Asking Family Is Worse

You could ask a stranger tomorrow.

Genuinely. If a man you had never met needed the thing you do, you would say what you do and what it costs and you would sleep fine afterward.

And you cannot ask your cousin, who has a place that needs exactly this, who you have known since you were four, and who would almost certainly say yes.

That is the shape of it and it makes no sense from the outside, so let me say what I think is going on inside it.

A stranger is only meeting the man in front of him. He has no other information. Whatever he decides, he decides about one piece of work.

Your cousin has thirty eight years of information. He remembers the job you left, the year that went badly, the thing you said you were going to do and did not do.

So the question you would be asking him does not arrive alone. It arrives with a file attached.

You are not asking them to reconsider your whole life, and one question about work has never once been a summary of a man.

And I am not going to tell you the family dynamics are imaginary, because they are not, and pretending otherwise would insult you.

What I want to do is separate two things that have got welded together, and then hand you something the size of a Tuesday.

Among his own kin, and in his own house

There is a line about this that comes from the one person who had the least reason to be dismissed by anybody.

But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. (Mark 6:4, King James Version)

Among his own kin, and in his own house.

That is not a complaint. It is an observation, and it is made calmly, and it names the exact circuit you are standing in: the people who have known somebody longest find it hardest to see them as anything new.

You are standing inside something scripture describes plainly rather than something peculiar to your family, and being hard to see at home has never once been evidence that a man is nothing. Mark 6:4 says among his own kin, and in his own house, and the Holy Spirit is the one who put that sentence in Jesus' own mouth about Himself.

And notice what He does next in that chapter. He does not stay and argue about it.

He goes round the villages teaching. He moves. The people who could not see Him were not persuaded, and He does not spend His life on persuading them.

You have permission to move rather than to convince, and going where the work is has never once been the same as giving up on the people at home. The Holy Spirit is the one who sends a man out from a place that cannot see him, and it is written in Mark 6 that He went round about the villages and got on with it.

The file is old

Now let me deal with the file, because that is the actual object here.

Whatever your cousin thinks he knows about you was filed a long time ago. Families do not update. They set a version of a person at about twenty five and keep it, because it is easier and because everybody is busy and because that is how families work.

That version is not a judgment that is being re passed every day. It is an old note that nobody has read in years.

You are being weighed by a document nobody has opened in a decade, and an old impression has never once been the same as a current opinion. The written word has people asking is not this the carpenter, which was true and years out of date, and the Spirit of God is the one who is not bound by what a village decided a long time ago.

And here is the part that might genuinely help.

You do not have to update the file. That is the mistake most men make with family: they try to ask for the work and correct the record at the same time, and the correcting is what makes it unbearable.

Ask the small question and leave the record alone. The record will update itself, slowly, out of the work, or it will not, and either way it is not this week's job.

You are able to ask one question without also defending a decade, and a small request has never once required a man to argue his case first. The Holy Spirit is the one who separates a question from a defense, and Mark 6:4 describes the difficulty without asking anybody to solve it on the spot.

Pick the one who is not the hardest

So the assignment, and there is a choice inside it.

Ask one person this week, out loud or in a message, if they need it done.

And it does not have to be the cousin. If the cousin is the hardest one, he is the wrong one to start with, and starting with the hardest one is a thing men do in order to fail honorably.

Start with the one on the edge of the family. The brother in law. The cousin's wife. The man at the same table who is family by marriage and does not carry thirty eight years of your history.

You are allowed to begin at the edge, and choosing the easier door first has never once been the same as avoiding the room. The Spirit of God is the one who is not in a hurry with a man, and the written word has Jesus going round the villages rather than standing in one doorway.

And when you ask, say it the way you would say it to a stranger. Same words, same tone, no history in it.

You are able to use the stranger sentence on a relative, and the same words in a familiar room have never once been dishonest. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives a man one plain sentence for both rooms, and it is written that the difficulty was in the hearers rather than in the man speaking.