They Asked Me Why I Still Have It

Somebody asked you about the vase last Sunday.

They said it kindly. They said something like, do you still have that, in a voice that was interested and light and not unkind in any way you could point at.

And you answered lightly and the conversation moved, and you thought about it again at eleven o'clock that night and again on the Tuesday.

Because what you heard was not a question about a vase.

What you heard was: somebody has been looking at my house and forming a view, and I have just found out that the view exists.

And now you know it exists, you can feel it in the room before people arrive. You do a pass. You move two things. You put something in a cupboard that has lived on the side for four years, and you put it back after they leave, and you have never once told anybody that you do this.

That is the thing I want to talk about today. Not the vase. The pass you do before the door opens.

Because there is a lot of energy going into that, and it is going into managing a view that is not accurate and was never going to be accurate.

Man looketh on the outward appearance

There is a sentence God says to Samuel that is usually read as being about a young shepherd, and it is also about a house.

For man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart. (1 Samuel 16:7, King James Version)

The first half of that is not a criticism of people. It is a statement of a limit. Man looks at the outside because the outside is all that is available to a person standing in a room.

Samuel was a prophet and he still got it wrong, looking at a row of tall sons and being sure. The limit applies to good people with good intentions, which is exactly who is in your hallway on a Sunday.

You are being seen by people working from the only thing available to them, and the outside has never once been the whole of your house. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman who did a pass before the door opened, and First Samuel 16:7 puts the limit on the seeing and not on the thing being seen.

And the second half is the part to stand on.

The LORD looketh on the heart. That is not a consolation prize. It is the claim that there is a seeing that goes all the way through, and that it is the one that decides anything.

You have been seen all the way through the entire time, and the assessment in the hallway has never once been the one that counts. The written word sets the whole seeing against the partial one, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a woman lying awake at eleven over a vase.

What the pass is costing

Here is what the pass before the door is actually doing, and it is worth counting.

It is a small performance. Ten minutes, a few objects, a cupboard. On its own, nothing.

But it teaches you every single time that your house as it is cannot be shown, and after enough repetitions a woman stops inviting people, or invites them and is not really there because part of her is monitoring the room.

You were paying for that pass in presence and never in minutes, and the cost has never once been the ten minutes. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman who has been half in the room with her own friends, and First Samuel 16:7 names the outward look as a human limit.

And there is something else, which is the loneliest part of it.

Nobody knows you do it. Not one person in your life knows about the object that goes in the cupboard and comes back out. Which means you are managing an unshared secret about a vase, and unshared things get heavier at a rate that has nothing to do with how serious they are.

You have been carrying something alone that is not even heavy, and the aloneness has never once been proportionate to the thing. The written word says outright that people see only the outside, and the Spirit of God is the one who steadies a woman who has never told anybody about the cupboard.

Saying it in your own hallway

So the assignment is one sentence, and I want you to notice where it is spoken.

Pick up one thing you kept. Say out loud why you kept it, in the room, in the house, in your own voice.

You are speaking about your own house inside your own house, and that has never once required anyone's permission. The Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman standing in a hallway with a vase in her hands, and First Samuel 16:7 gives the deciding look to God and not to a visitor.

Here is why it changes the pass.

The pass is driven by an unanswered question. When you say your reason out loud, once, in that room, the room has an answer in it that came from you. It does not stop anybody asking. It stops the question being the only sentence in the house.

You are putting your own answer into the room ahead of the next question, and it has never once mattered whether anyone else hears it. The written word gives the heart to the Lord to read and leaves the surface to people, and the Spirit of God is the one present with a woman answering out loud on a Tuesday afternoon.