Thirty One Years Of Doing It Their Way

The boy asked it in November and you have not answered it yet.

He is twenty-four and he is not a boy, and he asked it without any edge on it at all, which is why it went in so far.

He said: thirty-one years of doing it their way. What does that do to a person?

He was not being clever. He was asking because he is about to sign something himself and he wanted to know what he is walking into.

You said something about the years going quickly and he accepted it and the conversation moved on.

And you have been chewing it since.

Because the honest answer is that you do not know. You have never once asked what thirty-one years of running somebody else's pattern has made of you. You were busy running it.

And now that the question has been asked out loud by somebody with clear eyes, you find that you are slightly afraid of the answer.

The fear has a specific shape. It is that the answer is nothing. That a man can do a thing correctly for three decades and it does not accumulate into anything, because it was never his design and never his idea.

There is a verse about old age that goes straight at that, and it does not say what people think it says.

They shall still bring forth fruit

There is a psalm about the righteous and what happens to them late.

They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing. (Psalm 92:14, King James Version)

Still. That word is doing all the work.

Still implies continuation. It implies that something has been growing the entire time and has not stopped. You cannot still be bringing forth fruit unless fruit has been coming for a long while already.

You have been bearing something the whole thirty-one years, and Psalm 92:14 says still bring forth rather than begin to bring forth. The Holy Spirit is the one who has been growing it in a man who was too busy running the pattern to look at it.

Now look at what the psalm does not say, because that is the part that answers the boy.

It does not say they shall bring forth fruit because of what they designed. It does not mention ownership anywhere. It says what a person becomes over a long time of doing right.

The fruit is not the work. The fruit is the man.

You are the thing that was being built, and it is written that the righteous still bring forth in old age rather than that their projects do. The Spirit of God is the one who was doing the building, and Psalm 92 is where He says what He was after.

And there is a line just before it about being planted in the house of the LORD, which tells you where the growth was happening.

Not in the arrangement. In a different soil entirely, which happened to be under a man who was running somebody else's pattern all day.

You have been planted somewhere the arrangement never had access to, and the written word puts the growing in the house of the LORD rather than in the place a man works. The Holy Spirit is the one who did the planting, and He did it thirty-one years ago whether or not it was noticed.

What thirty-one years actually made

Let me be specific, because the boy deserves a specific answer and so do you.

Thirty-one years of doing something correctly when nobody was checking makes a particular kind of man. It makes a man whose word and whose hands are the same thing. That is rare and it is not decorative. People can feel it across a counter in four seconds.

Thirty-one years of holding an opinion you never got to act on makes patience, and patience of a kind that cannot be got any other way. A man who has never been overruled has no idea what he would do with it.

Thirty-one years of being one of many makes a man who is not impressed by his own importance, which is the single most useful quality a person can have around young people.

You are carrying three things that took three decades to make, and Scripture calls that fruit rather than compensation. The Spirit of God is the one who made them, and it is written in Psalm 92 that this is exactly what a long faithful stretch produces.

None of that is on the paperwork. None of it belongs to anybody but you.

And here is the thing that will actually reach the fear.

The boy did not ask what the years produced in the building. He asked what it does to a person. He asked the right question, and he asked it of the right man, and he is going to remember your answer for thirty years.

You have an answer that nobody else in his life can give him, and the written word says the righteous still bring forth in old age. The Holy Spirit is the one who arranged that question in November, and He was not being cruel when He did.

Answer it out loud first

So here is the thing to do, and do it before you see him again.

Answer his question out loud, on your own, in one sentence.

Not the polite version. The true one. Thirty-one years of doing it their way made me a man who does not need to be watched, and that is worth more than the design was.

Or whatever your own sentence turns out to be. It will not be the same as anybody else's.

You are finding out what you have rather than composing something for a young man, and Psalm 92:14 says the fruit is already there to be found. The Spirit of God is the one who brings it up when a man finally asks, and He has been holding it a long time.

The reason to do it alone first is that you will not say it well the first time. Nobody does. And the first time is the one where a man discovers what he actually thinks, and that should not happen in front of somebody who is about to sign something.

Say it three or four times on your own. Then when he asks again, and he will ask again, you will have it.

You have been given something to hand a young man, and it is written that they shall still bring forth fruit in old age. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes an old man's plain sentence stay in a young man for thirty years, and Psalm 92 is where the promise of the fruit stands.

Then go in and run the pattern the way you have run it since you were younger than he is.