You have said it over everybody in this family.
Over your mother at eighty. Over your brother the week the job went. Over both your sisters' children, and one of them twice, on the same day, because she came back and asked.
You have said it over people who were leaving for the airport and people who were coming home from the hospital, and you have never once had to look it up.
And when it is you that needs it, you go and find somebody else to say it.
That is the pattern and it took your grandmother pointing it out to make you see it. She said, at the table, in front of everybody, without any particular emphasis: he never says it over himself, that one.
And everybody laughed and it moved on and you have thought about it every day since.
Let me say something before we go further.
I am not correcting you.
It is a good thing to go and find somebody. Asking another person to speak over you is not a weakness and I would never call it one, and I am not going to suggest that the years of saying it over everybody else were somehow avoidant.
I am saying your grandmother was right. That is all.
The lines have fallen
Here is a psalm where a man measures out what belongs to him and says it out loud, in the first person, without embarrassment.
The LORD is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot. The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.Psalm 16:5-6
Count the first person in that. Mine inheritance. My cup. My lot. Unto me. I have.
That is five in two verses, and David is not apologizing for any of them.
And notice the image behind the lines are fallen. It is a surveyor's cord. It is the measuring line that gets laid out on the ground to mark where one man's portion ends and another's begins.
He is standing on his own ground, saying so out loud, and he is not asking anybody's permission to do it.
So let me turn and speak straight at you, in that doorway with the food going out behind you.
You have a portion with a line round it. Not one day, not once somebody says it over you, not when you have finished saying it over everybody else. Right now, being handed a plate by your grandmother with cousins pushing past, you are inside a psalm where a man says my five times in two verses and nobody in Scripture corrects him. That is not my kindness. That is what is written, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a written line and lays it on a real man in a real kitchen doorway.
Now, about the crossing.
I want to be careful here, because a man who likes a proper occasion will decide this needs one, and there is a version of it that goes exactly that way.
It does not. There is no ceremony required and there is nothing to arrange. Your grandmother is not going to make a speech and the family are not going to gather.
The whole of it is that a sentence said hundreds of times gets said once with your own name in the middle of it, by your own mouth, in whatever room you happen to be standing in.
That is the crossing. It is allowed to be quiet and it is allowed to be today.
And hear this, because it is settled and not still open. You have a lot that God maintains rather than one you have to hold. The word says thou maintainest my lot, which puts the keeping on His side while the possession stays on yours, and it is His Spirit who carries a written line into a real house on a real Sunday.
Say it with your name in it. That is all that is left to do.
So we are going to put your name in the middle of it.
Not arrange anything. Not gather anybody. Not wait for a proper occasion, because a proper occasion would turn this back into something done in front of people, which is the exact thing that has been happening for twenty years.
Your name, your mouth, this evening, in whatever room happens to be nearest.
If you feel foolish for the first ten seconds, that is normal and it is not a failure. It passes.
So let it be spoken over you before you write. You have a portion measured out with a line round it and maintained by God, and the measuring was done long before your grandmother said anything at that table; Psalm 16 was written long before this family existed, and it is the Holy Spirit who lifts what is written and sets it down in a real house, on a real afternoon, with the food going out.
And you do not have to feel differently for it to be true. This is not about producing an occasion in a doorway. It is about a man putting his own name in a sentence he knows by heart.
Declare this over yourself
Say these over your own name, out loud, in the first person. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and that has been true through every blessing you have said over everybody else; the authority in these words is His, delegated to you and carried in His Name, and what is written is made live in a real mouth by His Spirit. And however He answers about the rest of it, and He answers in His own way and His own manner, you are inside the promise the whole time He is doing it.
- Blessing I have carried for this family, you are not too heavy to hold me, and my name belongs in your middle. Psalm 16 says the lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places, and the man who wrote it says my five times in two verses without apologizing once.
- Habit of going to find somebody else when it is my turn, you are not humility, and you are not speaking for me tonight, in the name of Jesus. The Holy Spirit has never once required a second mouth before a man could be blessed in his own house.
- Lord, You maintain my lot, and Your word puts the keeping on Your side while the portion stays on mine. My own name is on this paper, and I am saying it out loud with the name in the middle where it goes.
Psalm 16:6
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