Everything Good Waits Until It Is Finished

There is a list of good things in your house and every one of them is waiting.

Having people over. Sitting in the front room on purpose. Using the good things. Taking a photograph of the family in there. Having anybody stay. The small ordinary pleasures of a house, all of them, held behind one condition.

When the house is finished.

And I want to be honest about that condition, because it is the whole of this article.

It is not going to be met.

Not because you will not work at it. Because a house is not a project with an end. There is always a next thing, and finishing the next thing reveals the one after it, and a house is a running relationship rather than a job with a completion date. Everybody who has ever owned or rented anywhere discovers this and almost nobody says it out loud.

So the condition is not a hard condition. It is a permanent one.

Which means the list is not a list of things you are going to do. It is a list of things you have decided not to do, and the deciding is invisible because it is dressed as timing.

It is finished

There is one sentence in the gospel of John that is the most complete statement about finishing there has ever been.

When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost. (John 19:30, King James Version)

It is finished. Three words, said once, and they were not about a house.

You are living on the far side of the only thing that ever actually needed finishing, and a room has never once been what any of that was about. John 19:30 records the finishing of the one thing that mattered, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a woman standing in a room with a list in her head.

Now I want to be careful, because this is a large verse and I am not going to make it small by using it to talk about a front room.

But look at what it does to the structure of a life, because that is exactly what it was for.

Everything that a person could ever have been waiting to be complete before anything good was allowed was completed there. That is the claim of the whole gospel. The waiting ended, the condition was met by somebody else, and nobody has to hold anything back until something is finished, because the finishing has been done and reported.

You are somebody for whom the finishing was done by somebody else, and a condition met at the cross has never once needed to be met again in a living room. The Spirit of God is the one who applies a finished work to an ordinary life, and it is written in John 19:30 that He said it is finished.

What the condition has cost

Now the practical part, and I want to count it honestly because the number is the argument.

How long has the condition been running?

If it has been six years, then that is six years of not having people over, of not sitting in the front room on purpose, of not using the good things, of not taking the photograph. Six years of a list of ordinary pleasures held behind a gate.

And the house is not finished, and it will not be finished in six more, and the same list will still be waiting.

You are able to count what a condition has actually cost, and a permanent condition has never once been a timing decision. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman the real length of a wait, and John 19:30 records a finishing that ended the waiting rather than starting another one.

And here is the thing about the good things on that list, and it is the piece that matters most.

They are not improved by a finished room.

An evening with people you love in it is not better in a finished house. The photograph is not better. The good things used are not better. Every single item on that list is exactly as good in a room with an unfinished corner in it, and not one of them has ever been made better by anything having been completed first.

Which means the condition is not protecting the quality of anything. It is only delaying it.

You are holding a list of things that a finished room could never have improved, and a good evening has never once been made better by a completed wall. The Spirit of God is the one present in an ordinary evening in an unfinished room, and it is written in John 19:30 that the finishing that mattered was announced as done.

And this, plainly, in these words, and this is the last article of the seven so it should be said as plainly as anything in the whole set. That house is not a report on you. Not on your effort, not on your standards, not on the life you have made in it. A house with things still to do is not a verdict on the woman living in it, and I am not going to allow it to be read that way.

You are a woman whose worth was settled a long way from an unfinished corner, and a house with work still in it has never once been a statement about who lives there. John 19:30 puts the only finishing that ever counted in the past tense in John 19, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the room with you.

One thing off the list, tonight

So here is the assignment, and it is the last one in this whole series, so it is the whole of what this site has been saying in one instruction.

Do one thing tonight that has been saved until the house is finished, and do it in the room as it stands.

Pick one thing off the list. The smallest one, because the smallest one is the one that will actually happen tonight.

Sit in the front room on purpose with a cup of something. Take the photograph. Use one of the good things. Send the message that asks somebody over. Whatever the smallest item on that list is, it can be done in the next hour.

You are taking one thing off a list that has been held behind a gate for years, and the smallest good thing has never once needed a finished room to happen in. The Holy Spirit is the one at work when a woman does one thing she has been saving, and John 19:30 records the finishing of the one thing that ever had to be finished.

And in the room as it stands. That is the second half and it is the whole discipline of this site.

Nothing gets done to the room first. Not a quick pass, not one job, not moving the thing that has been bothering you. The room is what the room is at nine o'clock tonight, and the good thing happens in it exactly like that.

Because a good thing done in a finished room is a reward for finishing, and a good thing done in an unfinished one is a life being lived. And the second one is available tonight and the first one is not available at all.

You are living in the room you have rather than waiting for one you will not get, and a good evening in an unfinished room has never once been a smaller evening. The Spirit of God is the one present in a life being lived rather than one being prepared for, and it is written in John 19:30 that the finishing was announced and completed by somebody else.