What If They Say No

You have not asked anybody.

And if we are honest about why, it is not that the opportunity has not come up. It has come up about four times in three weeks, and each time there was a half second where you could have opened your mouth, and each time the half second closed.

What happens in that half second is not laziness and it is not even really fear of the person. It is something in your body that arrives before any thought does, and it arrives at the possibility of a no.

I want to be precise about what that is, because naming it accurately takes some of its power.

A no is information. It means that this person, at this moment, does not need this thing.

But that is not what it feels like it means. It feels like a judgment has been passed, in public, on whether you are any good, and that once it has been passed it cannot be unheard.

You are able to survive a no, and one person declining a piece of work has never once been a ruling on a life.

And I will not tell you that they will say yes. I do not know these people and neither does anybody else writing about this, and the moment somebody guarantees you a yes they have started selling.

What I will do is take you to a woman who walked into a room where the no was not a bruised feeling. It was her life.

If I perish, I perish

Esther is being asked to go in to a king uninvited, which carried a death penalty, in order to speak for her people.

She has already said why that is impossible. And then she says this.

Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast likewise; and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish. (Esther 4:16, King James Version)

If I perish, I perish.

That is not bravado. That is a woman who has looked directly at the worst outcome, named it out loud, and gone anyway.

You are looking at a woman who named the worst thing before she moved, and saying the bad outcome out loud has never once made a person more likely to meet it. Esther 4:16 says and if I perish, I perish, and the Holy Spirit is the one who kept that sentence rather than a braver one.

And look at what she does first. Gather, fast, three days. She does not go alone and she does not go immediately.

She puts other people around the thing before she walks into it, which is a completely different kind of courage from the one people usually preach.

You have permission to gather people around this before you do it, and asking others to stand with you has never once been the same as being unable to do it yourself. The Holy Spirit is the one who moves with a person into a room, and it is written in Esther 4:16 that she called for three days of company before one walk down a corridor.

A no is one person on one day

Now let me take the no apart, because I think it has been allowed to be far bigger than it is.

When somebody says no to a piece of work, here is the full list of what it tells you. This person, today, for reasons you mostly cannot see, does not want this thing done or cannot pay for it now.

That is the whole list. Everything else you have added to it, you added.

You are carrying a sentence somebody has not even said yet and adding paragraphs to it, and a decline has never once contained the extra material a person hears in it. The written word has a woman name the actual worst outcome accurately rather than a swollen version of it, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a thing the size it really is.

And there is something else about a no that almost nobody says, so I will.

A no ends a thing, and endings are useful. Right now you are carrying four unasked people at once. Each of them is a maybe, and maybes are heavier than noes, because a maybe has to be carried indefinitely and a no can be put down.

You are carrying four open questions and calling it caution, and an unasked person has never once weighed less than a person who said no. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives a person the relief of an actual answer, and Esther 4:16 has a woman moving toward the answer rather than living in front of it.

Ask badly, this week

So the assignment, and I want to make it as small as it actually is.

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

One. Not four. And it does not have to be the most important one, and honestly it should not be. Pick the easiest one. The one where a no would cost you least.

You are allowed to start with the easy one, and choosing the smallest version first has never once been cheating. The Spirit of God is not in a hurry with a frightened person, and the written word gives a woman three days before she walks anywhere.

And you are allowed to ask it badly. In fact I would prefer it if you did.

An awkward question that gets asked is worth more than a smooth one that does not, and the awkwardness is not the thing that decides the answer. Whether they need it is what decides the answer.

You are able to ask a question badly this week, and a clumsy sentence has never once been the reason somebody declined work they needed doing. The Holy Spirit is the one who goes into the room ahead of a person, and it is written that a woman went in with nothing arranged except three days of prayer behind her.