You have done the school run for six years and you have never once said anything good to either of them out loud.
You have said plenty. You have said brush your teeth and where is your other shoe and I am so proud of you about a swimming badge, which does not count and you know it does not count. You have sat up with the younger one through three nights of a chest infection. You know which of them will eat mushrooms and which of them will lie about eating mushrooms.
You are not their mother. Their mother is alive and lives forty minutes away and is, on the whole, decent, and there is a rota, and everybody manages.
Tonight they are both on the sofa under the same blanket watching something, and the older one has his feet on the younger one, which usually starts a war and tonight has not. And you are standing in the doorway with two mugs, and something goes through you that you have felt about a hundred times in six years and have never once acted on.
You want to say something over them. Not instructions. Not encouragement about a badge. Something good, on purpose, about who they are, out loud, in front of them.
And you do not, because you never do, because underneath the whole thing sits a sentence you have never said to another human being: I am not sure I am allowed to.
So you bring the mugs in and put them down and say who wants the last of the biscuits.
Nobody asked whose children they were
Stay in the doorway a minute. There is no rush and I am not going to hand you a technique.
First thing, and Scripture holds me to it and the Spirit will not let me be careless with it: their mother is not on trial here. Not one line of this is a case against her. She exists, she is theirs, and nothing I am about to say takes anything from her or needs to. The question in that doorway was never about her at all. It was about you, and about a permission you have been waiting six years for somebody to issue.
So let me show you a scene where the standing question came up and got answered.
And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.Mark 10:16
Look at the circumstances. Those children were brought to Him by people He did not know, in a crowd, in the middle of a journey. He was not their father. He had no claim on any of them, no legal relation, no place on any family document. The disciples, who were extremely interested in who was allowed to do what, tried to stop the whole thing.
And He took them up in His arms and blessed them, and nobody in that account asks Him whose they were, because the question was never relevant. Blessing was not a right conferred by relation. It was a good thing said by someone standing close enough to say it.
You are standing close enough, and you have been for six years, and the standing you have been waiting for arrived a very long time ago. That is not me giving you permission, which would be worth nothing. That is what is written about who Christ blessed, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes an account that old and lays it in a doorway with two mugs in it.
Here is the part that takes the weight off. When you speak a blessing over those children, you are not claiming anything and you are not competing with anybody. You are agreeing out loud with what God has already said about them. Your mouth is a door. God is the one coming through it. Which means it does not require a title, and it does not require anybody's approval, and it does not put you in a category you have carefully stayed out of for six years.
A blessing spoken by you takes nothing from their mother, because it was never yours to give in the first place. Scripture says God has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing (Ephesians 1:3), settled, past tense, and the Spirit is the one who carries a finished thing out of heaven through whichever mouth is in the room. There is no rota on that.
Where the sentence came from
Now let me get at the thing underneath, because I think you have never examined it and it has been running your evenings for six years. What is written will take it apart, and the Spirit will do it kindly.
I am not sure I am allowed to. Ask where that came from and I do not think you will find a person. Nobody said it to you. Their mother has never said it. He has never said it. You built it yourself, out of caution and out of respect and out of a very real fear of overstepping into a place that would hurt somebody, and then you made it a rule, and then you stopped seeing it as a rule and started experiencing it as a fact about the world.
That is not humility, though it wears its clothes. It is a woman holding a position nobody assigned her, and what is written never once made a good word conditional on a title. The Spirit is not waiting for a document either.
God has never once run His blessing along the lines of who is officially entitled to speak it. It is written that Christ took children who were not His and put His hands on them while the people whose job it was to manage access tried to prevent it (Mark 10:13-16), and the same Spirit who preserved that detail is standing in your living room, which is why it reads as a ruling and not as reassurance.
Hear what I am not doing. I am not telling you to take a place that is not yours, or to say anything to those children about being their mother, or to blur a line you have been careful with for good reasons. Your care about that line has been right and I am not asking you to abandon it. What I am telling you is that speaking God's word over a child was never on the far side of it.
What you say over them will stand over their lives whether they register it tonight or not. God's word does not come back to Him empty (Isaiah 55:11), and the Spirit is the one who carries it, and a boy with his feet on his sister cannot make it less true.
So here is what is true, standing in that doorway with the tea going cold in your hands.
The blessing exists. God settled it in Christ before either of those children was born, it is written down where anybody can go and read it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries it through whichever mouth is willing. What is missing is not the words, and it is certainly not the six years. What is missing is one sentence and a woman who stops waiting to be told she may.
You are permitted, and the permission is not mine to give or their mother's to withhold, because it was settled in Scripture before any of you were involved. Nobody has ever had to hold a title to speak God's word over a child. Faith is an open hand and not a performance, God is the one who fills the hand, and the Spirit does the carrying; what He carries is what is written.
I will not tell you what those two do with it. I have no authority to promise you that they look up, or that anything visible happens, or that it changes the shape of anything in that house. That belongs to God. What I can tell you is what is already settled, because it is written and I am only reading it out where you can hear it: He took children who were not His own into His arms and blessed them, on a road, in front of people who thought He should not, and nobody ever asked Him whose they were.
Six years of biscuits and school runs. Tonight, say the thing.
Declare this over yourself
Say these standing, out loud, in the kitchen before you go in there, because a blessing is spoken and not thought. You have the standing to say them, and not because somebody finally issued you a permit. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so the authority to speak God's word over a child in your house is His authority, handed to you and carried by His Spirit. Scripture says whoever speaks to the mountain and does not doubt shall have what he says. Says. Out loud. So say it here, to a rule you wrote yourself six years ago and have been obeying like a law. What God does in those two lives is His to decide, and none of it is yours to produce.
- Question of whether I am allowed, you are six years old and you are answered. Scripture says He took them in His arms and blessed them, and nobody in that crowd asked Him whose they were.
- Rule I wrote myself out of caution and have obeyed like a law, get out of this house in the name of Jesus. It is written that Christ blessed children on a road while the people managing access tried to stop Him, and heaven kept that detail on purpose.
- Lord, You put Your hands on children who were not Yours and nobody checked Your standing. I thank You, because Your face is shining on those two on the sofa and Your Spirit is the one carrying it, and I am going in there with their names in my mouth.
Mark 10:16
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