I Asked Once And It Went Badly

You asked once. You remember the room.

You remember what you said and how it landed and the particular way the other man's face did something before he answered. You remember walking out and the walk to the car.

And that was eleven years ago, or six, or nineteen, and you have not asked anybody for anything since.

I want to say something about the size of that afternoon, because I think it has been allowed to grow.

At the time it was an hour. Since then it has been doing a job: it has been the evidence in a case you have been quietly running against yourself, and evidence gets stronger every time it is looked at, even when nothing new has been added to it.

You are not that afternoon, and one bad hour has never once been a fair sample of what a man can do.

And I am not going to tell you it did not happen or that it was not as bad as you remember. It probably was as bad as you remember. Men your age do not usually exaggerate this sort of thing, they minimize it.

What I want to do is put it back to its actual size, which is one hour, in one room, with one man, a long time ago.

He encouraged himself in the LORD his God

There is a day in David's life that is worse than anything you or I have had, and the sentence that ends it is the one I want.

His town has been burned. The families are gone. And the men with him, his own men, are talking about stoning him.

And David was greatly distressed; for the people spake of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters: but David encouraged himself in the LORD his God. (1 Samuel 30:6, King James Version)

But David encouraged himself in the LORD his God.

Nobody encouraged him. There was nobody left to do it. He did it himself, in God, on a day when every single person around him had turned.

You are in a text where a man had to do that for himself with nobody left to help, and a man alone with a bad day has never once been a man outside the reach of God. 1 Samuel 30:6 says but David encouraged himself in the LORD his God, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that possible in a person rather than leaving it to willpower.

And notice the word but. The whole verse is disaster and then one word turns it.

Everything before the but is still true. The town is still burned. The but does not undo the facts, it changes what happens next.

You have a set of facts that do not need undoing, and a bad thing that genuinely happened has never once had to be erased before a man could move. The Holy Spirit is the one who stands on the other side of that word, and it is written in 1 Samuel 30:6 with the disaster left fully intact.

What actually happened in that room

Now let me go back into your room for a minute, because the account of it that survived is missing some things.

You remember what you did. That part has been gone over hundreds of times. What almost certainly never got collected is any information about him.

You do not know what kind of week he was having. You do not know whether he had just been told to cut something, or whether he had said no to four people that morning, or whether the thing he said had anything to do with you at all.

You are holding half a transcript and calling it the whole event, and a man's reaction has never once been made only of the person standing in front of him. The written word records a whole camp turning on a man for reasons that were about their own grief, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets somebody see the other half of an old room.

And here is the second thing about that afternoon.

You were a different man. Younger, worse at it, with less in your hands. Whatever he was declining, he was declining something that is not what you would bring him now.

You have not offered the current version to anybody, and a no given to a younger man has never once been a no to the one standing here. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a person from being permanently identified with an earlier version of himself, and it is written that the same man who was nearly stoned went out that same day and recovered everything.

Ask a different kind of person

So the assignment, and there is a piece of strategy in it that I think is legitimate.

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

And make it structurally different from that room. If that was a formal setting, make this an informal one. If that was somebody senior, make this somebody sideways. If that was face to face, make this a message.

That is not avoidance. That is not asking your body to walk into the same shaped room and feel nothing.

You are allowed to change the shape of the room, and choosing different ground has never once been the same as refusing to go. The Spirit of God is the one who is not in a hurry with a man carrying an old afternoon, and the written word has a man go out after the worst day rather than back into it.

And one more thing about the ask itself. Keep it shorter than the one you made then.

The thing men do after a bad ask is over prepare the next one, and an over prepared ask carries the smell of the old one on it. Short and flat is better.

You are able to say something short this week, and a plain sentence has never once needed the weight of eleven years behind it. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man travel light, and 1 Samuel 30:6 has a man strengthen himself and then move on the same day.