I Need The Work More Than The Money

He is not just a customer. He is most of your month.

And that is the whole problem, and it is why you have not said anything about the four weeks.

Because there is a calculation running in you, and it goes: if I push him, he might go elsewhere, and if he goes elsewhere the situation is worse than being owed. Being owed is survivable. Losing him is not.

So you have said nothing, for four weeks, and the not saying anything is not patience. It is a man being held in place.

You are allowed to ask the people you depend on, and needing the work has never once meant giving up the right to be paid for it.

Let me say the uncomfortable thing plainly and then we will do something useful with it.

Right now you are in a position where somebody can not pay you and you will not mention it. That is not a customer relationship. That is a position, and it is one that gets worse rather than better if nothing changes, because a thing that works keeps happening.

And I am not going to tell you the fear is unfounded. He might go elsewhere. That is a real possibility and I am not going to pretend otherwise on a page written for a man with children.

Neither is it in our power to redeem them

There is a chapter in Nehemiah where working people come and say out loud, in public, what their position actually is.

Yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, our children as their children: and, lo, we bring into bondage our sons and our daughters to be servants, and some of our daughters are brought unto bondage already: neither is it in our power to redeem them; for other men have our lands and vineyards. (Nehemiah 5:5, King James Version)

Neither is it in our power to redeem them.

That is a group of working men naming, out loud, that they are in a position they cannot get out of by themselves.

You are looking at people who said their real position out loud rather than managing it quietly, and naming a trap has never once been the same thing as complaining. Nehemiah 5:5 says neither is it in our power to redeem them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who kept that public statement in the record.

And look at what happens next in that chapter. Nehemiah is angry. Not with them. With the arrangement.

He calls an assembly and the whole thing is dealt with in the open, because it had been running in the dark and that was what had allowed it.

You have something that has been running in the dark, and a situation nobody has named out loud has never once corrected itself. The Holy Spirit is the one who brings a thing into the open, and it is written in Nehemiah 5 that the naming came before anything changed.

What the fear is actually measuring

Now let me do the arithmetic with you, because I think the fear is measuring the wrong thing.

The fear says: if I ask, I might lose him.

But look at what is already being lost. The work is being done and not paid for, which is the same outcome as losing him except that the work carries on as well.

Four more weeks of this and the position is not better. It is the same amount of not being paid plus a month of your labor.

You are already in the outcome you are trying to avoid, and work done without payment has never once been a safer arrangement than a customer who left. The written word has men name a position they could not escape, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a man look at what is actually happening rather than at what he fears might.

And here is the second thing, and it is the one I would want a man in your position to take seriously.

A man who never asks is not a man who is easy to work with. He is a man who is easy to leave at the bottom of the pile.

Customers do not reward silence with loyalty. They reward it by continuing to do the thing that has not caused a problem. That is not malice, that is just how a pile works.

You have been teaching one man where you sit in his pile, and four weeks of silence have never once moved anybody up it. The Holy Spirit is the one who gets a man to say the thing at last, and Nehemiah 5:5 has the whole matter said in public rather than carried.

One plain sentence, today

So the assignment, and for you there is a piece of wording that protects the relationship while it asks.

Send the message asking for it, today, in one plain sentence.

The work, the date, the ask. One line.

You are able to send one line to a man you depend on, and a short plain message about an invoice has never once been the thing that ended a working relationship. The Spirit of God is the one present in a message like that, and the written word has working people name their position out loud.

And the wording that protects it is simply this: say it the way you would say anything else about a job.

The catastrophe you are imagining involves a confrontation. There is not going to be one. There is going to be a sentence about an invoice, in the same tone you use about a delivery or a date, and he will read it in eleven seconds between two other things.

You are able to send a sentence in an ordinary working tone, and a question about an invoice has never once been a confrontation in anybody's inbox. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives a man an ordinary voice for a hard message, and it is written in Nehemiah 5 that the naming is what allowed anything to move.

And do not put the children in the message. Your reason is not his reason to pay. The work is.