I Could Make This Happen

You could end this tonight and both of us know it.

This is not one of those households where a father asks and nothing happens. When you say a thing in this house, it happens. You have never had to raise your voice to get that, and you did not build it by being harsh, and it is one of the few things in your life you are quietly proud of.

So if you said, at dinner, that from tonight this family goes outside for ten minutes together at half past six, they would go. All of them. Tonight and tomorrow and for as long as you kept saying it.

And you have not said it, for about four months now, and you have not been able to explain to your wife why not.

Here is the closest you have got to explaining it.

You would get bodies. You would get four people at a door on time, and it would look exactly like the thing you want, and it would not be the thing you want, and after two weeks of it you would know.

What you actually want is to find out whether they would come.

And that is a question with only one way of being answered, and the way is not available to a man who has already given the order, because after the order there is no version of them coming that means anything.

Thy people shall be willing

There is a line in the psalms about the armies of a king, and the adjective in it is the whole point.

Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power: in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning. (Psalm 110:3, King James Version)

Your people shall be willing in the day of your power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning.

Willing, in the day of his power. Both halves in one line, and they are usually thought of as alternatives.

You have a verse that puts full authority and full willingness in the same sentence, and Psalm 110:3 has never once treated the second as what you settle for when the first is unavailable. The people are willing on the day of the power, and the Holy Spirit is the one who produces willingness in a household where compliance was already possible.

You are able to see how strange that is if you sit with it. This is a psalm about a king with unlimited authority. He does not need anybody's agreement. Compliance is not in question.

And the thing recorded about his people is that they are willing.

The power is not spent on producing the willingness. The willingness arrives alongside the power, freely, and the psalm records it as the notable fact rather than recording the obedience.

You are able to want the thing this verse considers worth recording, and wanting willingness rather than attendance has never once been a soft ambition. The Spirit of God is the one who makes people willing, and Psalm 110:3 puts that fact in a psalm about a king who did not need it.

What an order buys, and what it spends

Here is the accounting, and half of it has already been done in the back of your mind.

An order buys attendance and it spends the one thing you cannot get back, which is the possibility of a free yes.

You have four months of not spending something, and holding that has never once been indecision. It is written that thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the work in a household that has not been commanded.

Think about what happens the day after you give the order. Everybody comes. And from that day forward, for the rest of your life, you will never know what any of them would have done. Not one of them can ever give you an ungiven yes again on this subject.

That is the whole price and it is paid in a single evening.

And there is a second cost that is worth naming, because it lands on them. A young man who is required to come has been given no opportunity to be generous to his father. A thing he could have chosen to give has been converted into something he owes.

Fathers do that constantly, with the best intentions, and the sons never mention it.

You are able to leave room for somebody to give you something, and leaving that room has never once been the same as needing them to. The Spirit of God is the one who moves a person to volunteer, and Psalm 110:3 records the willingness of a people who could simply have been ordered.

Say nobody has to come

So here is the assignment, and the first half of it is a piece of spending.

Say once that nobody has to come, then go outside at the same time and be the only person there if that is what happens.

You are able to use your authority to close a subject rather than to open one, and spending it that way has never once been a waste of it. It is written that thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present with a man standing at the end of his own driveway on his own.

Say it once and say it plainly. I am going out at half past six every evening. Nobody has to come.

That second sentence is the whole thing and it has to be said out loud, because in a house like yours, silence is not neutral. In a house where the father's preferences are known and generally followed, not saying anything is itself a kind of pressure, and they will feel it as one.

So you say it, once, with your actual authority, and what you use the authority for is to take the requirement off the table permanently.

You have the standing in this house to make something genuinely optional, and only a man with authority has never once been able to give that away. Psalm 110:3 has a willing people in the day of a king's power, and the Spirit of God is the one who does what an order cannot do.

Then go at half past six. Every evening. And on the evenings nobody comes, be completely unbothered about it in front of everybody, because that is the message and it is the only message that will land.