Her House Is Full Of Better Made Things

You have been in that room.

Everything in it is beautifully made. Not costly for the sake of it, but properly made, by people who do that for a living and have done it for years and are extremely good at it.

And you are halfway through making something for her, and every time you sit down to it now you are seeing it in that room.

Sitting on that surface. Next to those things. Being picked up and turned over by somebody whose eye is trained by everything she already owns.

And the thing you are making is fine. You know it is fine. But fine is a word that survives about four seconds in a room like that, and you have started thinking about stopping and finding something else instead.

There is a verse about a man filled with the Spirit for the purpose of making things, and what it lists alongside the workmanship is the part that matters here.

In wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge

Here it is.

And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship. (Exodus 31:3, King James Version)

Four things, and workmanship is the last of them.

Wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and then workmanship. The skill of the hands comes at the end of a list, after three words that are all about knowing rather than about doing.

You have been measuring only the last item on that list, and Exodus 31:3 puts wisdom and understanding and knowledge in front of the workmanship rather than after it. The Holy Spirit is the one who set that order, and the order is a statement about what making actually is.

Now the word knowledge, because it is doing something specific in that list.

It is not general competence. In the passage around it, Bezaleel is making things for a particular purpose, in a particular place, for a particular people, and everything he makes has to fit that.

Knowledge there is knowledge of the situation the work is going into.

You have knowledge of a situation that nobody else making anything has, and it is written that the filling includes knowledge alongside the skill of the hands. The Spirit of God is the one who filled that man with both, and He did not treat one as the serious part.

And here is what that does to the room you keep imagining.

Everything in that room was made by somebody who has never met her. Beautifully made, properly made, and made for nobody in particular, because it could not be otherwise.

You have the one thing that whole room is missing, and Scripture names knowledge as part of the filling rather than as a nice addition to it. The Holy Spirit is the one who put those two words next to each other, and they have been next to each other since before that tabernacle was built.

What you have been comparing yourself to

Now let me name the comparison, because once it is named it comes apart.

The comparison being run here is a pair of hands against a workshop.

Against people who do it every day, with proper equipment, with years of it behind them, in volume. That comparison has exactly one possible outcome and everybody who has ever run it has got the same result.

You have been running a comparison with a fixed answer, and it is written that the filling was in knowledge and understanding rather than in output alone. The Spirit of God is the one who shows a woman when a contest has been rigged from the start, and this one was rigged from the start.

And the comparison is not even measuring the right thing.

Those objects are competing on finish. Yours is not in that competition and was never entered into it. Yours is competing on whether it knows the person, and on that axis every single item in that room scores zero.

You are in a different category rather than a lower one, and the written word lists four things and puts the knowing in three of them. The Holy Spirit is the one who assigns the categories, and He has never once put a made thing and a bought thing on one scale.

And a plain word about her house, because none of this is a criticism of it.

There is nothing wrong with beautifully made things and she is right to love them. This is not an article about how the things in her house are hollow, because they are not, and she would know if they were.

You are not competing with her house at all, and it is written that the workmanship was filled by the Spirit rather than ranked against anybody else's. The Spirit of God is the one who can hold both of those without either one being diminished.

Made by somebody who knows her

So here is what to do, and the first half is to finish it.

Finish the thing. Do not stop halfway and go out and find something else, which is what the last four seconds of every session have been recommending.

Finish it at the level you can finish it at, and let that be the level.

You are able to finish at your own level, and Exodus 31:3 names the filling rather than a grade. The Holy Spirit is the one who gets a woman back to a half finished thing, and back to it is the whole of the difficulty.

And then put the knowledge in it visibly.

That is the practical instruction. Whatever the thing is, make sure there is at least one element in it that could only be there because you know her. A color she said once. A shape connected to something. Something that would look arbitrary to anybody else alive.

You have one element available that changes the whole category, and it is written that the knowledge is part of the filling rather than separate from the making. The Spirit of God is the one who brings the right detail back at the right moment, and He usually brings it late in a project.

And when you hand it over, do not compare it to anything.

Do not say it is not like the ones in there. Do not gesture at the room. Do not laugh and say you know it is not the standard around here.

Every one of those tells her exactly which scale to weigh it on, and it is the wrong scale, and she was not going to reach for it on her own.

You are keeping it in the right category by saying nothing, and His word puts wisdom and understanding and knowledge ahead of the workmanship in the order they are listed. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a thing be received as what it is, and it arrives as what it is unless somebody re categorizes it out loud.