Waiting For A Person To Send You

There is one person whose blessing Hannah has been waiting for since she was twenty-six, and she is forty-one.

She has never asked for it. That is worth establishing early. She has not hinted, engineered a conversation, or done any of the small maneuvers that people do. If you asked her why not, she would say that a blessing you have to ask for is not the same object, and she is right about that, and it is also not the whole reason.

The whole reason is that if she asked and it did not come, she would know.

At the moment she does not know. At the moment there is a live possibility, running quietly in the background for fifteen years, that one day the conversation happens and the sentence gets said. And that possibility has cost her considerably more than a no would have.

Now, I want to be extremely careful about the person, because there is a version of this article that makes them the villain and that version would be a lie and would do damage.

They are not withholding anything. Almost certainly they have no idea. People in that position rarely do: they are carrying a great deal, they assume that what is obvious to them is obvious to everybody, and the sentence Hannah has been waiting fifteen years for would take them about four seconds to say and has never once occurred to them because they think she already knows.

That is the ordinary shape of it. Not neglect. Not politics. Two people, both decent, and a sentence that never came up.

And there is a second thing about them that matters more, and it is not a criticism either.

They could not give it to her anyway. Not really. Not the thing she actually wants, which is not a compliment or an endorsement but a settling, an end to the question, a floor under fifteen years of work. No human being has ever been able to hand that to another one. If they said it tomorrow she would have about three good weeks and then the question would come back in a slightly different shape, because it always does, because the thing she is asking for is not in their gift.

You have your own version of this. There is a person, and a sentence, and you know exactly what it is and exactly who would say it.

Nobody here is going to say a word against them. Not one.

But it is worth knowing that what you are waiting for was never on their side of the table.

The sending is passed along a chain, and the first link is not a person

There is a sentence Jesus says in a locked room to frightened people, and the structure of it settles this whole question.

Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.John 20:21

As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.

It is a chain, and the shape of the chain is the teaching. The Father sends the Son. The Son sends them. And the whole authority of the second sending rests entirely on the first one, which is why He states it as a comparison rather than as an independent act.

Nobody in that room voted. There was no assessment. He does not say I have watched you and you are ready, and given what they had all done the previous week, that is just as well.

And notice what He says first. Peace be unto you. Before the commission, before the breathing on them two verses later, He settles the room. The sending is issued to people who have just been told they are at peace, not to people who have earned a hearing.

And your sending comes down a chain that starts outside every person you know. That is not my encouragement: the written word roots the whole authority in the Father sending the Son, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my paragraph who makes that land in a woman who has been waiting fifteen years for one human sentence.

And peace was spoken over you before anything was asked of you. The word puts peace be unto you in front of the commission in that room, and the Spirit is the one who makes that order real in a body, which means the settling you have been waiting for a person to provide was handed over before the sending was mentioned.

What the person could actually give you, and it is worth having

Now the other half, because I do not want you to walk away from people.

Recognition from somebody you respect is a genuine good. It is not a weakness to want it and it is not idolatry to feel its absence. The New Testament is full of it: hands laid on, letters of commendation, names read out, people sent off with a blessing from a room that meant it.

So the absence is a real absence and I will not tell you otherwise.

What I am saying is that you have been asking one person for two different things at once, and only one of them was ever theirs.

They could give you recognition. That is real, it is in their gift, and if it ever comes it will be a good day.

They could never give you standing. That was never on their side of the table, and fifteen years of waiting has been fifteen years of holding out a hand for an object that is not in that room.

And your standing is settled elsewhere and already. The word says you are a child of God, and the Spirit Himself bears witness with your spirit that this is so, which is a sentence about parentage rather than about anybody's opinion of your work.

And nobody's silence has changed what you are. The word says the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are His, and knoweth does not wait on an announcement, and the Spirit is the one who makes that a comfort rather than a technicality to a woman at a kitchen table.

Nobody is asking you to go and have the conversation

I want that said plainly, because a message like this often ends with somebody going to have a conversation they have avoided for fifteen years, at the wrong hour, in the wrong state.

Do not do that tonight on the strength of this. Not because it would be wrong forever, but because tonight you would be going to get something they cannot give you, and it would not go the way you want, and the person would be confused and you would be worse off by Friday.

And do not, on any account, decide that they have failed you. You do not know what they are carrying, and I do not either, and the guardrail on this whole site is that we do not set anybody against the people they serve alongside.

And you are not required to be recognized in order to be sent. Nothing in Scripture makes a human sentence the condition of a divine one, and the Spirit of God has never once waited for a person to catch up before working through somebody.