Somebody in your family said it again on Sunday.
Not cruelly. That is the thing that makes it impossible to be angry about, and it is why you have never said anything back. They are worried about you. They want you to have a pension and holiday pay and somebody else carrying the risk, and every single one of those is a reasonable thing to want for a person you love.
And it still lands the way it lands.
Because underneath the question is an assumption that what you are doing is a phase. A gap. Something being got through on the way back to real employment, and after four years of that assumption you have started, in a way you would not admit, to need somebody in that family to say the opposite before you can fully believe it yourself.
He said it about his own town
There is a line Jesus says after being dismissed by the people who watched Him grow up, and it is one of the plainest observations in the Gospels.
But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. (Mark 6:4, King James Version)
In his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.
Three concentric circles, getting closer, and the last one is the house. He is not describing hostility. Read the surrounding verses: the people are not cruel, they are astonished, and their astonishment is essentially: we know this family.
That is the mechanism. Not malice. Familiarity. The people who watched you learn to ride a bicycle have a fixed picture of you, and the picture was formed a long time ago, and new information does not easily overwrite it.
Mark 6:4 states that as an ordinary and expected fact rather than as an injustice to be resented, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets somebody stop being surprised and wounded by the same thing every Sunday.
You are experiencing something entirely ordinary, and it has never once been evidence about the work. Mark 6:4 names the house as the hardest circle and does it without bitterness, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a relief rather than a grievance.
What He did next
Here is the part that matters more than the line, and almost nobody quotes it.
He did not stay and argue. He did not gather the family and explain the ministry. He did not wait until Nazareth came round.
The next verse says He laid His hands on a few sick folk and healed them, and then He went round about the villages, teaching. He carried on. Somewhere else, mostly, and He carried on.
And that is not a story about giving up on his family. He came back. It is a story about not making the work contingent on the recognition.
Mark 6:4 is followed immediately by the work continuing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates whether a thing is real from whether the people nearest to it have said so.
You are able to carry on without the agreement, and the work has never once depended on it. The written word has the teaching continue in the very next verse, and the Spirit of God is the one who unhooks a person's work from a household's opinion of it.
Do not build the case
Now the thing I want to talk you out of, and it is what you have been rehearsing, and Mark 6:4 does not contain one word of it, and neither does the Holy Spirit.
You have a case. You have been assembling it for about two years. It has figures in it, and the bit about the client who came back, and the year the shop on the corner closed and you did not.
Do not deliver it.
Not because it is untrue. Because a case requires a verdict, and asking for a verdict from people who have a fixed picture of you puts you in the position of a person seeking approval, which is exactly the position that is hurting you. And even if they concede the argument, the concession will not do what you want it to do, because what you want is not to win, it is to be seen, and those cannot be extracted by evidence.
Mark 6:4 has no defense in it anywhere. He states the pattern and moves, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can take a rehearsed argument out of somebody's mouth.
You are not required to prove anything, and a verdict has never once been what you were actually after. Mark 6:4 states the situation without one word of self-defense, and the Spirit of God is the one who releases a person from an argument they were always going to lose by winning.
So here is what I believe is going out over somebody today.
You are doing real work, and their picture of you has never once been an assessment of it. I am not turning you against anybody. Mark 6:4 names the house as the hardest circle and does it as a plain observation rather than an accusation, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my telling who lets a person stop being wounded by an ordinary and predictable thing.
And this, which is the word I came with:
You are counted, and the counting has never once been theirs to do. The written word has the teaching carry straight on in the next verse, and the Spirit of God is the one who unhooks a person's own belief in their work from a verdict their family are not going to deliver.
Say one true sentence to yourself. Then go and do the work.
Declare this over yourself
- Assumption in that question that this is a phase, you are not an assessment of my work. Mark 6:4 says a prophet is not without honor but in his own house, so by the Holy Spirit you do not get to grade me in the name of Jesus.
- Case I have been assembling for two years, you are not going to be delivered. The word has Him state it and move on with no defense at all, and by the Holy Spirit I am done seeking a verdict from people with a fixed picture.
- Father, You counted this before anybody in my family did. Your word says a prophet is not without honor save in his own house, so by Your Spirit I say one true sentence today, and I go and do the work.
Mark 6:4
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