I Am Keeping Up A Standard Nobody Checks

There is a standard being kept in that house and nobody has ever checked it.

You know what it covers. The things that are visible. The ones that would be noticed. The state of the front of the house and the front room and the car on the drive, and the small ongoing expenditure of effort and sometimes money that goes into keeping all of it at a level.

And the level is not yours. That is the thing worth saying at the start. It was set somewhere else, by somebody, a long time ago, and you inherited it and have been maintaining it since without ever having agreed to it.

Now here is the question that has never been asked out loud.

Who is checking?

Genuinely. Name the person. Not a category, not the neighbors as a concept, not people in general. A person, with a name, who has at any point in the last five years assessed the level at which your house is being kept and formed a view.

There is not one.

And that is not because you are unimportant. It is because that is not what people do. Everybody is inside their own house running their own standard for their own audience that also does not exist, and nobody has spare capacity to audit yours.

Having food and raiment, let us be therewith content

There is a line in Timothy about the bottom of the list, and the shortness of the list is the point.

And having food and raiment let us be therewith content. (1 Timothy 6:8, King James Version)

Food and clothing. That is the list, and the list has two items on it.

You are somebody Scripture describes as having enough, and a two item list has never once needed a third item to be complete. 1 Timothy 6:8 names two things and stops, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a man standing in his own hallway.

Now notice what is not on that list, because the absence is the whole of it.

There is nothing about a standard. Nothing about a level. Nothing about the front of a house, the state of a drive, or anything visible to anybody.

The whole content of that verse is two ordinary provisions, and the word attached to them is content, and there is no third clause about appearances anywhere near it.

You have both items on the list already, and appearance has never once appeared on the inventory of what a man needs to be content. The Spirit of God is the one who names what is actually required, and it is written in 1 Timothy 6:8 that food and clothing is where the list ends.

What it costs to keep

Now the practical part, and I want to be plain about it because the arithmetic is the argument.

The standard costs money that is short and effort that cannot be spared, and it produces nothing that anybody sees.

That is not an exaggeration and it is worth going through once. The visible things get maintained ahead of the invisible ones. Money goes toward the level rather than toward the household. Time goes into the front of the house rather than into the inside of it. And the whole of that expenditure is addressed to an audit that has never once taken place.

You are paying a real cost to an audience that does not exist, and an expenditure addressed to nobody has never once come back. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man what a level has been costing him, and 1 Timothy 6:8 names two provisions and calls that enough.

And here is the second cost, and this one is the heavier one.

Your household lives inside the standard rather than benefiting from it.

Because a level that is maintained is a level that everybody in the house has to live around. The front room is kept at it. The good things are held at it. And a family in a house being kept at a level is a family with less room in its own home than a family in a house that is being lived in and nothing more.

They did not set the standard and they do not benefit from it and they are the ones living inside it.

You are able to hand your household the room the standard has been taking, and a level maintained for nobody has never once served the people living underneath it. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in a house being lived in, and it is written in 1 Timothy 6:8 that the list of what is needed has two items on it.

And this, plainly, in these words, and this is the last of the seven so let it be said as plainly as anything in the set. That house is not a report on you. Not on your work, not on your provision, not on your standing anywhere. A house kept at a level is not a verdict on the man keeping it, and neither is a house that is not, and I am not going to allow either to be read that way.

You are a man whose worth was settled a long way from a front of a house, and a level maintained or dropped has never once been a statement about who somebody is. 1 Timothy 6:8 puts the whole list at two items in 1 Timothy 6, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the room with you.

One thing out, and still out

So here is the assignment, and it is the closing one of this whole site, so it is small on purpose and it is the whole thing at once.

Leave one thing out tonight that the standard would not permit, and let it still be out when somebody comes in.

One thing. Whatever the standard would have you move. Something on the front room floor. A chair from the kitchen still in the living room from last night. A coat over the back of something. Whatever it is that would be moved before anybody arrived.

Leave it.

You are able to leave one thing the standard forbids, and a chair out of place has never once been a report on a household. The Holy Spirit is the one at work when a man declines a level he never agreed to, and 1 Timothy 6:8 names two provisions and stops.

And then the second half, and this is the whole test.

Let it still be out when somebody comes in.

Not tidied at the last minute. Not moved when the door goes. Whoever comes, comes in on a house that is being lived in, and the thing is still where it was.

You have evidence coming rather than an argument, and an audience that has never once looked has never once been an audience. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man find out for himself, and 1 Timothy 6:8 names food and clothing and puts nothing about appearances anywhere on the list.

And watch what happens, because this is the part that will do the work no argument can do.

Nothing will happen. Nobody will say anything. Nobody will look. And the finding out, from evidence, in your own front room, that the audit does not exist and never has, will be worth more than every sentence in this article.

You have a front room that is about to prove something an argument never could, and twenty years of a level has never once been checked by one person with a name. The Spirit of God is the one present when a man lets his own house be seen as it is, and it is written in 1 Timothy 6:8 that having food and clothing is where the list of what a man needs comes to an end.