Who Am I Keeping It For

You can clean for a visitor.

Give you six hours' notice that somebody is coming and this house will be transformed. You know it and I know it. The energy arrives from somewhere, the decisions get made in seconds, and by the time the bell goes it is a different place.

And on a Tuesday with nobody coming, you cannot lift a cup.

That is not laziness and it is not inconsistency. It is that the fuel you have been running on for years is other people's eyes, and on a Tuesday there are none, and so there is no fuel.

The trouble is that nobody comes any more, for all the reasons this whole site is about, and so a fuel supply that used to arrive every few weeks now arrives never.

So you are not out of willpower. You are out of visitors, and nobody has ever offered you a different engine.

Whether therefore ye eat, or drink

There is a verse in Corinthians that takes the smallest possible actions and does something enormous with them.

Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. (1 Corinthians 10:31, King James Version)

Eating and drinking.

Paul could have picked anything. He picks the two most ordinary bodily acts there are, the ones nobody watches and nobody comments on, and he says those are done to the glory of God.

Which means the audience question has been answered in a way that has nothing to do with anybody arriving.

You have been offered a reason that does not run on other people's eyes, and no engine of that kind has ever once needed a bell to start it. 1 Corinthians 10:31 puts the direction inside the act, and the Holy Spirit is the one who supplies something that keeps working on a Tuesday nobody is coming.

And notice what this is not. It is not a rule that makes chores holy in order to get more of them done. That reading turns God into another visitor whose approval a person is cleaning for, and that would be the same engine with a different name on it.

It is plainer and better than that. It says the small unwatched act already has a direction, whether anybody sees it or not, and that direction is upward, and it was that before you thought about it.

You are not doing something pointless in an empty house, and 1 Corinthians 10:31 has never once made an audience the thing that gives an act its meaning. It is written about eating and drinking, which nobody watches, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that ordinary rather than grand for somebody standing in a kitchen on a Tuesday.

You have been running on a fuel that stopped being delivered. The word puts the direction into the act itself, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present in a room nobody is coming to.

Keeping it for yourself is allowed and it is not enough

Now let me say something honest, because there is an answer people give here and it does not work.

People say do it for yourself. Because a person deserves a nice home. Because a person is worth it.

I have watched that fail in a hundred kitchens, and I think I know why. On a tired Tuesday, the version of a person who would benefit is somebody they are not currently very fond of, and doing a favor for somebody you do not like is not motivating. A house is a record of what a hard stretch cost, and it is not a verdict on the man living in it.

You are permitted a reason that does not require you to like yourself on any given day, and no motive here has ever once had to be built out of affection. The written word puts the glory into whatsoever ye do without mentioning how anybody felt about it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who supplies what a mood cannot.

So I am not going to build tonight on that.

Here is the other reason, and it is smaller and it holds better. You live here. Not deserve. Not worth it. Live. This is where your body is at nine in the evening, and it is where you wake up, and a person living somewhere is a good enough reason for the place to work slightly better than it does.

That reason does not require you to like yourself on any given day. It only requires you to be in the building, which you are.

You were never lacking a reason, and there has never once been a version of this that depended on you feeling warmly toward yourself. 1 Corinthians 10:31 puts the direction in the act rather than in the audience or the mood, and the Spirit of God is the one who gives somebody a reason that survives a bad Tuesday.

You are permitted to keep this house for the plain reason that you are in it, and being in it has never once needed to be justified further. It is written that whatsoever ye do is done to the glory of God, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in fifteen minutes done for nobody at all.

Fifteen minutes, with nobody coming

So here is the whole of it.

Set a timer for fifteen minutes. Nobody is coming. That is not a problem to be solved tonight, it is the situation as it stands.

Work on anything. When it goes, stop.

And when the thought arrives, and it will, that this is pointless because nobody will see it, answer it with the shortest true sentence available: I live here.

Then stop and do nothing else.

You are able to work in an empty house tonight, and it has never once required somebody to be on their way. 1 Corinthians 10:31 gives the smallest unwatched acts a direction, and the Spirit of God is present in fifteen minutes in a room nobody is coming to.