I Have Decided I Am Not A Host

You have a sentence and you have been saying it for about ten years.

I am not really a host. I am not a house person. We are not really set up for it. I would rather go out. I am not that sort of guy.

They are all true, in the sense that they describe something real about how your life has gone. Nobody has ever pushed back on any of them, because they sound like a preference, and people respect preferences.

And a preference is a very good place to keep something, because nobody investigates a preference. Nobody says, out of interest, why not.

I want to do the thing that nobody has done, and I want to do it once and then move on, because there is no use in circling it.

Ten years ago there was a reason. There always is. It was probably not one thing, it was a stretch, and by the end of it not inviting anybody in had become the shape of your life, and then a sentence grew over the top of it to explain it to people, and the sentence has been doing that job so well for so long that it is now the only thing anybody sees, including you.

So the question is not whether you are a host. The question is what the sentence is covering.

And then, this week, we are going to open the door once.

It is not good that the man should be alone

There is a sentence in the second chapter of Genesis that arrives before anything has gone wrong anywhere in the world.

And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. (Genesis 2:18, King James Version)

Not good. Said by God, about a man, in a garden, before there was a single thing wrong with anything.

You are described by God as somebody who was never meant to be by himself, and being alone has never once been a personality that a man was issued with. Genesis 2:18 calls the aloneness not good before anything anywhere had gone wrong, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a man who has had a sentence ready for ten years.

Now look at what that timing means, because it is the whole force of the verse.

Everything else God had made up to that point had been called good. This is the first not good in the Bible, and it is not about sin and it is not about failure. It is about a man on his own, in perfect conditions, with nothing wrong.

Which means the aloneness is not a preference and it is not a personality and it is not a moral problem. It is named, by God, as a thing that is not good, in a sentence that has no blame anywhere in it.

You have something named plainly by God without one word of blame attached, and a man on his own has never once been a man being criticized. The Spirit of God is the one who names a thing without accusing anybody of it, and it is written in Genesis 2:18 that the not good came before anything had gone wrong.

What the sentence is doing

Now back to the sentence, because it is worth understanding what a good sentence like that actually does.

It is not a lie. That is the first thing. You genuinely would rather go out, at this point, because ten years of a habit produces a real preference and the preference is now honestly felt.

But it was built. That is the part worth seeing. It did not arrive with you. Somewhere behind it is a stretch of years, and in that stretch there was a house you did not want seen, or a marriage that ended, or a period where everything was too much, or a thing that happened in a room once, and the sentence grew over it the way skin grows over something.

And a sentence like that has a cost that never appears on any invoice.

You are carrying something that has been quietly charging you for ten years, and a habit that explains itself well has never once been free. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man what a good sentence has been costing him, and Genesis 2:18 names a man being on his own as not good without blaming him for it.

The cost is that nobody has been in your house for ten years, and nobody has asked why, because you gave them a reason that made asking rude.

You are able to look under a sentence you built, and a ten year old explanation has never once been the same thing as the truth it was covering. The Holy Spirit is the one who is gentle with what a man finds under there, and Genesis 2:18 names the aloneness without a syllable of blame in it.

And here is the thing I want to say most, and I want to say it as plainly as I can.

You do not have to tell anybody the true reason. Not this week, not ever, not to anybody who is not owed it.

Saying it once, out loud, alone, in your own kitchen, is enough for what we are doing here. The reason is not the audience's business. It is yours, and it is worth having in the open where you can see it rather than under a sentence where you cannot.

You are allowed to know a thing without announcing it, and a truth said once in an empty kitchen has never once been a smaller truth for having no audience. The Spirit of God is the one present when a man says a true thing to nobody, and it is written in Genesis 2:18 that God named a not good thing plainly and then did something about it.

And this, plainly. That house is not a report on you. Not on the years, not on whatever the stretch was, not on what has happened since. A place a man has kept people out of is not a verdict on the man, and I am not going to allow it to be read that way while he is standing in his own kitchen.

You are a man whose worth was settled a long way from a front room, and where a man lives has never once been a statement about who he is. Genesis 2:18 puts the not good on the aloneness rather than on the man in Genesis 2, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the kitchen with you.

One person, this week

So here is the assignment, and it is one person and one restraint.

Ask one person over this week, and open the door without doing anything to the place first.

One. Somebody you already see, who already likes you, for an hour, on a specific day. Come round Thursday, an hour, nothing formal.

And do not explain. Do not say it has been a while, do not say the place is not much, do not attach ten years to an invitation. A man who has said I am not really a host for a decade will feel a very strong pull to account for the change, and accounting for it is how it becomes a big thing that then does not happen.

You are able to give a plain invitation with no account attached to it, and one sentence has never once needed ten years of explanation welded to the front of it. The Holy Spirit is the one who moves a man to send something short, and Genesis 2:18 names the aloneness as not good and then moves straight to doing something about it.

Then the second half.

Do nothing to the place first. Not on the day, not the night before. Because if this week needs a preparation, then it is an event, and events do not repeat, and the whole point is that this can happen again next month without anything being arranged.

An hour that costs nothing to set up can happen again. An hour that took a night of work will not.

You are building something that can happen twice, and an hour that needed no preparation has never once been a lesser evening than one that took a week. The Spirit of God is the one present in an ordinary hour in a house that has been shut, and it is written in Genesis 2:18 that God called the aloneness not good and did something about it Himself.