It Did Not Change Us

You booked that week hoping it would do something, and it did not, and you have been quiet about it for two weeks.

Not that you said so at the time. You would not have put it in those words even to yourself when you were booking it.

But it was there. Something in you thought: if we get all of us in one place, with nothing else going on, for six days, something will shift. Whatever it is that has been slightly wrong between two of them will loosen. The eldest will say something. This household will come back different.

And you had six days, and everybody was fine, and you came home, and this household came back exactly the same.

And what has been going on in you since is not disappointment about a trip. It is a conclusion forming about your family. If six days in one place with nothing else going on did not shift it, then perhaps this is simply what we are.

That is the thing I want to take apart, and it is the last article of these seven, and there is one verse for it.

Not by might, nor by power

There is a sentence in Zechariah given to a man in the middle of a building project, and it names what does not accomplish things before it names what does.

Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the LORD unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts. (Zechariah 4:6, King James Version)

You have a sentence in the written word that rules out two methods before it names the one that works, and no week away has ever once been on the list of things that change a household. Zechariah 4:6 says not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is named in that verse as what actually does it.

Look at what gets ruled out. Might, which is force. Power, which is capacity, resource, the ability to arrange a thing.

That second one is what a week away is. It is the largest amount of arranging and resource a household like yours can produce, deployed at once, on purpose, in the hope of an outcome.

And the verse says that is not what does it.

You are not looking at a failure of your household, and no amount of resource has once been the mechanism this verse names. It is written not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts, which excludes the method rather than the people, and the Spirit of God is what shows a man that the week was never the instrument.

That is not a small correction. It moves the whole thing out of the category of evidence about your family and into the category of a method that was never going to work, which is a completely different conversation.

You are able to reclassify the week as a wrong method rather than as a finding, and two weeks of holding the second reading has never once made it accurate. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes a verdict off a household and puts it on a mechanism, and Zechariah 4 rules out force and resource by name.

And notice who this was said to. A man building something, in a period when the work was going slowly and looked small. He was not being told his project was hopeless. He was being told what the actual power supply was.

You are being told what the power supply is rather than that the work is hopeless, and no slow year in this family has once meant the building has stopped. It is written but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts, which is a supply rather than an encouragement, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is named as the one doing it.

What you were actually asking a week to do

Now the practical part, and it is about the size of the request.

You asked a week to change two people's relationship with each other, open up something in a teenager who has been closed for two years, and alter the general temperature of a household.

Written out like that, you can see it. That is an enormous request, and no week has ever done it, and no week was ever going to.

You are able to see the size of what you asked, and no part of that has once made you a foolish man for asking it. The Spirit of God is what lets a man look at his own hope plainly without embarrassment, and it is written that the might and the power are ruled out rather than mocked.

And here is what makes the request understandable rather than silly. You have very few instruments. A man in your position has almost nothing he can deploy at his family: he cannot make anybody talk, he cannot repair anything between two other people, and he cannot change the temperature of a room by deciding to.

A week away is one of the only large things you can actually do. So of course you loaded it. It was the only lever in reach.

You were reaching for the only instrument you had, and no version of that has once been you expecting too much. It is written that the work goes forward by the Spirit rather than by what a man can deploy, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the weight of an outcome off somebody who has been carrying it alone.

And here is the exchange that this article ends on, which is also the end of these seven. You cannot change your household. That is now established, and it is not a defeat, because it was never your job and the verse says so out loud.

What you can do is put this family in the same place with nothing else going on, repeatedly, and let the actual agent do the actual work in His own time.

You are able to keep providing the conditions without owning the outcome, and no week has once needed to produce anything to have been worth doing. The Holy Spirit is the one who does what a week cannot, and Zechariah 4:6 puts the accomplishing entirely on His side of the sentence.

Say what you were asking, and stop asking a week

So here is the assignment, and it is the last one of these seven.

Say out loud what you had hoped the week would do. Then stop asking a week to do it.

The saying first, to one adult, and say the whole embarrassing thing: I think I was hoping that week would sort something out between the two of them, and that our eldest might open up, and it did not, and I have been low about it since.

You are able to say the whole hope out loud including the part that sounds foolish, and saying it has never once made it a foolish hope. Zechariah 4:6 rules out the method without any mockery attached to it, and the Spirit of God is with a man saying something plain at his own table.

Then the second half, which is a decision rather than an action. Stop asking a week to do it.

Which means, practically: plan the next one without a purpose. Do not go anywhere hoping something shifts. Go because it is good to be in one place with nothing else going on, which is a complete reason on its own and is the only reason that does not set the week up to fail.

You are able to plan something with no outcome attached to it, and taking the purpose out has never once made the week smaller. It is written not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, and the Holy Spirit is the one who works in His own time in a household that has stopped scheduling Him.

And then keep going. That is the last thing I have for you, and it is the whole of this site in one sentence. Keep taking this family places, small and near and often, without a purpose, for years.

Because the thing being hoped for here does happen in families. It just does not happen on a Thursday in June because somebody paid for it. It happens in the ninth or the fortieth ordinary hour of being in the same place with nothing else going on, and nobody notices it happening, and it is done by somebody other than you.