For the parent driving home after a question they were not ready for.
You are in the middle lane at forty when your son asks, from directly behind your right ear, what happens to people who never hear about Jesus.
He's eleven. There's a football bag in the footwell, and a smell of oranges from something that has leaked in a side pocket and will not be found for weeks. The indicator is going because you need the next exit, and you have about four minutes of road left.
So you talk. You say something about God being fair, and something about not knowing, and you ask him what made him think of it, which buys you the roundabout.
He says a boy at school brought it up at lunch. Then he talks about the boy's dog for the whole of the rest of the journey, in detail, without appearing to notice that the first subject was ever raised.
You pull onto the drive, turn the engine off, and sit there for a second with the sensation that you have just failed an examination you did not know you had been entered for.
This car has not been nothing, and it's been doing the work for six years. The written Word the road into his list of four places, and the Spirit has been riding in the back with the football bag.
The Examination You Think You Failed
Name the standard you just graded yourself against, because you have never once inspected it.
The standard is a complete, satisfying, theologically careful answer to one of the harder questions in the whole field, delivered without notice, at forty miles an hour, to an eleven year old, in under four minutes.
Written out like that it's obviously absurd. No teacher, no minister and no scholar could meet it. People write entire books on that question, then disagree with each other at length about the answers.
You'd never hold another adult to it. If a friend told you he'd been asked that in a car and had fumbled it, you'd tell him straight away that nobody could have done better, and you'd mean it. The standard only ever gets applied to you, by you, on your own drive.
You have been holding yourself to a standard that no qualified person in the history of the church could have met in a car with an indicator going.
You failed a standard that no trained person could have met either. The Word says that never asks a parent for a complete answer, and the Spirit is not waiting on one.
And When Thou Walkest by the Way
Here is the passage, and one of the four places named in it is the one you were in.
And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.Deuteronomy 6:6-7 (KJV)
The house, the way, the lying down, the rising up. The way is the journey, the going from one place to another, and for you that journey has wheels and a football bag in it.
There's no suggestion anywhere that the way is the inferior setting. It sits second in the list, ahead of both ends of the day, and it's named without apology or qualification.
If anything the journey has an advantage the other three don't. Nobody in a car is facing anybody, nobody can leave, and the whole thing has a natural end when you arrive. That's close to ideal conditions for saying a difficult thing out loud, which is why he said it there.
Those words went first to a people who walked everywhere they went, and they carry over to a family in the middle lane without losing anything.
A car on a dual carriageway is the way, which the verse names by name. It is written that talking into the journey, and the Spirit has been in six years of journeys.
Six Years of Driving
Do the arithmetic, because nobody ever does and the number is not small.
School runs, matches, the swimming thing on Wednesdays, the long drive to his grandmother twice a year. Call it four hours a week for six years, and you are somewhere north of twelve hundred hours.
In that time he has asked you about death, about whether you believe it, about why his friend's parents split up, and now about people who never heard. He asks in the car because in the car nobody has to look at anybody, which is exactly why eleven year olds say the true thing there.
Twelve hundred hours of a boy raising hard subjects with a parent who answers. If you'd paid for that in a building somewhere you'd count it as your children's entire religious education.
You don't count it because it's free, and because it happens in a car, and because nobody stood at the front of it. Those are the only three reasons, and not one of them is a reason.
Twelve hundred hours of honest talk is what you have, and you have never once counted it. Scripture's instruction measures the talking rather than the venue, and the Spirit has filled the hours you dismissed.
I Am Not Telling You the Answer Was Good
Be straight with yourself, because comfort built on a false claim will not hold.
Your answer was not very good. You know it and I am not going to tell you otherwise. It was two half sentences and a question to buy time at a roundabout.
Nor am I telling you the question is settled, or that he will not ask again, or that you will do better next time without thinking about it in advance.
What I want off you is the word failed. Not the wish to answer better. Not the responsibility.
He Asked You
Here is the turn, and it is not about the quality of anything you said.
An eleven year old boy, who talks to you mostly about football, chose to put a serious question about God to you personally, in a car, without any prompting, because a boy at school had raised something that troubled him.
He did not take it to the boy at school. He did not take it to the internet, where he would have found four thousand confident answers by people who have never met him. He took it to the back of your head at forty miles an hour.
That is a boy who has learned, over twelve hundred hours, that his parent will engage with a hard thing rather than deflect it. He learned that from you, and it did not come from the quality of your answers.
He brought it to you, which is the fruit of every hour you never counted. The written Word's instruction asks for the talking and leaves the outcome elsewhere, and the Spirit made your car the place he trusted.
Declare this over yourself
You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so what follows is not a claim made out of your own authority. It is agreement, said back to God in His own words, while the Holy Spirit carries it. How He orders the rest of it is His to decide, and He answers in His own way and in His own time.
What follows was settled before you read it. You stand in Christ and He in you, the Spirit carries agreement, and God keeps every decision about the sequel to Himself.
Speak it once and leave it there.
This car has not been nothing, and six years of driving have been doing the work I thought was missing. It is written that I talk of these words when I walk by the way, and the way is the journey, which for us has wheels and a football bag in it. The Spirit has been riding in the back of it for six years. I am not sitting an examination. My son brought a hard question about God to me personally, in a car, because he has learned that I will engage with it, and he learned that from twelve hundred hours nobody counted. I give the outcome to God and put the word failed down.
Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.
This message is free. Nothing here is locked, nothing is for sale, and nothing is being asked of you.
Deuteronomy 6:6-7
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
