The Children Are Not Allowed In There

There is a rule in your house and everybody knows it without it ever having been announced.

The children do not go in the front room.

It was never a decision. There was no evening where it got made. It assembled itself out of a hundred small moments, each of which was reasonable, and the total is a room in a house with three children in it that the children are not in.

And you know exactly why it happened, because you were there for most of the hundred moments.

Something got spilled. Something got broken, once, and you were fine about it, which cost you something. Somebody put their feet on the good chair. And each time there was a small correction, and none of the corrections was unfair, and children are extremely good at learning where the corrections happen.

So they stopped going in. Nobody banned them. They worked it out, which is worse, because a ban can be lifted and a thing that was worked out cannot.

Tonight we are going to lift something that was never imposed.

Suffer them to come, and forbid them not

There is a moment in Mark where the Lord is displeased about exactly this, and the language He uses is strong.

But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. (Mark 10:14, King James Version)

Much displeased. And forbid them not.

You are looking at the one thing Scripture records displeasing Him about children, and a child kept back has never once been a small matter to Him. Mark 10:14 has the Lord displeased about children being kept away, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a father standing in a hallway.

Now look at who is doing the keeping back in that passage, because it is the part that will land.

His own disciples. Good men. Men who were protecting Him from an interruption, because He was tired and busy and there were important things happening and children are noisy.

They were not being cruel. They were being sensible, and they were managing the room, and they were entirely wrong.

You are able to be protective and wrong at the same time, and a sensible instinct has never once made a rule correct. The Spirit of God is the one who told good men they had got it wrong without calling them bad men, and it is written in Mark 10:14 that He was displeased with the ones keeping the children back.

What the rule is teaching

Now the practical part, and it is about what your children are learning rather than about the room.

They are learning where they rank against the furniture.

Not consciously. Nobody in that house could say it out loud. But a child who has worked out that there is a room they are not welcome in has learned something about the order of things in their own home, and they have learned it from the doorway rather than from anything anybody said.

And they will not remember the rule. They will remember the shape of it.

You are teaching a household its own order every day, and a room a child is not welcome in has never once said anything except where that child stands. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a father what his own house is teaching, and Mark 10:14 has the Lord displeased with exactly the people who were managing the space.

And here is the thing about the room that makes this easier than it sounds.

The room is not being preserved for anybody. There is no visitor coming who requires it. It is being preserved against a risk, and the risk is your own children, and the thing being protected is worth less than the thing it is being protected from.

That is the whole arithmetic and it takes about four seconds to do once somebody says it out loud.

You are protecting a room from the people it exists for, and furniture has never once outranked a household in the house of a man who provides for one. The Spirit of God is the one present when a father opens a door to his own children, and it is written in Mark 10:14 that He said forbid them not.

And this, plainly, in these words. That room is not a report on you. Not on your fathering, not on your standards, not on whether you have provided well. A front room that got quietly closed is not a verdict on the man who closed it, and I am not going to allow it to be read that way while he is standing in the hall.

You are a man whose worth was settled a long way from a front room, and a rule that assembled itself over years has never once been a statement about who somebody is. Mark 10:14 puts the displeasure on the keeping back in Mark 10, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the room with you.

One hour, and one thing left out

So here is the assignment, and it has two halves and the second one is the difficult one.

Let the children into that room tonight for an hour, and leave one thing they leave out exactly where it is overnight.

First. Say it plainly, at dinner. Come in the front room tonight. Do not make a speech and do not explain that things are changing, because a speech makes children suspicious and one of them will decline on principle.

Take whatever is already happening in there. An hour.

You are opening a door to your own household without a speech attached, and one hour has never once needed an announcement to be given. The Holy Spirit is the one at work when a father says come in, and Mark 10:14 has the Lord say forbid them not without any qualification following it.

Then the second half, and this is where it actually happens.

Leave one thing they leave out exactly where it is overnight.

There will be something. There always is. A cup, a game with the pieces out, a coat over the arm of the good chair, something on the floor that has no business being on the floor.

Leave one of them. Overnight. And come down to it in the morning.

You are able to let a room carry the evidence of your own children, and one game on a floor has never once cost a house anything. The Holy Spirit is the one at work in what a household sees at seven in the morning, and Mark 10:14 has the Lord say forbid them not with nothing following it.

Because if the room gets restored after they go up, then the hour was a visit, and children can tell the difference between a visit and a room. And a thing of theirs still there at seven in the morning is the whole of the message, and it does not need one word said about it.

You are letting your children leave a mark on the best room in the house, and one thing of theirs left overnight has never once been a smaller welcome than an hour. The Spirit of God is the one present in a front room at seven in the morning with a child's thing still on the floor, and it is written in Mark 10:14 that of such is the kingdom of God.