a particular prayer produces a particular sum, because that is a lie about God and it damages the people with the least. And I am not going to tell you which of your two lines to choose, because it is your household and your mother and your wife's Wednesday, and you know all three of those better than any writer could.

And one plain thing first. Money trouble takes some people somewhere much 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 wife, a brother, 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 trial.

Because the decision was made at nine and everything since has been a hearing, and the hearing has been running with no defense counsel, no evidence for the other side, and a judge who has already decided.

Now let me put the verse down, and I want to handle it carefully, because it sits in the passage most often misused on this subject.

Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.Matthew 6:32

Notice the exact claim. It is not He will send them. It is not ask and the amount arrives. It is a statement about what God already knows.

Knoweth that ye have need.

And in context that is enormous, because Jesus has just been talking about people scrambling after food and drink and clothing, and the thing He offers as the answer to the scrambling is not a guarantee of supply. It is the fact that the Father is not unaware.

Which means a man at a table at midnight is not explaining himself to a God who has to be informed of the situation. The situation is already known, in full, including the class on Wednesdays and the gas for his mother.

You are not making a case to somebody who needs the facts, and Scripture states plainly that the Father already knows what a household needs. It is written that your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things, which is a statement about His knowledge rather than a promise about the timing of supply, and His Spirit is the one who makes that a genuine rest at a kitchen table.

You have been under a known and understood need since nine o'clock, and the passage puts the knowing before any asking happens. Matthew 6 has the Father knowing rather than being told, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that a reason to stop rehearsing rather than a reason to hope harder.

A decision and a verdict are not the same thing

Here is the part I most want to hand you, and it will save a great many midnights.

A decision has two or more options, a set of costs, and an end. It closes. Once made, it stops asking for anything.

A verdict has no options. It is a judgment about a person, and it never closes, because there is no evidence that would satisfy it and no moment at which it is finished.

At nine o'clock there was a decision on that table. Two lines and a cost.

By eleven there was a verdict being sought, and it was being sought by the same tired man who was supposed to be doing the arithmetic.

And here is the thing about a verdict that a decision never does: it makes the decision itself harder to execute, because now paying the garage does not just cost money, it also confirms something.

So he sits.

You have a decision in front of you rather than a verdict, and no verse anywhere makes a hard month a report on a man. Matthew 6 has the Father knowing the need without one word of comment on how the household got there, and the Spirit of God is what keeps a table at midnight a place of arithmetic rather than a courtroom.

And I want to say the thing about the two things that get cut, because that is where the sting actually is.

It is not the money. It is that the cost lands on a wife and a mother, and a man who chose the car is going to feel every Wednesday of that month.

But look at it plainly. His wife goes to that class because she likes it and she would give it up in a heartbeat for a month if it meant he got to work, and she would not think about it twice, and he knows that, and it is the reason he cannot bear to be the one who takes it.

That is love running in both directions and nobody being allowed to spend it.

You were never intended to make this decision without the household in the room, and Scripture puts the bearing between people rather than inside one at a table. It is written to bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ, which is Galatians 6 requiring somebody willing to be carried, and His Spirit is what makes telling a wife at eleven at night an act of obedience.