He Comes Out For Everybody Else

He went out for four hours on Saturday with his friend's family. Four hours. Willingly.

And on Sunday you asked him to walk to the store and he did not look up.

You have been carrying that around since, and you have not said it to anybody, because there is no way to say it that does not sound like a man asking to be reassured.

So let me say the sentence for you, since you cannot: he will do it with anyone except me.

That has been sitting in you for a while. It has been quietly explaining a great many other things. And I want to look at it properly, because a verdict that has never been examined is not a verdict, it is a suspicion that has been left alone long enough to harden.

His father came out to him

There is a second half to the story of the prodigal that almost nobody preaches, and it is about the son who did not go anywhere.

And he was angry, and would not go in: therefore came his father out, and intreated him. (Luke 15:28, King James Version)

Therefore came his father out.

Look at what the father does with a son who will not come in. He does not send for him. He does not wait to be approached. He does not stand in the doorway and let the refusal be answered by silence.

He goes out. Physically leaves the room where everything is happening, and walks to where the one who will not come is standing.

You are being shown a father who moves toward a refusal, and it was never the son who had to cross that distance first. Luke 15:28 has the father come out to the one who would not go in, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that read as a way forward rather than as another demand on you.

And notice the word intreated. Not commanded. Not rebuked. He asks, out there, in the dark, away from the party, without an audience.

You have a picture of asking done away from the room, and it was never in front of everybody that this got handled. The written word puts the conversation outside where nobody else is, and the Spirit of God is what moves a father off a doorstep and out to where his son actually is.

What a refusal in a house is made of

Now let me offer something about the four hours on Saturday, because I do not think it means what it is doing to you.

Going out with somebody else's family is easy for a seventeen year old in a way that going out with his own is not.

There is nothing at stake. Nobody there has known him since he was four. No conversation with them can accidentally become a conversation about his future, or his room, or what he is doing with himself. He can be a version of himself with no history attached, for four hours, and then come home.

Nobody can offer that to their own child. It is not a service anybody is failing to provide. The refusal is about the room and not about the man, and a father who goes out to the one who will not come in has not lost anything.

You are not being rejected, and it was never you that the four hours were a verdict on. Luke 15 has a father go out to a son who is standing outside on purpose, which is exactly why the Spirit of God will not let a man read a closed door as a report on himself.

And here is the part that will help most. Every time you ask him to come with you, he hears the whole history in the question, because it is in there. That is not a fault in the asking. It is what it means to be somebody's father.

Go out to where he is

So the practical part, and it is a change of position rather than a change of words.

Go out to where he is. His room, the kitchen, wherever. Not the doorway, not a shout up the stairs.

You are able to cross the distance yourself, and it has never once been a loss of standing for a father to go and find his own son. The passage has the father leave the house and go out to him, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a man walking up his own stairs.

And say one plain sentence that does not ask him for anything. Something like: I am going out for twenty minutes at seven. That is it. No question mark, no invitation, no expectant pause.

Then leave. Let the no stand without it having to be said, and go at seven whether anybody comes or not.

Because the invitation that has been failing is not the walk. It is the request, and the request has a decade in it. A statement has almost none.

You are able to make an offer with nothing to answer, and it has never once been the same thing as not asking. Luke 15:28 has a father intreat a son outside, away from the room, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present when a man says a short sentence and walks back down the stairs.