I Ask And Then I Say Never Mind

You ask, and then about a second later you take it back.

It happens in the gap. You say the thing, and then you watch their face, and something moves in it. A small pause. A slight rearrangement. And before it has finished rearranging you say, never mind, it does not matter, forget I said anything.

And they say, no, go on. And you say, honestly, it is nothing.

And then the moment is over and everybody goes back to what they were doing.

Here is what I want to point out, and it is going to sit oddly for a minute.

You do not know what that pause was.

You have never found out. Not once. In every single instance of this, you have withdrawn before the pause finished, which means you have been reading the first half of an expression and acting on it as though it were the whole.

And a face at the start of a pause is not a conclusion. It is a face doing something.

Tell me, what hast thou in the house

There is a moment where a widow comes to a prophet with nothing, and the first thing he does is ask her a question.

And Elisha said unto her, What shall I do for thee? tell me, what hast thou in the house? And she said, Thine handmaid hath not any thing in the house, save a pot of oil. (2 Kings 4:2, King James Version)

What shall I do for thee. That is the first question, and it is asked plainly, with no conditions attached.

And then he asks a second one, which is the practical one, and he asks it directly. Tell me what you have got.

You are asked plainly what is in the house, and no honest question has ever once been asked with a catch hidden inside it. 2 Kings 4:2 says tell me, what hast thou in the house, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a plain question feel plain to somebody who has been reading faces for years.

Notice how she answers. She says she has nothing, and then corrects herself, save a pot of oil.

She nearly withdrew. She said not any thing first, and then she added the one small true item, and that one item is what the whole rest of the story is built on.

You have been one correction away from the thing the story was going to be built on, and no small item has ever once been too little to be the beginning of something. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present in the half second where somebody nearly says nothing, and it is written that the save a pot of oil came after the not any thing.

And notice that Elisha does not rush her. He asks, and then there is space, and she fills it, badly at first and then accurately.

The space is what let the true answer arrive.

You were never going to hear the real answer inside one second, and no space has ever once been filled properly by the person who asked the question. The Spirit of God is the one who holds a gap open long enough for the truth to come, and Scripture keeps her first wrong answer in the text rather than tidying it away.

What the pause actually is

Now let me be concrete, because a general reassurance will not stop a withdrawal that happens in a second.

Name what is actually in that pause on somebody's face. There are perhaps four things it could be.

They are working out the answer. They are working out how to say it simply. They are remembering something unrelated that came into their head. Or they did not hear you properly and are about to ask you to repeat it.

Three of those four are somebody preparing to help you well. The fourth is nothing at all.

You are looking at a face that is nearly always working on your behalf, and no pause has ever once been a verdict that arrived that quickly. The Spirit of God is the one who names what is actually happening in a room, and 2 Kings 4:2 has a plain question asked with room left after it.

And here is the second half, which is the cost.

Every withdrawal teaches the other person something. It teaches them that when they pause, you leave. And after enough of those, people begin answering you fast, without thinking properly, because they have learned that a pause ends the conversation.

So the withdrawing has been producing worse answers, from people who wanted to give you better ones.

Nobody ever told you that. It is a gap in the teaching, and it is not a fault in the man.

You have been getting hurried answers from people who wanted to give you careful ones, and no withdrawal has ever once left anybody the room to think. The written word leaves a space after the question and gets a true answer into it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man what his own retreat has been costing.

Four seconds

Now the small thing, and it is a count.

I am not going to ask you to be braver. Bravery is not what is missing, and telling a man to be brave in a moment that lasts one second is no use to anybody.

Ask one thing this week and stay quiet for four seconds, whatever their face does.

You are able to stay in a room for four seconds, and four seconds of quiet have never once been awkward to anybody except the person counting them. 2 Kings 4:2 asks and then leaves room, and the Holy Spirit is the one present in a gap a man has always closed.

Count them. Actually count. One, two, three, four, in your head, slowly.

The counting is not a trick. It works because the withdrawal is faster than thought, and counting gives your mouth something else to do at the exact moment the never mind wants out.

And whatever their face does in those four seconds, do not act on it. A face at second one is not a face at second four, and you have only ever seen second one.

You are seeing the whole of an expression for the first time, and no first second of anybody's face has ever once been the finished thing. The Spirit of God is the one who holds a man in a gap he has always run out of, and it is written that the true answer came after the space rather than during it.