saying 'No'

All sorts of different issues arise in the course of a day.

'Pastoral' issues, in the broadest sense. All of them needing addressed.

Some are to do with arrangements that have to be made in connection with upcoming services. Not just the coming worship we'll be sharing in this fast-approaching Sunday (though that needs attention for sure). Nor just the service here tomorrow over lunch-time (that also requires some attention - not least my reminding the person who's leading tomorrow that that's what he's scheduled to do!). But a service of thanksgiving for a person who has died.

Then there are phone calls I need to make, arranging to meet different folk, and tieing up one or two loose ends.

And folk that come in with a problem we have to work through. A problem to do with the way that we handle an awkward situation. How to be firm with a person without causing needless offence.

It's a problem to do with how we best say simply 'No!'

A long time ago I was at a two-day conference arranged for Christian ministers on the theme of 'time management'. These were the days before that was really in vogue.

The guy who was leading the course - a business-oriented guy, who nonetheless was well aware that it was ministers he was teaching - he was underlining just how important it is in the management of time to be ruthlessly firm and insistent in not taking on far too much.

One of the ministers present then raised his hand. That's all right for you to say and do, out there in your business world. But we're Christians, he said, and Christian ministers at that: we're meant to be nice and full of grace - so how can we say 'No'?

Learn to say 'No' graciously then, he said.

Which seemed pretty wise (as well as fairly obvious!) at the time. It's a grace we need to learn. We assume too often that 'grace' means always saying 'Yes'.

Like the TSB (as was) we like to say 'Yes'. But it's not always helpful or wise so to do. We need to learn the grace of saying 'No'.

I think it's Bill Hybels (of Willowcreek fame) who writes somewhere of a notice which says very simply - which part of the word 'No' do you not understand?

People can be quite persistent and pushy at times.

Jesus wasn't at everyone's beck and call. He didn't always jump to every request.

Grace doesn't mean we always oblige. It means learning to say 'No' graciously.

Learning to say 'No'. Graciously.

I live with that tension each day. To give time to this means I have to say 'No' to that. The challenge is always in seeing just what 'this' is each day. And then saying 'No' to 'that'.

It's a tension we all of us live with. And that's why this awkward situation had arisen. The person, being a person who has sought to follow Jesus - this person likes to say 'Yes', to oblige, to help out.

But there's no way that can happen. And the problem we have is essentially two-fold.

First, we're always anxious that we do not cause offence. And we're all too aware just how easily others can take offence.

We need to be clear that once we have given our 'No' in a gracious and courteous way - in a very real sense such 'offence' is then not our problem at all. It's an issue the person 'offended' will have to work through with the Lord. We must learn to dispose of the burden of 'guilt' that we sometimes continue to bear when a person has taken offence like that. It isn't our problem at all.

But there's another real problem we encounter in actually saying 'No'. We can think that we're letting God down.

What sort of Christian are you, if you won't help out? That sort of thing.

Don't let yourself be blackmailed by that sort of thing. You are not in yourself the answer to all the world's problems and all of the needs people have. Don't start to think that you are.

Saying 'No', when the Lord makes it clear that it's not a thing he's calling you to do, is not ever letting him down. It's simply being obedient. It's simply walking humbly with the Lord and being open and honest enough to acknowledge you can't do it all.

There are limits to what you can do. There are limits to what you can give. Unlike the Lord, we're very finite creatures.

A long time ago I learned how important it is in putting requests to a person, to make it always as easy as I can for them to say 'No'. The only pressure I'm wanting the person to know is the pressure of God's Holy Spirit. Burdening that person's heart , himself.

He makes a far better job of that than we can ever do. Leave that sort of 'pressure' to him.

I guess if we all learned to live like this, intent on making it easy for people we're requesting something from to say simply 'No': and secure enough in the grace of our relationship with Christ, ourselves to say 'No' graciously - then an awful lot of problems would be gone.

But meanwhile, there'll be issues of this sort that I'll be helpng folk to handle day by day.