He Deflects Every Time And The Man Keeps Asking

Four times in eight months, which he only worked out because he sat and counted it.

The first time was in a van. The second was at the end of something at work when everybody else had gone. The third was a text, which is the one that should have told him, because a man does not text a thing like that lightly. The fourth was three weeks ago in a canteen.

Every single time, he has sent him somewhere else.

Not rudely. He is warm about it and he means it: you should talk to so and so, he is much better on this than me. Or there is a thing on at such and such, you would like it. Or he sends a link to somebody who explains it well, and he genuinely does explain it well.

He is not ducking out of embarrassment. That is what he tells himself, and there is truth in it. He thinks the man deserves a proper answer from somebody who knows what they are talking about, and he has spent his whole adult life sending people to the right person, which is a habit that has served him well in every other area of life.

And the man has never once followed any of it up.

He has not gone to so and so. He did not go to the thing. He did not open the link, or if he did he has never mentioned it.

He has just come back, four times in eight months, to the same person.

And that fact has been sitting in front of him for eight months and he has never once looked directly at it, because looking at it would mean accepting that he is the one being asked, and that the redirect is not a service he is providing.

The redirect is an exit. He built it himself and he uses it warmly and it works every time.

And the man keeps coming back anyway, which is either persistence or something else.

And you have a version of this. Somebody comes to you and you send them somewhere better, kindly, every time, and they keep coming back to you, and you have never asked yourself why.

He first found his own brother

There is a small verse near the start of John that describes the least impressive evangelism in the New Testament, and it is the one that produced Peter.

Andrew has spent about an afternoon with Jesus. That is the whole of his training. He has no doctrine, no experience, and nothing that anybody would call an account.

He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, "We have found the Messiah."John 1:41

His own brother. The person nearest to him.

There is nothing about him choosing the right person or the strategic one. He goes to the man he lives with, and what he says is about eight words long, and he does not explain anything.

And that is how Peter arrives.

You are near somebody, and proximity has been the whole qualification in this since the first afternoon. It is written that he first found his own brother and said, we have found the Messiah (John 1:41), and it is the Holy Spirit who does what happens in a man after eight words, which is not something Andrew could have arranged.

Now the redirect, because it needs naming as what it is.

You have spent your adult life sending people to the right person and it has served you well in every other area. In a workplace that is competence. It is genuinely a virtue and it has made you useful to a great many people.

But it does not transfer here, and the evidence is sitting in front of you: he has not gone to any of them.

You have been offering a service that has been declined four times, which means the service was not what was wanted. Scripture says a friend loves at all times (Proverbs 17:17), and it is the Holy Spirit who has been bringing a man back to the same person for eight months, which is not a routing error on his part.

And the reason it does not transfer.

What he is asking for is not information. If he wanted information he would have opened the link, and the link is good and you know it is good.

He is asking a person he trusts what is true, and the answer he wants has your name attached to it, because the whole point of asking you is that he has watched you for a while and something about you made him ask rather than search.

You are the answer he is looking for, and the person you keep recommending cannot supply it because he has not been in the van. It is written that you are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all (2 Corinthians 3:2), and it is His Spirit who writes that letter in a man's ordinary life, which is what this colleague has been reading for eight months.

And the text message, which is the one you knew about at the time.

A man does not text a thing like that lightly. You said so yourself. That was the moment it cost him something to ask, and it was answered with a link, and he has still come back once since.

You have been given four openings and you have not lost the fourth one yet. Scripture says God is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish (2 Peter 3:9), and it is the Holy Spirit who has been keeping a door open in a colleague for eight months while a good man kept pointing at other rooms.