Nine days, and the flat is mostly boxes.
The job is real and it is good and he applied for it deliberately, twice, over two years. Nobody is making him go. There is no tragedy in this and he has been careful to say so to everybody who has asked, and he has meant it every time.
The shelves are down. He got rid of the sofa on a Saturday to a man in a van who did not say much.
His mother is fine about it, which took a while. There has been a great deal of food this month.
And at some point in the last fortnight something has settled on him that he has not been able to name, and it comes at particular moments: standing in the middle of a room with a roll of tape, or in the queue at the place he has been in three times a week for six years, or last Sunday, at the end, when everybody stood up and left.
The nearest he can get is this. He is leaving. He is not being sent.
Nobody has done anything wrong. He knows about eleven people who are genuinely sad and four who have said something that mattered, and one man at work made a speech that was better than the occasion deserved.
But nobody has stood him up and put a hand on him and said anything over him, and he had not known, until a fortnight ago, that this was a thing he wanted, and now he cannot stop noticing that it has not happened and that the runway is nine days long.
They laid hands on them and sent them away
Sit down on a box for a minute, because there is a moment in the written word that is precisely the difference you have been trying to name, it takes one verse, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moved on the room it happened in.
Two men are going. The going is already settled: the Spirit has said so, and the men are willing, and the route is not in doubt.
And then the church does something anyway.
And when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, they sent them away.Acts 13:3
They sent them away.
Read that verb carefully, because it is the whole thing. Barnabas and Saul were already going. The church did not decide it, and the church did not enable it, and nothing about the journey depended on a room in Antioch.
What that room did was change the category of the going. Two men stopped being travelers and became sent ones, and the mechanism was hands and words and people who were staying behind.
Hear this on your box. You are not making this up, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture puts a formal sending on people who were already leaving, and the Holy Spirit is the one who works through hands and spoken words, and the thing you have been unable to name for a fortnight is in a verse in Acts.
Now let me be fair to the eleven people, because you have been fair to them and they deserve it.
Nobody withheld this. Almost nobody now knows how to do it. A whole culture has lost the sentence and kept the party, and the result is that a man can be genuinely loved by twenty people and still walk out of a life with nothing said over him.
That is a gap in the practice and not a verdict on your friendships.
Hear this too, and let it settle the standing in the middle of a room with a roll of tape. You have not been overlooked, and Scripture is what says so. What is written treats the sending as the church's ordinary work rather than a ceremony for special people, and the Spirit of God has never once required somebody to be important before He would work through hands laid on them.
And now the part that is going to require you to do something you would rather not do, and it is one sentence long.
You are going to have to ask.
Nobody is going to offer, because nobody knows this is available. So you pick one person, or three, and you say: before I go, will you pray over me and send me?
Say the word send. It is the word in the verse and it is the one you actually want, and using it will tell them exactly what you are asking for, which they will otherwise not know, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the sending through them.
They will do it. They will be honored and slightly nervous and they will do it badly and it will not matter in the slightest, because the written word does not put the weight on the eloquence of the people staying behind.
So in the next nine days you ask one person.
Not a group, unless a group is easy. One person you trust, and the sentence is: before I go, will you say a blessing over me and send me out?
And then, when they do it, you stand still.
That is the second half and it is harder than the asking. Do not fill it. Do not make a joke at the front of it or thank them halfway through or turn round at the end and say something that makes it lighter for everybody.
Stand there and let words be put on you, in a room, by somebody who is staying, and let it take as long as it takes.
The written word has a whole church laying hands on two men who were already going and calling that a sending, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the sending through hands and spoken words, so nothing about it needs anybody to be good at it.
You are not walking out of a life in nine days. You are being sent into one, and the difference is a sentence, and there is still time to get it said.
Declare this over yourself
Say these standing among the boxes. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the Holy Spirit is the one who sends through hands and spoken words according to the written word, so the standing you speak from was never built out of anybody thinking to offer. Whether the new country is everything you hoped or nothing like it, the outcome is His to decide, and it is never a measure of how you were seen off.
- Nine days, you are not a departure and I am not merely going. The Word of God says they laid their hands on them and sent them away, and those two were already going, and what the room changed was the category and not the route.
- Feeling that I have been overlooked by people who love me, get out of this flat, in the name of Jesus. Scripture makes the sending the ordinary work of the church rather than a ceremony for important men, and the Spirit of God works through hands laid on anybody at all.
- Lord, You are the God who sends through hands and spoken words, and Your Spirit is the one doing the sending in a half packed room. I am asking somebody this week to bless me and send me, and I am standing still while they do it.
Acts 13:3
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