Two Said No And One Put Shoes On

There is a moment you have had about forty times and have never examined.

Somebody says yes. One of them. And two of them say no, or say nothing, which counts as no in your house.

And then you say: ah, never mind, another time.

And the one who said yes goes back upstairs, and you have just taught them something, and it is not the thing you meant to teach.

Because what happened in that moment is that their yes was not enough. Not because you value them less. Because somewhere along the way going out became an event that requires the household, and an event that requires the household can be vetoed by anybody in it.

So one child in your house has now been quietly overruled by their siblings, several dozen times, without any of you noticing it happen.

By many or by few

There is a line in Samuel spoken by a young man who has decided to do something with one other person.

And Jonathan said to the young man that bare his armour, Come, and let us go over unto the garrison of these uncircumcised: it may be that the LORD will work for us: for there is no restraint to the LORD to save by many or by few. (1 Samuel 14:6, King James Version)

There is no restraint to the LORD to save by many or by few.

Read the situation. Jonathan has an entire army available and he does not take it. He takes one person, the one who is willing, and he goes.

And the sentence he says out loud is not about courage or about odds. It is a statement about what God is not limited by, and the thing named is the number.

You are not looking at a shortage in your own hallway, and it was never the count that decided whether something was worth doing. 1 Samuel 14:6 names the number as the precise thing God is not restrained by, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land on a man standing at a door with one child.

And notice who goes with him. Not the best of the army. The one who was there and willing, and that is the only qualification the text records.

You have somebody willing in this house tonight, and it was never required that they be the whole household to count. The written word takes the many and the few and puts them on exactly the same footing, and the Spirit of God is what stops a father grading his own family by attendance.

What the cancellation actually says

Now the part that will be slightly uncomfortable, and I say it as somebody who has done it.

When you cancel because two said no, the child who said yes learns that their willingness has no weight on its own.

That is not what you meant. What you meant was: it is not worth the fuss for one. But that is not what arrives. What arrives is that being the one who wanted to come is not a position that gets you anything.

And children who learn that stop volunteering, because volunteering has been shown to be pointless, and after about a year the house has nobody in it who says yes, and the conclusion drawn is that nobody wants to go. A family outing does not require a quorum, and one child on a sidewalk is a whole going out.

You are not living with a household that refuses you, and it was never their unwillingness that emptied that hallway. 1 Samuel 14 sets out with one willing person and no vote at all, which is exactly why the Spirit of God moves a father toward the one who said yes.

And there is a second thing. The two who said no are not being punished by your going. They are being shown that this happens, reliably, whether or not they are in it, which is the only thing that has ever brought a reluctant person along in the end.

Go with the one

Here is the practical part and it is a decision rather than a technique. Decide now, before the next time, that one yes is enough. Not two. One.

You are able to settle that in advance, and it has never once needed to be decided in a hallway with everybody watching. The passage has Jonathan say the sentence about many and few before he moves rather than after, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man make a decision when the room is quiet.

Then when it happens, do not announce the new policy. Do not say right, well, we are going anyway. That turns it into a rebuke of the two who stayed.

Just say: alright, come on then, and go, with the one, for twenty minutes.

And when you come back, say nothing about it. Do not report on what a nice time you had. Do not say the others missed out. Both of those turn a walk into a lesson, and the walk is not a lesson.

You are able to go and come back without making a point of it, and it has never once been necessary to teach anybody anything on the way home. 1 Samuel 14:6 records a man going with one companion and no speech to the ones who stayed behind, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a good decision from turning into a message.