It Keeps Asking Me And I Keep Saying No

It comes back.

Not every day. Often enough that you have got used to the shape of it, and the small drop it puts in your stomach when it appears.

The first time, you did not know what it was, so you made it go away. The second time, you knew what it was and still did not know what it would do, so you made it go away again. And after the fourth or fifth time, something changed. It stopped being a question you had not answered and became a thing you were avoiding.

That is a different feeling and a worse one.

Because now there is a small dread attached to it. Now, when it appears, what you feel is not curiosity but the low weariness of a thing you keep putting off, and a suspicion that the putting off is starting to count against you somewhere.

Let me say the plain thing first. Nobody has ever told you what that request would change. Not once. Not in a sentence you could hold.

So what has been called avoidance for five months has actually been a person declining to agree to something nobody explained. That is a gap in the teaching and not a gap in you. In every other part of life we call it sense.

New every morning

There is a line in the middle of a book of grief, and it is about things arriving fresh rather than piling up.

They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:23, King James Version)

The man writing that had lost nearly everything, and what he says is not that the trouble stopped. What he says is that the mercy does not run out and does not go stale, and that it turns up again the next day at full strength.

Now sit that beside a thing on a screen that keeps coming back. Something that returns is not necessarily something accumulating against you. In the economy God actually runs, the thing that keeps returning is the kindness.

You are living under a mercy that arrives fresh and does not keep a running total, and five months of saying not now have never once been added up anywhere against you. Lamentations 3:23 says they are new every morning, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that true for somebody who has been quietly keeping score of their own delays.

Notice what the writer is doing in that chapter. He is talking to himself. He is a man deliberately putting one fact back in front of his own eyes because everything else in view is heavy.

That is not denial. It is a man choosing what he looks at while the situation stays exactly as it is.

You have permission to choose what you put in front of your own eyes, and a thing that keeps returning has never once been keeping a record on you. The Holy Spirit is the one who hands a person back the true shape of their own week, and it is written that the mercies are new rather than counted.

And there is one more word in that verse worth having, which is faithfulness. Great is thy faithfulness. Faithfulness is the quality of showing up in the same way, again, without changing the terms.

That is not a threat. That is what makes it safe to take your time.

You were never on a clock that somebody else is watching, and the returning of a small request has never once been a countdown against a person. The Spirit of God is the one who takes the hurry out of an ordinary decision, and Scripture puts faithfulness beside the mercy rather than a deadline.

What you were never told

Now let me be concrete, because a general reassurance does not help somebody who is going to see that thing again on Thursday.

Something on a screen that asks the same question repeatedly is nearly always doing one of two things. It is asking permission to change itself, or it is asking permission to change what it knows about you.

That is genuinely the whole of it. And in both cases, the reason it keeps asking rather than going ahead on its own is the important part.

It keeps asking because it has not been given permission. A thing that could take what it wanted would not stand at the door for five months being polite about it.

You are looking at something that has waited five months for an answer, and a thing that waits has never once been a thing that can take. The Spirit of God is the one who takes the menace out of a polite repeated question, and Scripture names faithfulness as a returning that does not change its terms.

What nobody said out loud is that saying yes and saying no are both real answers, and that either one ends the small dread.

The dread is not attached to the request. It is attached to the state of not having decided, and that state is the only part of this that is actually costing you anything.

You have been carrying the not deciding rather than the decision, and an undecided question has never once had a claim to stay in a person's stomach. The written word puts the mercy new every morning rather than stacked in a corner, and the Holy Spirit is the one who ends a thing that has been left open.

Ask what it changes

Now the small step, and it is not a decision.

I am not going to tell you to say yes and I am not going to tell you to say no. I have not seen your screen and I never will, and anybody who tells you which way to go on a thing they cannot see is guessing at your expense.

What I will say is that anybody is entitled to know what a thing changes before agreeing to it, and that nobody has ever offered that one sentence here.

So the step is to get the sentence. Not from the screen. From a person.

You are entitled to a plain answer before you agree to anything, and asking what a thing changes has never once been an unreasonable question for anybody to ask. Lamentations 3:23 has a man putting one solid fact in front of his own eyes on purpose, and the Holy Spirit is the one who steadies somebody about to ask for the first time.

And say it plainly, without the apology that usually goes in front. Something on my screen keeps asking me something and I have never known what it would change. Can you tell me in one sentence.

That is the whole request. Notice that it does not confess anything, does not describe the five months, and does not ask anybody to do anything for you.

You are asking for information and not for a rescue, and one plain sentence has never once been a burden on the person hearing it. The Spirit of God is the one who is present when somebody asks a thing out loud for the first time, and it is written that the mercy is new on the morning they finally do.